A VOC captain named two lands he barely entered
Abel Tasman, sailing for the Dutch East India Company in 1642 and 1644, became the first European known to reach New Zealand—he called it Staten Landt—and left his name on Tasmania after charting Van Diemen’s Land. The company still judged the voyages a commercial flop.
Born around 1602 or 1603 in Lutjegast, Groningen, Tasman had no schooling and picked up navigation on the job after joining the VOC in 1633 and shipping out to Batavia. He skippered the Mocha to the Maluku Islands and in 1639 served as second-in-command under Matthijs Quast on a northern cruise that reached Dutch Formosa and Deshima off Nagasaki.
Batavia’s ruling council, the Council of the Indies, sent him and the pilot Franchoijs Jacobszoon Visscher into little-charted waters with two small vessels, Heemskerck and Zeehaen. One goal was the gold-rich ‘Beach’, a phantom land that had haunted European maps since a slip in some editions of Marco Polo. Leaving on 14 August, he rested at Mauritius, then rode the Roaring Forties farther east than any earlier fleet.
On 24 November he sighted Tasmania’s west coast and named it for Governor-General Antonio van Diemen. A gale blew him off Bruny Island into what he dubbed Storm Bay. Hunting a southern continent rather than more islands, he turned away from the winds of Bass Strait and headed east. On 13 December his crew became the first Europeans to see New Zealand’s South Island. Off Golden Bay, Māori in a waka clubbed four sailors to death with patu, and the Dutch later mistook Cook Strait for a mere bight. Cape Maria van Diemen and the Three Kings Islands still carry his names.
Homeward, he met Tonga on 20 January 1643, nearly lost both ships on Fijian reefs and reached Batavia on 15 June. A 1644 voyage with Limmen, Zeemeeuw and Braek traced Australia’s north coast but sailed past Torres Strait. The VOC, wanting trade and shipping lanes, called the results disappointing, though James Cook would later lean on Tasman’s charts. He joined Batavia’s Council of Justice and retired in 1653 owning 288 acres.
Source: Abel Tasman
