Roggeveen and subsequent European visitors were surprised to find that the islanders’ only watercraft were small and leaky canoes, no more than 10 feet long, capable of holding only one or at most two people. In Roggeveen’s words: “As concerns their vessels, these are bad and frail as regards use, for their canoes are put together with manifold small planks and light inner timbers, which they cleverly stitched together with very fine twisted threads, made from the above-named field-plant.
