Abel tasman discovering australia and new zealand. Abel Tasman: discoveries of the great navigator

Abel Janszon Tasman - the great Dutch navigator, was born in 1603 in the Dutch village of Lutgegast. There is no information about Tasman's parents, about his childhood and youth, as well as nothing is known about where he received his education. When Abel Tasman was 28 years old, he began serving in the Dutch East India Trading Company, most likely as an ordinary sailor, but a few years later in 1634 he became a skipper on one of the company's ships.

The ship on which Abel Tasman served was mainly engaged in the transportation of spices and spices. It is also known that in the period from 1634 to 1638, Tasman carried out hydrographic work in the Malay Archipelago, and near the Moluccas, he carried out guard duty. In 1638, he was appointed captain of the ship Angel, he signed a 10-year contract with the company and went to India.

In 1639, Abel Tasman went on an expedition to the shores of Japan. The purpose of this expedition was to search for the islands of Rico de Oro and Rico de Plata, lost in the ocean, on which, according to legend, there were huge reserves of precious metals. The expedition was equipped by Anton van Diemen, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, he allocated two ships and appointed Tasman as the captain of one of them, Graft.

The expedition started on June 2, 1639 from Batavia, making an intermediate stop in the Philippines, where work was carried out to refine the map of the Philippine Islands. Moving further northeast, they managed to discover islands from the Bonin archipelago. At this, luck turned away from Tasman, an epidemic broke out on the ships, and it was decided to return to Batavia. On the way back, Tasman compiled a charter for the coasts of the East China Sea.

The arrival in Batavia took place on February 19, 1640, by which time Graft's crew consisted of only seven people. In the next two years, van Diemen repeatedly sent Tasman to Japan, China and some other countries of Southeast Asia on various assignments. One of these trips almost became the last for the navigator: heading to Taiwan, the Tasman flotilla fell into a severe typhoon, all ships except the flagship sank.

This ship drifted across the ocean for a long time with broken masts, a rudder and water in the hold, it was saved by a chance meeting with another Dutch ship. The purpose of the new expedition, organized by van Diemen in 1642, was the expansion of influence. The navigators were tasked with finding sea routes that would allow Dutch ships to avoid encounters with Portuguese warships in the still unexplored southern part of the Indian Ocean.

In addition, they needed to clarify the outlines of the southern land discovered back in 1606 by Willem Janszon. It was also assumed that, moving east towards Chile, they would be able to find the lost Solomon Islands. The expedition set off from Batavia on August 14, 1642, headed by Abel Tasman, who by that time was rightfully considered the best Dutch captain in the East Indies. This expedition involved 110 people who set off on the two ships Hemsmerk and Seehan.

The condition of the ships left much to be desired, the decks of which were completely rotten, so Tasman did not dare to go across the entire ocean to Chile and decided to explore only the southern land and the areas adjacent to it. Moving in a southeasterly direction from the island of Mauritius, on November 24, 1642, Abel Tasman discovered a new land, naming it in honor of the governor Van Diemen's Land.

The voyage was continued, and after some time the expedition discovered another land, which later became known as New Zealand. However, Tasman did not explore this island, deciding that it was the previously discovered Land of the States. After that, the ships set off on their way back, to the north they discovered the Fiji Islands, the Tonga archipelago, the island of New Ireland, the island of New Britain, etc.

But the Solomon Islands, due to poor visibility, passing very close to them, the expedition did not find. The ships, which had been sailing for ten months, returned to Batavia on June 15, 1643. This expedition had no material benefit, just as a safe sea route to Chile was not found, which was very dissatisfied with the leadership of the East India Company. However, van Diemen in the same year sent another expedition under the command of Tasman to explore New Guinea.

During this journey, he made a detailed map of the northern coast of Australia and proved that this land is the mainland. In May 1645, Tasman was awarded the rank of commander for his services as a navigator, at the same time Tasman entered the council of justice of Batavia. Even despite the high post, Abel Tasman continued sea expeditions until 1653, until he retired. The navigator died in 1659, at that time he was 56 years old.

Saturday, December 15, 2012 7:42 pm + to quote pad

On December 13, 1642 - 370 years ago - the Dutch navigator Abel Tasman set foot on New Zealand for the first time.

Abel Janszon Tasman (Dutch. Abel Janszoon Tasman, 1603, Lütjegast, Groningen province - October 1659, Batavia (now Jakarta) - Dutch navigator, explorer and merchant. Received world recognition for the sea voyages he led in 1642-1644. The first among famous European explorers reached the shores of New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji.The data collected during his expeditions helped to prove the fact that Australia is a separate continent.

