history of the "Phinisi"

As a country with 17,000 islands, boat-building and seafaring have been an integral part of Indonesian culture from ancestral times, right up until today.

The traditional Phinisi style is unique to Indonesia and is used to describe traditional gaff-ketch sailing rigs that originate from the island of Sulawesi. Sulawesi boat builders are considered some of the best wooden boat builders in the world and the craft is passed down from generation to generation.

Phinisi style boats have been used for centuries, most notably by the Bugis & Makassan people. They were (and still are) identifiable but their tall, powerful topsail ketch rig. The ketch design is a 2 mast design with the front mast always being the bigger of the two.

It is said that Sulawesian boat-builders were influenced by European rigging styles - specifically the Dutch schooners. Those in the know will explain that, although influenced by schooners, the Phinisi & Schooner designs are quite different. The common name for both these type of vessels nowadays is "Phinisi". Originally the word Phinisi refers to the rigging (the masts and the sails) rather than the actual hull shape. Most Phinisi style rigs are attached to Palari boats. These boats have distinctly shaped hulls and are built using ironwood, which is a common wood grown in Sulawesi.

Historically these types of boats were used for transport and cargo operations between the islands in the large Indonesia archipelago with many ships regularly sailing as far as Australia. The art of Indonesian boat building has developed over centuries with the distinctive design features of the Phinisi boat being found as far back as the 8th century!

Thankfully, even with the advent of modern shipping & building techniques, there is still a very successful Phinisi building community in Sulawesi. Since the early 1900s the hull and rigging design remains relatively unchanged, but of course the majority of modern day Phinisi's have engines inside their impressive hulls!

Like many traditional crafts, Sulawesian boat building has been passed down through the generations. Prior to the 1990s this knowledge was imparted purely by oral teachings. Originally these majestic boats were built using only the local ironwood and these traditional methods of ship building were formally recognised by UNESCO in 2017.

“The construction and deployment of such vessels stand in the millennia-long tradition of Austronesian boatbuilding and navigation”, and therefore deserve a place on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”. 

Some unique construction methods are the reasons why UNESCO felt it culturally significant to recognise this type of ship building. Historically, Phinisi ships were never “built to plan”. Ships were built with a heavy emphasis on ritual and ceremony. Individual planks of wood would be hand sculpted and often named to symbolise the importance of every facet of the ship.

Of course more recently ship builders have embraced modern tools to aid their work, but the ships are still built on beaches. There are no European style shipyards here!