“...In paddling, the entire crew strike the water as one man. Time is kept by songs and choruses, in which all join. The greatest velocity of a New Zealand canoe is six miles per hour.”
[Stories of the Island World, Nordhoff, 1857]


“Every thing was new to her; the singing of the sailors as they worked at the capstan or pulled at the bowline, all, all was to her novel and strange.”
[The Crooked Elm, Or, Life by the Wayside, Higgins, 1857]