Cape Jacobs Gerrets (1594-1650) Portrait of Abel Tasman, his wife and daughter. (1637)

Abel Janszon Tasman was born in 1603 in the village of Lütjegast near Groningen (now the municipality of Grotegast in the province of Groningen) in the Netherlands in a poor family, independently learned to read and write, and, like many of his countrymen, connected his fate with the sea. The exact date of his birth is unknown. The first documentary mention of him refers to 1631, when he, already widowed by that time, remarried. As follows from the surviving church record, his wife was illiterate and came from a poor family, which indirectly confirmed the validity of the assumptions of the researchers of his biography about his low social status at that time.

Presumably at the same time, Abel Tasman entered the service of the Dutch East India Company as a simple sailor, but already in the records of 1634 he appears as the skipper of one of the company's ships. The main occupation of the company's sailors at that time was the service of transportation of spices and spices, which were an expensive and valuable commodity for the European market.

In 1636, Tasman returned to Holland, but two years later he was back in Java. In 1638, Tasman, commanding a ship, sailed to India. In 1639, the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies, Van Diemen, organized an expedition to the North Pacific Ocean to explore the seafaring areas in the region of Japan and trade opportunities with the local population.

Portrait of Antonio van Diemen (1593-1645).(1636-1675, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) Anthony van Diemen(Dutch. Antonio van Diemen, Antonie van Diemen; 1593 (1593), Culemborg - April 19, 1645, Batavia) - the ninth Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

It was headed by an experienced navigator Mattis Quast. Tasman was appointed skipper on the second ship.

Quast and Tasman had to find the mysterious islands supposedly discovered by the Spaniards to the east of Japan; these islands on some Spanish maps bore the tempting names "Rico de oro" and "Rico de I" ("rich in gold" and "rich in silver").

The expedition did not justify Van Diemen's hopes, but it explored the Sean waters and reached the Kuril Islands. During this voyage, Tasman proved himself to be a brilliant helmsman and an excellent commander. Scurvy killed almost the entire crew, but he managed to navigate the ship from the coast of Japan to Java, withstanding severe typhoon attacks along the way. After 6 months at sea, the Tasman ship, having lost almost 40 out of 90 crew members, returned to the Dutch fort Zeelandia on the island of Formosa (Taiwan). During this voyage, Bonin Island was discovered by him.

In 1640, Tasman again led one of the 11 Dutch ships headed for the shores of Japan. This time he spent about three months in the Japanese port of Hirado.

Van Diemen showed considerable interest in Zeidlandt, and he was not disappointed by the failures of the expedition of Gerrit Pohl. In 1641, he decided to send a new expedition to this land and appointed Tasman as its commander. It was up to Tasman to find out whether Zeidlandt was part of the Southern Continent, to determine how far it extended to the south, and to find out the paths leading from it to the east, into the still unknown seas of the western Pacific Ocean.

Karte des Südmeers vor der Reise Tasmans, von Hendrik Hondius um 1650

Tasman was provided with detailed instructions summarizing the results of all voyages made in the waters of Zeidlandt and the Western Pacific. This instruction has survived, and Tasman's daily records have survived, which allow us to restore the entire route of the expedition. The company gave him two ships: a small warship "Heemskerk" and a fast flute (cargo ship) "Sehain". One hundred people took part in the expedition.

The ships left Batavia on August 14, 1642 and arrived on the island of Mauritius on September 5. On October 8, they left the island and headed south, and then south-southeast. On November 6, we reached 49 ° 4 "south latitude, but could not move further south due to a storm. Vischer, a member of the expedition, proposed sailing to 150 ° east longitude, adhering to 44 ° south latitude, and then along 44 ° south latitude go east to 160° east longitude.

Under the southern coast of Australia, Tasman thus passed 8-10 ° south of the Neates route, leaving the Australian mainland far to the north. He followed east at a distance of 400-600 miles from the southern coast of Australia and at 44 ° 15 "south latitude and 147 ° 3" east longitude noted in his diary: "... all the time the excitement comes from the southwest, and, although every day we saw floating algae, it can be assumed that there is no large land in the south ... "This was an absolutely correct conclusion: the nearest land south of the Tasman route - Antarctica - lies south of the Antarctic Circle.

On November 24, 1642, a very high bank was noticed. This was the southwest coast of Tasmania, an island that Tasman considered part of the Zuidlandt and named Van Diemen's Land. It is not easy to establish which part of the coast the Dutch sailors saw that day, because the maps of Vischer and another member of the Gilsemans expedition differ significantly from each other. The Tasmanian geographer J. Walker believes that it was a mountainous coast north of Macquarie Bay - Harbor.

