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Tasman’s Voyage to New Zealand: Setting the Record Straight

Posted by on 25 February 2013 | 2511 Comments

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For decades school textbooks stated that Captain James Cook was the first European to ‘discover’ New Zealand in 1769. Not only is this incorrect, it overshadows a key part of our history.

Almost 130 years before the British sailor and his vessel the Endeavour anchored up in Endeavour Bay (now Poverty Bay) near Gisborne, an employee of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) achieved something that seems to have been forgotten by many people.

Abel Janszoon Tasman, commander of the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen was on a commercial expedition for the VOC. Although it has been widely believed he was tasked with discovering the unknown ‘South Land’, some historians have suggested he was employed to find new sea routes to South America.

According to Tasman’s log, days after having skirted around the southern and eastern land that would later bear his name, Tasmania, he caught sight on December 13, 1642 of “a large land, uplifted high … southeast from us about 15 miles, made our course … direct for it”. This turned out to be the mountainous west coast of the South Island off a promontory now known as Perpendicular Point.

Four days later, about two kilometres off Whanganui  Inlet ,Tasman observed “in various places smoke rise where fire was made by the inhabitants”.  It has been argued the smoke was being used to signal waka (Maori canoes).

The following day, on December 18, the ships rounded Farewell Spit, at the top of the South Island, and arrived in what is now Whariwharangi Bay and dropped anchor. No first-hand Maori reports of what happened next are known to exist, but Dutch journals state that two waka full of Maori left shore to inspect the ships first hand.

Michael King suggests in his book The Penguin History of New Zealand that a cultural misunderstanding led to the first contact between Maori and European turning violent. Dutch trumpeters responded to calls (possibly a haka) and sounds made by the Maori pukaea (long wooden trumpets), little realising that instead of establishing a line of communication they had inadvertently accepted a challenge to fight.The following morning the Zeehaen’s cockboat was rammed by a waka, with four crewmen thrown overboard. Three of them died while the other one was taken ashore by the Maori. His fate remains unknown.

Tasman followed established orders not to engage in warfare with local peoples and made ready to set sail. Presumably feeling they could finish the job, 11 more waka headed towards the vessels, but when the first one got close to the Zeehaen, the crew fired the cannons at it, killing at least one man at which point the waka pulled back and allowed the Dutch ships to depart.

Out of “Moordenaers Baaij”, as Tasman named it (now Golden Bay), they sailed up the west coast of the North Island trying to find somewhere safe enough to risk a landing, reaching Cape Maria Van Diemen, the westernmost point of the North Island (named after the wife of Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the VOC) on January 4, 1643. In need of fresh water, they investigated Great Island in the Three Kings group (55 Kilometres north west of Cape Reinga) but were put off by the rocky shore and a group of imposing-looking inhabitants who threw stones from the cliff-tops.They continued looking for a landing site until January 6, at which point Tasman abandoned the search and sailed north, where he was welcomed as the first European to set eyes on a number of Tongan and Fijian islands.

It was a VOC employee who later named the line of coast drawn by Tasman’s expedition Nieuw Zeeland, named after the “Chamber of Zeeland” in the VOC( Nieuw Holland, after the Chamber of Holland, already existed). By the late 18thcentury, this changed in the English language to New Zeeland, then New Zeland and, finally, New Zealand.

Although there is no doubt Tasman was the first European to visit New Zealand, historians have argued as to whether he or his crew actually set foot on shore. Grahame Anderson makes his feelings clear in his book The Merchant of the Zeehaen when he states that Tasman “failed to set foot on New Zealand soil”.

In an article in The New Zealand Herald in 2010, Dr Ian Barber agreed Tasman never made it to shore and suggested the Maori attacked the Dutch explorers because they felt an area of kumara (a type of sweet potato) cultivation was being threatened by the ships anchored nearby.“People would have been concerned for the impact these of visitors on their crops,” said Dr Barber. “Food, and the storage of food, was associated with community well-being as well as chiefly mana, power and politics. Everyone in the community had a vested interested.” He goes on to state: “The most important thing is that they [Tasman’s crew] were not even allowed to land.”

It has also been suggested by historian John Mitchell that the conflict occurred because the Maori feared the Dutch vessels might awaken a dreadful monster which lived in a nearby cave, or that the ships had breached a sacred ban imposed on the waters.

However, historian Rüdiger Mack has suggested that part of Tasman’s crew did in fact make it to shore on December 18, 1642. His theory is based on an engraving, showing a Dutch rowing boat on the shoreline, that was copied from Abel Tasman’s original log book drawing (probably lost – but a number of 17th and early 18th century copies are in circulation).

Ultimately, we may never know whether any Dutch sailors made it to shore or not, although it is certain this key moment in NZ history will continue to be debated for many years to come.

What do you think? And could our country’s history have been different if Tasman’s men and the local Maori had established friendly relations back in 1642?

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