From Raft to Raft: An Incredible Voyage from Tahiti to Chile and Back

Not since the fantastic story of the Kon-Tiki expedition has there appeared such as exciting saga of a primitive raft expedition across the Pacific for scientific investigation. From Raft to Raft tells the incredible, suspenseful drama of the dangerous voyage led by Eric de Bisschop from Tahiti to Chile and back to Polynesia—a foray twice as long as that undertaken by Kon-Tiki and one that encountered infinitely greater difficulties and dangers.

Like Heyerdahl, de Bisschop undertook his voyage to prove an ethnological theory—but a theory completely contrary to that of his Norwegian forerunner. Heyerdahl believed that voyagers from South America had visited Polynesia in prehistoric times; de Bisschop was equally certain that Tahitian sea rovers had traveled as far as Chile and Peru.

After suffering unbelievable hardships during the first half of the voyage, two members of the Tahiti Nui crew abandoned the project, but de Bisschop and Alain Brun, who narrated the story to Bengt Danielsson, continued on their journey, spending thirteen months aboard the most primitive rafts. But despite the inadequacy of their crafts—all of which had a frightening tendency to break up—coupled with the dangers of attacking sharks, mutiny by one of the crew, raging storms, and near-starvation, the Tahiti Nui voyage was completed in record time—but not before a series of dramatic events occurred that were to culminate in tragic death