Tasman Encounters the Māori at Golden Bay
Abel Tasman sighted the west coast of the South Island on 13 December 1642, the first European to reach New Zealand, and left without setting foot on it. He had been sent from Batavia by Anthony van Diemen to determine what lay in the southern ocean and whether a passage ran east to Chile. He had passed south of the Australian continent without seeing it and had charted the island he named Van Diemen's Land, and then sailed east for nine days. The land he struck was high and mountainous. He followed the coast north and anchored in a bay at the top of the South Island. Waka came out from shore, and there was an exchange of trumpet calls that both sides misread — the Dutch blew to signal friendliness, and the Māori response was very probably a ritual challenge. The following morning a canoe rammed a Dutch cockboat crossing between ships, and four sailors were killed. Tasman named it Murderers' Bay, weighed anchor and sailed north without landing. The place is now Golden Bay, and the encounter is understood as a defence of territory by Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri. He continued up the west coast, failed to find the strait between the islands, and concluded the land might be part of a great southern continent connected to South America. He called it Staten Landt. Dutch cartographers renamed it Nova Zeelandia. No European returned for 127 years, until James Cook charted both islands in 1769 and 1770. The name stuck to a country Tasman never landed on.
- Year: 1642 CE
- Category: Exploration