On December 2, sailors landed on the shores of Van Diemen's Land. “On our boat,” writes Tasman, “there were four musketeers and six rowers, and each had a lance and a weapon at his belt ... Then the sailors brought various greens (they saw it in abundance); some varieties were similar to those that grow on the Cape of Good Hope ... They rowed for four miles to a high cape, where all kinds of greenery grew on flat areas, not planted by man, but existing from God, and there were fruit trees in abundance, and in wide valleys there are many streams, which, however, are difficult to reach, so that only a flask can be filled with water.

The sailors heard some sounds, something like the playing of a horn or the blows of a small gong, and this noise was heard nearby. But they didn't see anyone. They noticed two trees, 2-2 1/2 fathoms thick and 60-65 feet high, and the trunks were cut with sharp stones and the bark was torn off here and there, and this was done in order to get to the birds' nests. The distance between the notches is five feet, therefore, it can be assumed that the people here are very tall. We saw traces of some animals, similar to the prints of the claws of a tiger; (the sailors) brought the excrement of a four-legged beast (so they believed) and some fine resin that seeped out of these trees and had the scent of humilak ... There were many herons and wild geese off the coast of the cape ... "

Leaving the anchorage, the ships moved further north and on December 4 passed the island, which was named the island of Mary in honor of Van Diemen's daughter. Passing by the islands of Schaugen and the Frey-sine peninsula (Tasman decided that this was an island), the ships reached 4-34 "south latitude on December 5. The coast turned to the north-west, and in this direction the ships could not move due to headwinds. Therefore, it was decided was to leave coastal waters and go east.

Tasman on his map connected the coast of Van Diemen's Land with Neates' Land, discovered in southern Australia in 1627. Thus, Tasmania became a protrusion of the Australian mainland, and in this form it was shown on all maps until the beginning of the 19th century.

During the period from 5 to 13 December 1642, the expedition crossed the sea separating Tasmania and Australia from New Zealand. At noon on December 13, Tasman and his companions discovered New Zealand land - a cape on the northwestern tip of the South Island of New Zealand, later named Cape Ferwell by Cook. Rounding this cape, Tasman entered the strait separating the South and North Islands (modern Cook Strait). On the southern coast of this strait in a deep bay on December 18, the ships dropped anchor.

Here a meeting was held with the Maori, who went out to the ships in sharp canoes. At first everything was fine. Stately, painted with patterns, people with yellowish skin behaved peacefully (they were all armed with clubs and spears). The canoes came very close to the ships, and the sailors entered into conversation with the islanders. Tasman had recorded phrases in the languages ​​of New Guinea, but these dialects were as incomprehensible to New Zealanders as Dutch. Suddenly the world was broken. The Maori captured a boat sent from the Hemskerk to the Zehain. In this boat were the boatswain and six sailors. The boatswain and two sailors managed to swim to the Hemskerk, but four Maori sailors were killed; their bodies and the boat they took with them. Tasman places all the blame for this skirmish on the locals. He named the bay where this event took place, Assassin's Cove.

Maori canoes and Abel Tasman's ships in Killer's Bay (now Golden Bay).
Isaack Gilsemans (died about 1645) Description English: "A view of the Murderers" Bay, as you are at anchor here in 15 fathom", a drawing made by Abel Tasman"s artist on the occasion of a skirmish between the Dutch explorers and Māori people at what is now called Golden Bay, New Zealand. This is the first European impression of Māori people. 18 December 1642 ("View of the Bay of Murderers, a drawing made by the artist Abel Tasman on the occasion of a skirmish between Dutch sailors and Maori).

Leaving the bay, he headed east, but soon contrary east winds forced him to lie adrift. On December 24, a council of commanders was held. Tasman believed that a passage could be found to the east, but his companions believed that the ships were not in the strait, but in a wide bay that cut deep into the newly discovered land. It was decided to head to the northern shore of this "bay". Since Tasman did not find the passage that divides New Zealand in two, he decided that it was a single landmass, and called it the Land of the States (Statenlandt), believing that it was part of the Land of the States of Schouten and Lemaire. Passing to the northern coast of Cook Strait, Tasman then turned west, bypassed the southwestern tip of the North Island and followed its western coast to the north.

On January 4, 1643, he discovered the extreme northwestern tip of New Zealand, which he named Cape Maria Van Diemen. Headwinds prevented him from rounding the cape and surveying the north coast of the North Island. He mapped only the western coast of the Land of the States. Only one hundred and twenty-seven years later, the true outline of this land was established and proved that it is not part of the southern mainland, but a double island, which in area is only slightly larger than Great Britain.

Having discovered on January 5 a small island of the Three Wise Men (Three Kings on modern maps) near the New Zealand coast, Tasman headed to the northeast.

On January 19, the ships entered the waters of the Tonga archipelago. Tasman was more fortunate here than Schouten and Lemaire.

