Nobody outside the raft saw the Kon-Tiki between the morning of 29 April 1947, when the tug cast her off, and 3 August, when canoes came out from Angatau. What the world knew of her it knew from Haugland’s and Raaby’s wireless, picked up by amateurs in the United States and relayed to the agencies in New York, and from there to every newspaper that took the service. The Australian and New Zealand papers of 1947 are open in Trove and Papers Past, and they printed the New York copy almost unchanged. Read in order, they are the record of how a demonstration became a proof.

May

The first report was late. On 13 May the North American Newspaper Alliance in New York carried “a delayed radio report from the Kon-Tiki raft”, and the Sunraysia Daily of Mildura printed it the next day. The raft was at 84 degrees 37 minutes west and 9 degrees south, and “has thus covered about 500 miles, averaging 50 miles a day, since it left Callao on April 28. It was cast adrift by a tug which towed it 150 miles to the south along the coast.” The tow, by the crew’s account, was about 50 sea miles to the north-west. The purpose was already fixed in the agency’s words: the raft “is manned by six Norwegian scientists who are seeking to prove by a 4000-mile drift that raft voyagers from South America in pre-historic days settled in South Sea islands. The voyage is expected to take four months.”

June

On 19 June the raft radioed, in the words of the Daily Mercury of Mackay two days later, “that they have made a record drift in the Humboldt current of 132 miles in the last two days. The raft is already ahead of schedule and if the new speed is held the expedition should reach Tahiti in approximately 100 days instead of the 120 estimated when the scientists left Callao.” Earlier in the week they had “passed the halfway mark in 55 days”. The expedition, the paper explained, “is attempting to follow the presumed route of the pre-Incan migration from Peru to Polynesia 1500 years ago.”

July

On 18 July Lima radio announced a landfall that had not happened. The Northern Advocate of Whangarei on 19 July: “The six Norwegian scientists on the raft Kon-Tiki successfully completed the crossing of the South Pacific by reaching the Marquesas today, reports the Lima (Peru) radio. The raft sailed from Callao on April 29. It will proceed from the Marquesas to Tahiti.” The Sydney Sun had the same story on its front page the same day, with the departure given as 24 April. The raft was in fact south of the Marquesas and out of sight of them, with three weeks of ocean still to go; the “crossing” was a position report read as an arrival.

On 21 July, the day Watzinger went overboard and the first storm struck, the raft radioed “that it was within 300 miles of Puka Puka, the nearest island of the Tuamoto group. When it arrives at Puka Puka it will have drifted 3900 miles since it left Callao”. The Morning Bulletin of Rockhampton added, in square brackets, the sentence that every reader was meant to carry away: “Six Norwegian scientists are trying to prove by duplicating the feat that pre-Incan Indians travelled by raft to Polynesia 1500 years ago.”

August

On 7 August, the day of the reef, the Warwick Daily News printed a report from a few days earlier: the expedition’s position was “now well in among the Tuamotu Island chain. Several days ago they saw their first land in three months; but the vagaries of wind and tide prevented landing on tiny Puka Puka.” They were north of Angatau and in line for Takume, and “hope to attempt a landing although unknown currents projecting from the shore lines and lowlying reefs will present difficulties.”

Then four days of silence, until the Rarotonga amateur’s relay reached New York. The Brisbane Telegraph of 12 August, from the Australian Associated Press: “The Kon-Tiki raft expedition ended its voyage on Raroia Reef in the Tuamotu Islands when, after three days trying to get around the reef, it finally was drawn on to a coral reef where it grounded. All members of the expedition made their way safely ashore on an uninhabited island and managed to salvage most of the equipment. They hope to find natives who will assist them get the remaining logs of the raft into a quiet lagoon for reassembly.” The Central Hawke’s Bay Press in New Zealand had the same words the same day.

On 14 August Heyerdahl’s claim about the wireless went out. The West Australian of 15 August: his two operators “set a world record for battery-operated transmitters by communicating with Norway direct from the raft three days before reaching the reef. The original batteries ran down so the operators reassembled the smaller cells inside a 45-volt battery and rewired four 1½-volt cells in parallel and with this makeshift power source they sent messages direct to Norway from an exact antipodal position on the earth’s surface.” The paper added what the Norwegian wireless men had done in the war: both parachuted into Norway twice, both holders of the Norwegian War Cross and the British Distinguished Service Order; Raaby had “radioed back vital information about the location of the battleship Tirpitz”, and Haugland had taken part in the action against the heavy-water plant at Rjukan.

