The Kon-Tiki raft hit a reef and ended its Pacific crossing
On this day · 7 August 1947
After 101 days drifting across the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft, Thor Heyerdahl and five companions ran aground on a remote atoll and made it ashore.
On 7 August 1947, after 101 days at sea, the balsa-wood raft Kon-Tiki ran aground on a coral reef off the Raroia atoll in French Polynesia. Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his crew of five had sailed roughly 4,300 miles from Callao, Peru, with no engine and no modern hull — just lashed logs and the trade winds.
Heyerdahl’s aim was to prove a point. He argued that ancient South Americans could have reached the Pacific islands by raft, and he set out to show there was no technical reason they couldn’t.
The voyage proved nothing about who actually settled Polynesia — but it proved the journey was survivable.
The crew scrambled onto an uninhabited islet and all came home safely. Heyerdahl’s book about the trip became a worldwide bestseller, and the original raft is now the centerpiece of the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo, where it still draws visitors decades on.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