Those only "touched" the northernmost islands of this archipelago, and Tasman discovered the main Tongan islands - Tongataba, Eua and Namuku (he called them the islands of Amsterdam, Middelburg and Rotterdam, respectively). This was a very important discovery: until now, the Spaniards and the Dutch in western Polynesia met only small islands lying on the periphery of this vast area.

Inhabitants of New Ireland. Drawing by Abel Tasman

Inhabitants of the island of Rotterdam. Drawing by Abel Tasman

Island of Rotterdam. Drawing by Abel Tasman

Islands of the Three Kings. Drawing by Abel Tasman

Tasman stayed on the islands of Tonga until February 1, 1643. The islanders received him warmly and cordially.

Woodcut Gilseman from the travel diary of Abel Tasman (1642-1643) depicting the clothes, boats and settlements of the Tongan people.
Tongatapu, drawing by Isaack Gilsemans

Woodcut by Gilsemans (?) from ship diary by Abel Tasman, showing both ships in the bay (A), the inhabitants of Tongatapu with presents (B and E), showing their cano (C), how they fish (D), and where the king lives (F).
Houtsnede in scheepsdagboek Abel Tasman, met de bewoners van Tongatapu die met geschenken aankomen

From the islands of Tonga, Tasman headed northwest. On February 6, he discovered the Fiji Islands, but fogs and bad weather prevented exploration of this vast archipelago. Continuing northwest, the Tasman passed far to the east of the Banks and Santa Cruz Islands. The Solomon Islands remained to the west of his route; On March 22, he reached a large atoll, which he named Ontong Java.

Further, Tasman, along the route of Schouten and Lemaire, headed along the northern coasts of New Ireland (which he considered part of New Guinea) and New Guinea to the Moluccas and Java, and on June 14, 1643, arrived in Batavia.

The well-known historian and geographer J. Baker rightly called this voyage of Tasman a brilliant failure. And indeed, if in terms of navigation the route outlined by Vischer was exceptionally successful, then in a purely geographical sense it could not justify itself. The Australian ring had too large a radius: inside this ring were Australia with Tasmania and New Guinea.

Tasman only touched New Zealand and, without examining it, mistook it for the western ledge of the Land of the States of Schouten and Lemaire. However, passing from New Zealand through the islands of Tonga and Fiji to New Guinea, he separated the Australian-New Guinean land from the mythical southern mainland. Since the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit of Kyros also happened to be west of the route laid out by Tasman in the Pacific Ocean, the cartographers had to separate it from this mainland and attach it to Zeidlandt. This very real land that appeared on the maps with the New Guinean "pendant", Van Diemen's Land and the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit, was called New Holland (on maps of the 17th and first half of the 18th century, its entire eastern half was shown as a solid "white spot").

The Tasman Expedition of 1642-1643 was one of the most outstanding overseas ventures of the 17th century. Tasman discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), New Zealand and the islands of Tonga and Fiji. He "separated" the New Holland land from the southern mainland, opened a new sea route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific in the band of stable westerly winds of the fortieth latitudes; he rightly assumed that the ocean washing Australia from the south captures a vast expanse in the forties and fiftieth latitudes. Contemporaries did not use these important discoveries of Tasman, but they were duly appreciated by James Cook; He owes much of the success of his first two voyages to Tasman.

Immediately after the return of Tasman from the voyage, Van Diemen decided to send him again to the shores of Zeidlandt. The fact is that neither Janszon, nor Carstens, nor Gerrit Paul managed to penetrate the Gulf of Carpentaria. Therefore, it was not clear whether this vast water basin represented a bay or, in its southernmost part, it turned into a strait leading to Neates Land. Tasman was charged with surveying the coast of New Guinea south of 17° south latitude and ascertaining whether it connected with the land known as Seidlandt.

On modern maps, only the tip of the "tail" of New Guinea reaches 10 ° south latitude. However, Van Diemen, like all people of that time, believed that the eastern coast of Carpentaria, surveyed in 1623 by Carstens up to 17 ° south latitude, was part of New Guinea.

At the beginning of 1644, three small ships were equipped in Batavia and a team of one hundred and ten people was selected. Frans Vischer was appointed chief helmsman of the expedition. Records of the participants in this voyage have not been preserved, but the route of the expedition is shown on the "Bonaparte map", which is stored in the Mitchell Library in Sydney (it is called so because it came to Australia from the personal archives of one of Napoleon's relatives). The map is based on Tasman's data and contains his own handwritten notes.

The Abel Tasman map 1644, also known as the Bonaparte Tasman map. This map is part of the collection of the State Library of New South Wales, Australia.

