Ha! We should expect nothing less than an Englishman of all people to know his New Guinea cannibals! And there's no telling what loathsome disgusting things decorate his shelves and hang from the rafters of the Great Hall in his castle!
These illustrated paddles are more like poles with attached blades. Mine, while long, are in one piece. I should unbox the things to check length. They are not useable in a low level canoe but might work in something higher. They do have sailboats. On the other hand they also have seagoing coastal canoes and even rather slight designs which are capable of longer range calm seas ocean use. This latter type of canoe was used cannibals to unload a grounded and abandoned British trade vessel whose English crew took off in a cutter and left the Chinese crew to themselves. The cannibals happened upon the vessel and happily took the Chinese in groups of five or ten. The canoes, which looked small and shallow, were thought to be going only a short distance but that wasn't the case. No problem. They got to shore safely and the Chinese, who sang a happy traditional song of return, were welcomed into the village where they participated in the resulting feast. Literally. The Chinese song was heard so many times that the cannibals memorized some of it. This happened in the 1870's or a bit later and the words or melody survived in some form into modern times, meaning perhaps the time the book was written in the twenties. In fact, they likely survived until today as the tribe (if I have the right one in mind) recently apologized for eating the Chinamen. Of that crew only one survived being carried off. He was there when a British ship happened by. The man earned his share of fame. I forgot how many were eaten. The tribe apparently had a reputation for this interesting bit of converting a ship into a Burger King.
I'll measure the paddles as my curiosity is aroused. There has to be an optimum body size and position for their use. Likewise I'll have to consider their pointy shape as there may be a backup intention to use as a weapon.
Even so the spear was used as ship to ship or shore artillery with bows and arrows as convenient. This is noted in an account by Moncton of Giwi, a friendly coastal cannibal who did an analysis of the bad cannibals who sent a flotilla down the coast to raid his village. After doing an analysis he used advanced materials and techniques to come up with armaments and ambush tactics for defense. He wound up destroying the next raider group leaving only one canoe to escape. Moncton noted with some annoyance that chief Giwi told him he cooked someone's hands in the very pot - from which Moncton had cleaned grease using clean sand - and used as his own dinner plate or cookpot.
The issue in this battle was weight, speed, and range of all weapons used. Even in New Guinea a thoughtful cannibal chieftan would employ the equivalent of high tech materials to obtain the advantages of carbon fiber and long range weaponry.
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