Ariki

An ariki (New Zealand, Cook Islands), ‘ariki (Easter Island), aliki (Tokelau, Tuvalu), ali‘i (Samoa,Hawai‘i), ari'i (Society Islands, Tahiti), aiki or hakaiki (Marquesas Islands), akariki (Gambier Islands) or ‘eiki (Tonga) is or was a member of a hereditary chiefly or noble rank in Polynesia.

New Zealand

Political leadership or governance in Māori society has traditionally come from two different groups of people – the ariki and the rangatira. The ariki are the "persons of the highest rank and seniority". As the "high-ranking first-born children of first-born children", ariki inherit their positions from their forebears. In particular, their "supreme rank [comes] from the conjunction of a number of senior descent lines from founding ancestors, and ultimately from the gods". Although most ariki in the past have been male, women, like Te Atairangikaahu, have "brought their own qualities to bear on leadership ... [with] the expectations of them ... [being] the same as for men".

Ariki do not operate in simple hierarchical organisations; despite what "government officers were inclined to believe", ariki have never been "the apex of a structured hierarchy of institutionalised tribal authority". Many positions overlap with ariki holding multiple roles, including "head of an iwi, the rangatira of a hapu and the kaumatua of a whanau". Similarly, in times past, "a tohunga may have also been the head of a whanau but quite often was also a rangatira and an ariki".

Ariki (yacht)

Ariki is a racing yacht which was built in Auckland, New Zealand in 1904 by Logan Brothers. She had a distinguished career as a racing and cruising yacht. From the time of her launch in Oct 1904 she dominated first class Auckland yacht racing until the appearance of the yacht Ranger in 1938. She has the sail number A3.

Ariki is the Maori name for chief or leader.

Development

Ariki was designed by Archibald Logan and built by Logan Brothers for Charles Horton of the Horton publishing family as a combined racing and cruising yacht.

Ariki's design was based on the Logan brother's highly successful Rainbow of 1898, which in turn had been inspired by the George Lennox Watson designed royal yacht Britannia of 1893. Ariki was a gaff rigged cutter with a jackyard topsail. Featuring a spoon-bowed and counter-stern, her hull was planked in copper fastened kauri, consisting of two thinner layers of planks that were diagonal to each other and a third skin of planks running horizontally fore and aft along the yacht. She featured a flush deck with no cabin top visible above the deck.