The results of this voyage exceeded all expectations. Tasman passed along the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula, then along the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria and discovered a number of small islands near it. He explored the western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, then proceeded along the northern coast of the Arnhemland peninsula, crossed the Dundas Strait between the Coburg Peninsula and Melville Island and entered the bay, which he named after Van Diemen. Without going deep into this bay, Tasman again went out to the open sea, rounded the islands of Melville and Bathurst from the north (he took these islands for part of the mainland) and went southwest along the still unexplored northwestern coast of Australia. At times, due to reefs and small islands, he had to keep at a considerable distance from the coast, but he found that there were no wide breaks anywhere in it, and went along it up to places south of 21 ° south latitude, which had already been surveyed in 20 years of the 17th century. From the Northwest Cape, Tasman headed for Java and arrived in Batavia in early August 1644.

Tasman's First and Second Expeditions.
Designations on the map:
________ first expedition 1642-1643;
_ _ _ _ second expedition in 1644.
- coasts open to Tasman and known to him;
- coasts open to Tasman, but unknown to him;
— islands open to Tasman;
coasts or islands discovered by Tasman

Thus, Tasman erased from the map large "blank spots" in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the northwestern coast of Australia. After this voyage, the western part of the mainland took on the contours that we see on modern maps. The northern coast of Australia on the Tasman map received only a general outline, and only painstaking research carried out almost two centuries later made it possible to clarify its data and plot a number of bays, capes and islands in this part of the mainland on a hag. But it was Tasman who discovered that the coastline stretches continuously from the Northwest Cape to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

However, the results of both Tasman expeditions disappointed the East India Company. Tasman did not find any gold or spices - he explored the deserted shores of desert lands. In fifty years the company had seized so many rich lands in the Asian East that it was now most concerned with how to retain these distant possessions. The routes laid out by Tasman did not promise her any benefits, because she already held in her tenacious hands the sea route leading to the East Indies past the Cape of Good Hope. And in order to prevent competitors from seizing these new routes, the company considered it good to close them and at the same time stop further searches in Seidlandt. “It is desirable,” they wrote to Batavia from Amsterdam, “that this land should remain unknown and unexplored, so as not to draw the attention of foreigners to the ways, using which they can damage the interests of the company ...”

In April 1645, Van Diemen died, and the new trend in the overseas policy of the company finally triumphed.
Until almost 100 years of travel by the British navigator James Cook, Europeans never began to explore New Zealand, and visits to Australia were isolated and most often caused by shipwrecks.

Tasman, in essence, remained out of work. He fell into disgrace, took part in small expeditions. His nautical skills, however, did not go unnoticed. In 1645, he was awarded the rank of commander, i.e., he became the head of a detachment of ships, and his salary was raised.

In addition, Tasman was appointed a member of the Council of Justice of the city of Batavia. Since he was recognized as a connoisseur of the sea, he was instructed to review the ship's logs of all the ships of the company and give an opinion on their navigation.

For several more years, Tasman led various expeditions in the Malay Archipelago. In 1647 he was sent as a representative to the king of Siam, and in 1648 he led a detachment of 8 ships that opposed the ships of the Spanish fleet. In 1651 he was reinstated, but left the company.

Abel Janszon Tasman was born in the village of Lütjegast, near the city of Groningen, in 1603 (the exact date of birth remains unknown). The navigator was of humble origin. Before entering the service in the East India Company of the Netherlands, there is practically no information about him. Church documents recorded that in 1631 Tasman married a second time to a girl from a poor and illiterate family.

From sailor to skipper

At about 30 years old, Tasman became a sailor on one of the ships of the East India Company. This organization, which was engaged in trade in goods from distant eastern countries, gave Abel the opportunity to make a brilliant career. Already in 1634, the sailor became a skipper (in other words, a captain on a commercial ship).

Like other employees of the company, Tasman served the transportation of spices and spices, which were the most valuable goods on the European market. He traveled regularly along the Brouwer route, a sea route that began at the Cape of Good Hope and ended in Java, which belonged to the Netherlands. The skipper had to command ships in the conditions of frequent storms that traditionally occurred between 40 and 50 degrees south latitude (this space was called the Roaring Forties by sailors). The regular storms were due to strong winds - the same winds that allowed the Dutch to quickly get to Java and back.

Continuing a career

The first time Tasman took the route of Brouwer was in 1633, when he sailed from the Dutch island of Texel to Batavia. That was the name of modern Jakarta then. Then he went to the Malay island of Seram. Abel nearly died there. The Dutch had a conflict with the locals, which resulted in the murder of several companions of the navigator.

In 1937 Tasman returned to Amsterdam. At home, he signed a new contract with the East India Company for a period of ten years. Taking his wife with him, the skipper finally moved to Batavia. In 1638, the Dutchman went on a trip to India. A year later, he participated in a research expedition, the purpose of which was the northern part of the Pacific Ocean. Tasman visited Formosa (modern Taiwan, where the Dutch for some time owned several forts) and Dejima, a Japanese trading port built on an artificial island.

