Abel Tasman · 1643 · sea
Tasman's journal of the 1642 to 1643 voyage, made for the Dutch East India Company to find out whether the Great South Land was worth trading with. He found Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji, missed Australia's east coast entirely, and came home to be told he had not been enterprising enough.
- 1Batavia
August 1642, and the Dutch East India Company sends Abel Tasman to find out whether the Great South Land exists and whether anything can be sold to it - two ships, and instructions to be commercial about it.
- 2Mauritius
West first to catch the roaring forties, refitting at the Company's island - and then south to forty-nine degrees, further than any European had sailed in that ocean.
- 3Van Diemen's Land
24 November 1642, and a coast sighted and named for the Governor-General - a landing party unable to reach the shore through the surf, so a carpenter swims in to plant a flag on a beach nobody would revisit for a century.
- 4Golden Bay
18 December, and New Zealand: a canoe rammed a ship's boat and four men killed, so Tasman named it Murderers Bay and left without setting foot ashore - having found the country and learned nothing about it.
- 5Tongatapu
Tonga, and the friendliest reception of the voyage - water, pigs and coconuts traded freely, and the first European description of the islands.
- 6Fiji
North-west through reefs that nearly wrecked both ships in the dark - Tasman charting what he could of an archipelago that would not be properly surveyed for another two hundred years.
- 7New Guinea
Along the northern coast and west toward home, having sailed round the whole of Australia without once seeing its eastern side - which is why he concluded there was no continent worth the Company's attention.
- 8Batavia
June 1643, ten months out, and a report the directors found disappointing - no trade, no gold, no market. Tasman had charted New Zealand, Tasmania, Tonga and Fiji, and was told he had not tried hard enough.