Post #631495 by TikiTomD on Fri, Apr 6, 2012 6:03 AM

Some additional items to share regarding Lake Lanoto`o...

I ran across this July 26, 2010 blog post that seems to be related to the quest of Dr. Heidrun Schmidt, Dr. Funk’s great-grandniece, relative to the old Lake Lanoto`o health resort...

Our guide has been helping uncover the remains of small huts that a German doctor built and lived in during his time in Samoa. He found the foundations as well as a few remaining day-to-day items like old wine bottles and a teapot. The doctor's grandchildren have been visiting from Germany and want to place a headstone marker there. A bit tricky since it's an hour walk up steep and slippery terrain and no one else lives nearby, but our guide is determined it will get done somehow. He had amazing stories about the doctor who lived there a century ago and was finally driven out by New Zealand planes around WWII.

Of course, Dr. Funk had passed before even WWI, and New Zealand, at the request of the British, took Western Samoa from the Germans without bloodshed in 1914, so that last part is myth. No doubt there is a collective Samoan memory of Dr. Funk that has grown a bit in the retelling, as historic events experienced by succeeding generations infiltrated that memory. But what a movie scene that would be, with the 100-year old, cigar-chewing German medico spilling his drink and dodging as Brewster Buffalo fighters (“flying coffins”) of the Royal New Zealand Air Force strafed the Pandanus-lined shores of Lake Lanoto`o! As the fighters rumble away having failed again, said medico gives them the appropriate finger salute. I’m thinking that Burl Ives would have been about perfect for the role of Dr. Funk...

Here’s a description of Lake Lanoto`o from the 1909 book by Oscar Vojnich, a Hungarian Baron who journeyed throughout Oceania starting in 1906 and recorded his observations in The Island-World of the Pacific – Journey Notes...

Too bad about that photo deterioration!

I also came across this 2009 technical paper that asserted no one had previously even ascertained the depth of Lake Lanoto`o before the authors’ investigation. As almost 170 years had elapsed from the time that the U.S. Exploration Expedition had sounded the lake (see prior post), they can probably be forgiven the oversight...

The lake depth determined by these investigators, 52.5 feet (16 meters) was remarkably close to that determined by the U.S. Exploration Expedition, 57 feet (9.5 fathoms). The difference could reasonably be attributed to accumulation of sediment and detritus over the centuries. Recall the sounding technique used on the U.S. Ex. Ex...

-Tom