Bonin detection

Abel Tasman became widely known in 1639. Sailing from Batavia, he sailed past the Philippine Islands and, together with Captain Mattis Quast, discovered the island of Bonin, about which there had only been legends before. The initiator of the Tasman voyage was Anthony van Diemen, the governor of the Netherlands East Indies. According to legend, he entrusted the skipper with this mission so that he would be as far as possible from his daughter, with whom Abel was in love. The end point of the journey was again Japan, where the navigator stopped in Tokyo, after which he returned back to Batavia.

Discovery of Tasmania and New Zealand

Van Diemen was extremely pleased with the results of the 1639 expedition. Soon Abel Tasman went on a new journey. This time he had to go beyond the traditional trade routes and head to New Holland (Australia) in order to determine whether it is connected to New Guinea.

On August 14, 1642, Abel Tasman sailed again from Batavia. Under his leadership were two ships. Three weeks later, the expedition reached the Mascarene Islands. The "Southern Continent", to which she was heading, at that time was the source of the most incredible rumors and conflicting information.

On November 24, Abel Tasman made perhaps his most important discovery. His ships approached a large island, immediately named Van Diemen's Land (after the governor of the Netherlands East Indies, who patronized the expedition). Today it is known as Tasmania. This name was given to the island in 1856.

Having landed on the eastern coast of the island, the Dutch realized that Van Diemen's land was inhabited. The sailors, afraid that giants might live in the jungle, refused to go deep into the forests. Then Abel Tasman returned to the sea and went further east. On December 13, the outlines of another unknown island appeared. The navigator mistook it for part of the land discovered by Schouten and Le Mer near Cape Horn. In fact, it was the South Island - one of the two largest islands in New Zealand.

Skirmish with Maori

On December 18, 1642, Tasman's ships entered the discovered convenient bay and anchored. The ships immediately attracted the attention of the natives. They had never seen European ships before and dared not approach strangers closer than stone throwing distance. They were Maori - tall and dark-skinned people of New Zealand.

Abel Tasman, whose travels had previously taken him to the natives of distant lands, decided to send a boat with sailors to them. The Maori became furious and killed three Dutchmen. The rest of the sailors threw themselves into the sea and were rescued by boats that came to the rescue. The natives managed to hide in the jungle, and the team never avenged them for the death of their comrades. The place of death of the three Dutchmen for a long time became known as the Bay of Killers (today it is Golden Bay - Golden Bay).

On the islands of Tonga

After the incident with the Maori, Abel Tasman, whose biography is best known for this particular journey, headed north without losing sight of the New Zealand coast. The South Island was replaced by the North. Having reached its tip, the Dutch did not go around this new land and continued on their way towards the ocean.

On January 21, 1643, Abel Tasman, whose discoveries had not yet ended, was the first European to reach the islands of Tonga. They received Dutch names: Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Middelburg. Here the sailors obtained new provisions: chickens, pigs and fruits. On February 6, the Fiji archipelago was discovered, then named after Prince Wilhelm. Passing by, Tasman's ships were nearly wrecked by dangerous reefs on the northeast side of these islands. Local residents were in a state of primitive society. The population practiced ritual cannibalism and was not hospitable.

Return to Batavia

After Fiji, the Tasman ships approached New Guinea and visited places explored by Schouten and Le Mer. All the numerous small islands that the Dutch met on their way were mapped by the expedition's navigator Frans Wisker.

On June 15, the expedition, led by Abel Tasman, returned to Batavia. Today, its results are considered historical. However, in the 17th century, New Zealand and other open lands did not interest the leadership of the Netherlands East Indies. The researcher did not achieve all the goals set. First of all, he did not find the mysterious southern continent - Antarctica. Abel Tasman (whose years of life - 1603-1659) until his death considered New Zealand discovered by him to be part of this mysterious land.

new journey

In January 1644 Tasman's second and last major expedition to the southeast began. This time, three Dutch ships rounded New Guinea from the south and headed towards the northern coast of Australia. Here they were waiting for the waters of the vast Gulf of Carpentaria, which flows into the mainland for as much as 600 kilometers. Willem Janson was the first European to visit it in 1606, but this region still remained little explored. Tasman got there because he missed the Torres Strait that separates Australia from New Guinea. The Dutch were hampered by reefs, which forced them to correct the course, first to the south, and then to the west. The expedition returned to Batavia in August 1644.

This was the end of Tasman's activities as a discoverer. He was appointed to the Legal Council of Batavia and made commander. In 1647, the authorities sent Tasman to Siam as a diplomat to establish contacts with the king of this eastern country. A little later, the captain began to command a detachment of ships during the conflict between the Netherlands and Spain.

Navigator's legacy

Tasman retired in 1651. Even historians have not been able to reconstruct the events of the late stage of his life. It is only known that the navigator died in Batavia in 1659 at the age of 56.

