The story
Flag Day Fautasi Race in Pago Pago Harbor
A harbor-wide longboat rowing race held during American Samoa's Flag Day, with hand-built fautasi crewed by 40 to 50 rowers representing individual villages. Described locally as the territory's largest community-based cultural event, it traces to naval-era competitions introduced around 1900 and remains a matter of intense village pride rather than open sport.
A fautasi is a wooden longboat roughly 100 feet long, crewed by 40 to 50 rowers pulling in unison, and when a fleet of them lines up across Pago Pago harbor for Flag Day, the result is widely described as the largest community-based cultural event in American Samoa, bigger by participation than the flag ceremony that gives the holiday its name.