New Zealand Added to the Map

TO a Dutchman, Abel Tasman, belongs the honour of being the first white man to sight the islands occupied by the Maoris. Tasman’s voyage was made possible by the interest of van Diemen, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, who sought an extended field for the trade of the great Company which he represented, and by the influence and planning of his Pilot Major, Visscher, a leading map-maker and navigator. Tasman’s mixed experiences as skipper, trader and handy-man of his Company stood him in good stead when in 1642 the Zeehaen and the Heemskirk sailed from Batavia.

The story of Tasman’s association with New Zealand is brief. He sighted Westland on 13^th December, noted the ‘ large high-lying land,’ sailed up the West Coast, sheltered in Murderers’ Bay (the Golden Bay of modern maps) where his crew came off worst in a melee with Maoris, rode at anchor in Cook Strait without fully realising that it separated the two islands, continued his voyage northwards, named Cape Maria van Diemen, and turned east at the Three Kings Islands.

His name for the country we inhabit was ‘ Staten Landt,’ but this was altered to Nova Zeelandia or New Zeeland. He thought it was the western coast of a supposed great Southern Continent—ultima thule, the most remote land, and the extremity of the world.

Tasman’s map, though crude to the eyes of the twentieth century, was the basis of work by future navigators. Cook’s enthusiasm may have been aroused by the laconic phrases of Tasman’s journal.