Everything that was named after Abel Tasman (the island, the sea and the basin) was named after his death. Contemporaries considered his expeditions unsuccessful. The East India Campaign never succeeded in discovering new areas suitable for trade. For almost a hundred years, Europeans did not return to the development of New Zealand. Everything changed after the expeditions of the British James Cook. In the XVIII and XIX centuries. justice was restored in relation to such a researcher as Abel Tasman. New Zealand, for example, today has a National Park, a lake and a bay named after him.

Abel Tasman

In 1642, the governor-general of the Dutch Indies, Van Diemen, decided to establish whether Australia was part of the southern mainland and whether New Guinea connected with it, and also to find a new road from Java to Europe. Van Diemen found a young captain, Abel Tasman, who, having gone through many trials, won the fame of an excellent connoisseur of the sea. Van Diemen gave him detailed instructions on where to go and how to act.

Abel Tasman was born in 1603 in the vicinity of Groningen in a poor family, he independently mastered the letter and, like many of his countrymen, connected his fate with the sea. In 1633, he appeared in Batavia and, on a small ship of the East India Company, went around many of the islands of the Malay Archipelago. In 1636, Tasman returned to Holland, but two years later he was back in Java. Here, in 1639, Van Diemen organized an expedition to the North Pacific. It was headed by an experienced navigator Mattis Quast. Tasman was appointed skipper on the second ship.

Quast and Tasman had to find the mysterious islands allegedly discovered by the Spaniards to the east of Japan, these islands on some Spanish maps bore the tempting names "Rico de oro" and "Rico de plata" ("rich in gold" and "rich in silver").

The expedition did not live up to Van Diemen's hopes, but it explored Japanese waters and reached the Kuril Islands. During this voyage, Tasman proved himself to be a brilliant helmsman and an excellent commander. Scurvy killed almost the entire crew, but he managed to navigate the ship from the coast of Japan to Java, withstanding severe typhoon attacks along the way.

Van Diemen showed considerable interest in Zeidlandt, and he was not disappointed by the failures of the expedition of Gerrit Pohl. In 1641, he decided to send a new expedition to this land and appointed Tasman as its commander. It was up to Tasman to find out whether Zeidlandt was part of the Southern Continent, to determine how far it extended to the south, and to find out the paths leading from it to the east, into the still unknown seas of the western Pacific Ocean.

Tasman was provided with detailed instructions summarizing the results of all voyages made in the waters of Zeidlandt and the Western Pacific. This instruction has survived, and Tasman's daily records have survived, which allow us to restore the entire route of the expedition. The company gave him two ships: a small warship "Heemskerk" and a fast flute (cargo ship) "Sehain". One hundred people took part in the expedition.

The ships left Batavia on August 14, 1642 and arrived on the island of Mauritius on September 5. On October 8, they left the island and headed south, and then south-southeast. On November 6, they reached 49 ° 4 S, but could not move further south due to a storm. A member of the expedition, Vischer, suggested sailing to 150° east longitude, adhering to 44° south latitude, and then along 44° south latitude to go east to 160° east longitude.

Under the southern coast of Australia, Tasman thus passed 8–10° south of the Neates route, leaving the Australian mainland far to the north. He traveled east at a distance of 400-600 miles from the southern coast of Australia and at 44 ° 15 south latitude and 147 ° 3 east longitude noted in his diary:

“… all the time the excitement comes from the southwest, and although we saw floating algae every day, it can be assumed that there is no big land in the south…”

This was an absolutely correct conclusion: the nearest land south of the Tasman route - Antarctica - lies south of the Antarctic Circle.

On November 24, 1642, a very high bank was noticed. This was the southwest coast of Tasmania, an island that Tasman considered part of the Zuidlandt and named Van Diemen's Land. It is not easy to establish which part of the coast the Dutch sailors saw that day, because the maps of Vischer and another member of the Gilsemans expedition differ significantly from each other. The Tasmanian geographer J. Walker believes that it was a mountainous coast north of Macquarie Bay - Harbor.

“On our boat,” Tasman writes, “there were four musketeers and six rowers, and each had a lance and a weapon at his belt ... Then the sailors brought various greens (they saw it in abundance); some varieties were similar to those that grow on the Cape of Good Hope ... They rowed for four miles to a high cape, where all kinds of greenery grew on flat areas, not planted by man, but real from God, and there were fruit trees in abundance trees, and in wide valleys there are many streams, which, however, are difficult to reach, so that you can only fill a flask with water.

