For the end of the 18th century, when the major Western explorations and descriptions had been completed but the local traditions were not destroyed, we have firm accounts from most parts of the Pacific. When these are brought together they reveal an open seaway in a series of separate stages from Indonesia and the Philippines to the extreme east of Polynesia, and north/south to Hawaii and New Zealand. Lewis (1972) pointed out that almost all the Pacific islands can be reached by sea crossings of no more than 500 km, and his analysis of navigation methods shows that planned passages could be much longer. Information about inter-island movement and trade has been summarized from old accounts for each area by Haddon and Hornell (1936-38), along with sizes of boats, performance and numbers of people carried. Many of the same data, and new material, are given by Lewis (1972).

Let us start with the Palau (Belau) Islands, a group 100 km across, only about six days sailing by local canoe from Mindanao in the Philippines. The long-distance kaep canoes for travel within the group were single-outriggers up to 10 m long. Stone money was carried regularly from Palau to Yap, and there is a tradition that trepang was taken to Chinese merchants in the Philippines. There were Micronesian colonies on Tobi and Sonsorol, almost in the Moluccas, and traditions of voyages southwards to the coast of New Guinea and of raiding parties coming the other way. All the island groups of Micronesia had regular trade, visits or wars within the main groups, with many traditions of war parties venturing further afield. From Palau there was a continuous route for trade and war through the Carolines past Puluwat, then from Kosrae to Jaluit in the Marshall Islands, then to Tarawa in Kiribati (Gilbert Islands), each stage with a slightly different type of double-ended long-distance single-outrigger canoe (Haddon and Hornell 1936-38, I:439, quoting Hambruch). The Marshall Islanders raided other islands from Kosrae in the west to the Ellice Islands (Tuvalu) in the south (Haddon and Hornell 1936-38, I:439). There was no longer a tradition of exploration, but instead there were extremely well-organized schools of navigators who learned the inter-island routes and the seasons for travel. The large single-outrigger canoes sail more safely into the wind than downwind, but go fastest and most steadily with the wind on the beam. In the Carolines the popo canoes ran regular passenger routes (mainly north and south) over a total range of 3000 km and every year parties of them visited the Marianas (Haddon and Hornell 1936-38, I:438, from an account of the Freycinet voyage). It is an interesting detail that in Micronesia the navigation classes for learning star tracks were conducted on the beaches facing east to mark the rise of the stars (Haddon and Hornell 1936-38, I:439).

Another route to the south lay along the island chain past New Ireland and the Solomons to the Santa Cruz islands, to Fiji and on to Tonga. The boats here were more solid single outriggers. From Tonga the route continued into Polynesia to Samoa, thence to Tahiti, from where there were routes in all directions, eastwards to the Tuamotus and thence to the Marquesas, northwards to Hawaii, south to the Cook Islands. From Tonga and Samoa there were traditions of raiding parties to the Santa Cruz islands, carrying Polynesian populations to the Polynesian Outliers such as Tikopia. There is a tradition that many generations ago there were voyages between Tahiti and Hawaii, and between Rarotonga and the Marquesas. Tangi’ia-nui was a great voyager who claimed to be familiar with island groups from Fiji to Easter Island and who ended his life in Rarotonga. Tupaia, the Raiatean high priest friend of Cook, knew of many islands in the Australs, Societies, Cooks, Tuamotus, and westwards as far as Fiji. According to some Maori traditions, Kupe from Tahiti discovered New Zealand about the 10th century. Toi and Whatonga followed 8-10 generations later and then Nuku sailed there via Rarotonga with four canoes. For a while, mainly in the early nineteenth century, until they disappeared, these canoe journeys persisted within the island groups in the central and eastern Pacific, and a few survived into the twentieth century (Lewis 1972).

The voyages we learn about in Polynesian traditional myths were different from those of Micronesia, being less frequent, over longer distances, and related to the original exploration rather than to regular routes. The Polynesian longdistance vessel was the double canoe in which a voyage would be more likely to carry plants, seeds, women and animals, so requiring more time and expense to prepare. The only surviving and regular long-distance inter-island trade that we know of from eighteenth and early nineteenth century accounts of Polynesia occurred in the Societies and Tuamotus in eastern Polynesia and in the Fiji-Tonga-Samoa triangle in western Polynesia.