German adventurer on mission to resurrect the Kalia [1]
Thursday, May 30, 2002 - 11:00. Updated on Wednesday, February 10, 2016 - 17:52.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 17, no. 1, May 2002.
The German adventurer, Captain Burghard Pieske, and another German master boat builder, Kieter Brummer visited Tonga at the end of April, at the start of what they hope will become a great adventure.
They were on a mission to reconstruct Tonga’s Millennium Kalia, which had sunk at the Faua Harbour. They want to be part of the dream of the Millennium Kalia Trust, which is to get the Kalia to sail long-distance voyages throughout the Pacific.
Captain Burghard Pieske is a well-known adventurer. In 1992 he sailed on a Viking ship from Europe to America, to prove that the Vikings reached America before Columbus. In 1998 he re-enacted the voyage by Captain Bligh on a longboat sailing from Tofua to Indonesia.
However, to get a big Kalia project off the ground they would like the Millennium Kalia Trust to authorise Captain Pieske as their representative, and Captain of the Kalia.
Captain Pieske is obsessed with the Kalia project and said he is convinced that the ancient Tongans possessed maritime knowledge and skills, which surpassed that of the sea faring nations of Europe at the time. He believes that the Kalia should become, “a cultural mobile monument for Tonga.”
He said that to finance the project they had collected $100,000, and he had donated $50,000 of his own money, and German companies had pledged about $75,000. He estimated that they needed $US1 million to finish the project, and he was confident that he could raise the funds but said that donors would only give if they trusted the people that they were dealing with.
Captain Burghard Pieske had three proposals that he hoped would be granted by the Millennium Kalia Trust and the Tonga government:
to make him as the Honorary Consul for Tonga in Germany; to issue him with a Tongan Passport and to make him a permanent resident of Tonga; and to sign a contract as the Captain of the Kalia.