Search for the southern continent
Abel Tasman · 1642 CE – 1643 CE · Earth
Find out for the Dutch East India Company how far the South-land reached and whether a passage led across the southern ocean to Chile.
Historical context
In 1642 the Dutch East India Company, master of Batavia and of much of the East Indies, knew the north, the west and part of the south coast of the South-land, but not how far it ran to the east. Governor-General Antonio van Diemen hoped for rich lands and for a passage to Chile, to trade there and to raid the Spanish. The voyage is told in Tasman’s own journal, which J. E. Heeres edited with an English translation in 1898, and in the views drawn by Isaac Gilsemans; Tasman sailed right round the South-land without sighting it, and so showed, as Te Ara puts it, that it was not part of a larger continent.
The voyage, step by step
From Batavia
14 August 1642
On 14 August 1642 the Dutch East India Company sends Tasman from Batavia with two ships to look for the southern continent, the unknown South-land, and a passage to Chile.
Across the Indian Ocean
6 November 1642
After a month at Mauritius, the ships run south into hail, snow and cold near 49 degrees south, then east for weeks without sight of land.
Van Diemen’s Land
24 November 1642
On 24 November 1642 Tasman sights a high, mountainous coast and names it Van Diemen’s Land; on 3 December his master carpenter swims ashore to plant the Prince’s flag.
Aotearoa New Zealand
19 December 1642
On 19 December 1642 Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri waka attack a Dutch boat in Mohua, Golden Bay, which Tasman names Murderers’ Bay; he sails on without landing in Aotearoa and returns to Batavia by Tonga and Fiji.
Outcome
Found Van Diemen’s Land and the west coast of Aotearoa New Zealand, where four men were killed at Golden Bay; traded at Tonga, passed the Fiji reefs and New Ireland, and returned to Batavia on 15 June 1643 without finding anything the Company could profit from.
Abel Tasman
Dutch navigator, the first European known to have reached Van Diemen’s Land and Aotearoa New Zealand.
Sources
- Abel Janszoon Tasman’s Journal of his discovery of Van Diemens Land and New Zealand in 1642, with documents relating to his exploration of Australia in 1644 (English translation, with Heeres’s Life and Labours of Tasman and appendices)J. E. Heeres (ed.) · Frederik Muller, Amsterdam; Project Gutenberg Australia ebook 0600571h · 1898
- European ‘discovery’ of New Zealand — Abel Tasman, Te Ara, the Encyclopedia of New ZealandJohn Wilson · Manatū Taonga, Ministry for Culture and Heritage · 2009
- Abel Tasman — Wikipedia
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