Gordon and Joann Morse, who live in the historic Lyman Missionary House on the outskirts of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, have been lugging the tapa around for 40 years. It's too big to unfold in the house and weighs 85 pounds. They had to build a box the size of a single bed to store the tapa. According to Morse, they were offered $7,000 for their treasure but refused to sell.

How do you estimate the price of a royal tapa 100 feet by 16 feet? Morse said the appraiser figured that fine tapa sells in 3-by-3 squares for $50.

The story of the tapa is as unusual as the item itself.

Begin with the royal visit of England's Queen Elizabeth II to Tonga in 1953. The queen cannot walk on the ground, right? So 60 Tongan ladies went to work beating a tapa on which the queen could walk from the royal limousine to wherever she was going.

Her royal highness stepped from the car onto the tapa while 60 tapa beaters held it down. Flashbulbs popped and Morse has a photo of the royal procession.

Now fast-forward to 1962 when a San Francisco steeplejack named Lee Quinn acquired a yacht named Neophyte and recruited an all-girl crew to sail around the world. This had to be one of the most improbable voyages in the history of navigation so it garnered reams of publicity.

At this time, Morse was a reporter for The Advertiser. Quinn sent reports to Morse, who wrote a 10-part series on the trip that was distributed by The Associated Press. Along the way, Quinn was divorced and married one of his crew. The Neophyte was cut in half by a freighter off Sydney, Australia. A second Neophyte finished the voyage.

Crew members jumped on and off the vessel like fleas at each port. Before the voyage ended, some 83 women had sailed in the boat.

At Tonga in 1964, Quinn met the son of Queen Salote. The royal heir owned a yacht but the rigging was in bad shape. Quinn, a master rigger, gave the prince some new hardware and re-rigged the yacht. To show her gratitude, the queen went to her storehouse and brought out the tapa as a gift to Quinn.

He didn't have room for it on his yacht so he gave it to Morse when he returned to Hawai'i. Joann Morse loves antiques. That's why they bought the Lyman House, which is on the historic register and why she watches "Antiques Roadshow."