1970: Thor Heyerdahl sets sail with his crew from Safi, Morocco, aboard Ra II.

He will attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a boat built of reeds and succeed where the previous expedition aboard Ra I had failed.

Heyerdahl, a Norwegian zoologist, gained international fame for his Pacific Ocean expedition in 1947, when he sailed Kon-Tiki — a boat constructed of native woods from the coast of Peru — on a 101-day, 4,300-mile voyage to Polynesia. The success of Kon-Tiki supported the claims of Spanish conquistadors that similarly constructed Incan rafts made the same voyage.

More than a scientist, perhaps, Heyerdahl was humanist. In assembling the crew for the Ra II passage, he took great care to select seafarers of different nationalities, races and religions. If the stated purpose of this voyage was to demonstrate the seaworthiness of buoyant reeds, an equally important goal was to show that a diverse crew could work together and flourish in a confined space.

The 3,200-mile voyage of Ra II ended successfully 56 days later. It docked at Bridgetown, Barbados, on July 12.

Heyerdahl had another reed boat, the Tigris, constructed for a 1978 voyage hoping to prove that trade and migration were possible between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Five months into that voyage, with the Tigris still seaworthy, Heyerdahl burned his boat in protest at the entrance to the Red Sea, where his progress was blocked by warring nations in the region.

He spent his later years working for peace and the environment. Heyerdahl died in 2002.

Source: Wikipedia

Photo: Thor Heyerdahl’s raft Ra II (Kon-Tiki Museum, Oslo, Norway). The reed is not original, the rest of the vessel is. Via Wikipedia.

This article first appeared on Wired.com May 16, 2007.