On 21 August the Adelaide Chronicle printed the longest piece of the year, under the headline “History Believed Verified By Raft Crash”. It is worth quoting at length, because it is the moment the reading changed:

“The Kon-Tiki raftsmen feel that they accidentally carried historical accuracy to extremes by crashing on to Raroia reef in the Tuamotu archipelago after spending three days trying to get round it. They had surmised before their departure from Callao (Peru) that that was probably the way the first Peruvian explorers of the Pacific area ended up 1,500 years ago. Still they are satisfied with the performance of the raft and personnel during nearly 15 weeks of drifting, which carried the six young Scandinavian explorers over 4,000 miles in the flow of the Humboldt and South Equatorial currents.”

The crew “tried for three days to get round the long low Raroia reef but finally were drawn among the jagged coral outcrops and decided that the only course was to brave the 25-ft. breakers surging across the main reef. The men were ordered to cling to the basic nine balsawood logs of the raft which proved to be a wise decision as the raft was progressively tossed from breaker to breaker. The first hut on the deck was smashed to bits, then the hardwood mast was carried away and the steering oar went. Cross logs from the stern and bow broke adrift, but the main logs held together. Finally the crew was able to jump on to the coral and make its way over the last 500 yards to the shore.” On the island they were “sharing the island with rodents, parakeets, thrushes and doves. There are very few insects. They are under the protection of two flags, those of Norway and the Explorers’ Club of New York.”

Nothing in the body of the report says that history had been verified. The headline said it.

On 28 August, from New York: “Towed behind the French Government schooner Tamara, the Kon Tiki raft has already managed to break two cables, giving more trouble than in all its 4000-odd miles of voyaging under its own power. The six Scandinavian explorers, who travelled on the raft from Peru until it grounded on Raroia Island, hope the raft will tow as far as Tahiti, but plan to leave it at Fakarava Lagoon, the last link of the Tuamotu Group, if the weather gets too heavy.”

September and October

On 3 September the French embassy in Washington was told by the Governor of Tahiti that the six had reached Papeete in the Tamara. “The men will leave for the United States in the first available eastbound ship,” the Newcastle Morning Herald reported. “The leader of the expedition, Thor Heyerdahl, said he planned to extend his investigation of ocean raft transportation and endeavour to substantiate the Polynesian ancestry theory. Heyerdahl and his companions appeared to be healthy after the long voyage.”

No eastbound ship was due at Papeete for two months. The Otago Daily Times of 24 September: “The Kon-tiki expedition and its raft sailed for San Francisco in the Norwegian steamer Thor I. No east-bound ship was due to touch at Papeete for two months, so the Norwegian ship owners, Lars Christensen, ordered the Thor I to go from Samoa to pick up the scientists.”

And on 5 October, from Washington, in The West Australian the next day: “President Truman yesterday received members of the Kon-tiki expedition and accepted from them the United States flag that had flown from the mast of their balsa raft during its 4,000-mile drift from Peru to Polynesia. The President asked them for the Norwegian flag which they flew from the stern. They promised to send it to Mr. Truman who suggested that the flags should be hung together in Washington Museum.”

What the wires did not say

Between 28 April and 5 October the agencies gave the world a departure date (three of them), a distance (4,000 miles, 3,900 to Pukapuka, 4,000-odd), a purpose (“to prove”), a landfall that did not happen, a landing that did, a wireless record, two flags, a president and a verdict. They did not report, because nobody on the raft had radioed it, that the crew had discovered in mid-ocean how the centreboards steered the raft and had gone back to the oar; nor that the raft could not return to an island in sight; nor what any of that meant for the question of whether Peruvians had made the voyage. Those things were in the Geographical Journal three years later. By then the reading was set.

Sources

• Trove, National Library of Australia: Sunraysia Daily, 14 May 1947, p. 1; Daily Mercury, 21 June, p. 1; The Sun, 19 July, p. 1; Morning Bulletin, 23 July, p. 1; Warwick Daily News, 7 August, p. 5; The Telegraph, 12 August, p. 2; The West Australian, 15 August, p. 11; Chronicle, 21 August, p. 25; Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 29 August, p. 1, and 4 September, p. 7; The West Australian, 6 October, p. 17. 14 May, 21 June, 19 July, 23 July, 7 August, 12 August, 15 August, 21 August, 29 August, 4 September, 6 October
• Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand: Northern Advocate, 19 July 1947, p. 7; Central Hawke’s Bay Press, 12 August, p. 1; Otago Daily Times, 24 September, p. 5. 19 July, 12 August, 24 September
• Thor Heyerdahl, “The Voyage of the Raft Kon-Tiki,” The Geographical Journal 115 (1950), pp. 20–41, for the crew’s own dates and distances against which the wire reports are read. archive.org