The sailors heard some sounds, something like the playing of a horn or the blows of a small gong, and this noise was heard nearby. But they didn't see anyone. They noticed two trees, 2-2 1/2 fathoms thick and 60-65 feet high, and the trunks were cut with sharp stones and the bark was stripped here and there, and this was done in order to get to the birds' nests. The distance between the notches is five feet, therefore, it can be assumed that the people here are very tall. We saw traces of some animals, similar to the prints of the claws of a tiger; (the sailors) brought the excrement of a four-legged beast (so they believed) and some fine resin that seeped out of these trees and had the aroma of humilak ... There were many herons and wild geese off the coast of the cape ... "

Leaving the anchorage, the ships moved further north and on December 4 passed the island, which was named the island of Mary in honor of Van Diemen's daughter. Passing by the Schouten Islands and the Freycinet Peninsula (Tasman decided that this was an island), the ships on December 5 reached 4 ° 34 south latitude. The coast turned to the northwest, and in this direction the ships could not advance due to headwinds. Therefore, it was decided to leave the coastal waters and go east.

Tasman on his map connected the coast of Van Diemen's Land with Neates' Land, discovered in southern Australia in 1627. Thus, Tasmania became a protrusion of the Australian mainland, and in this form it was shown on all maps until the beginning of the 19th century.

During the period from 5 to 13 December 1642, the expedition crossed the sea separating Tasmania and Australia from New Zealand. At noon on December 13, Tasman and his companions discovered New Zealand land - a cape on the northwestern tip of the South Island of New Zealand, later named Cape Ferwell by Cook. Rounding this cape, Tasman entered the strait separating the South and North Islands (modern Cook Strait). On the southern coast of this strait in a deep bay on December 18, the ships dropped anchor.

Here a meeting was held with the Maori, who went out to the ships in fast canoes. At first everything was fine. Stately, painted with patterns, people with yellowish skin behaved peacefully (they were all armed with clubs and spears). The canoes came very close to the ships, and the sailors entered into conversation with the islanders. Tasman had recorded phrases in the languages ​​of New Guinea, but these dialects were as incomprehensible to New Zealanders as Dutch. Suddenly the world was broken. The Maori captured a boat sent from the Hemskerk to the Zehain. In this boat were the boatswain and six sailors. The boatswain and two sailors managed to swim to the Hemskerk, but four Maori sailors were killed, their bodies and the boat they took with them. Tasman places all the blame for this skirmish on the locals. He named the bay where this event took place, Assassin's Cove. Leaving the bay, he headed east, but soon contrary east winds forced him to lie adrift.

On December 24, a council of commanders was held. Tasman believed that a passage could be found to the east, but his companions believed that the ships were not in the strait, but in a wide bay that cut deep into the newly discovered land. It was decided to head to the northern shore of this "bay". Since Tasman did not find the passage that divides New Zealand in two, he decided that it was a single landmass, and called it the Land of the States (Statenlandt), believing that it was part of the Land of the States of Schouten and Lemaire. Passing to the northern coast of Cook Strait, Tasman then turned west, bypassed the southwestern tip of the North Island and followed its western coast to the north.

On January 4, 1643, he discovered the extreme northwestern tip of New Zealand, which he named Cape Maria Van Diemen. Headwinds prevented him from rounding the cape and surveying the north coast of the North Island. He mapped only the western coast of the Land of the States. Only one hundred and twenty-seven years later, the true outline of this land was established and proved that it is not part of the southern mainland, but a double island, which in area is only slightly larger than Great Britain.

Having discovered on January 5 a small island of the Three Wise Men (Three Kings on modern maps) near the New Zealand coast, Tasman headed to the northeast.

On January 19, the ships entered the waters of the Tonga archipelago. Tasman was more fortunate here than Schouten and Lemaire.

Those only "touched" the northernmost islands of this archipelago, and Tasman discovered the main Tongan islands - Tongataba, Eua and Namuku (he called them the islands of Amsterdam, Middelburg and Rotterdam, respectively). This was a very important discovery, until now the Spaniards and the Dutch in western Polynesia met only small islands lying on the periphery of this vast area.

Tasman stayed on the islands of Tonga until February 1, 1643. The islanders received him warmly and cordially.

From the islands of Tonga, Tasman headed northwest. On February 6, he discovered the Fiji Islands, but fogs and bad weather prevented exploration of this vast archipelago. Continuing northwest, the Tasman passed far to the east of the Banks and Santa Cruz Islands. The Solomon Islands remained to the west of his route; On March 22, he reached a large atoll, which he named Ontong Java.

Further, Tasman, along the route of Schouten and Lemaire, headed along the northern coasts of New Ireland (which he considered part of New Guinea) and New Guinea to the Moluccas and Java, and on June 14, 1643, arrived in Batavia.

The well-known historian and geographer J. Baker rightly called this voyage of Tasman a brilliant failure. And indeed, if in terms of navigation the route outlined by Vischer was exceptionally successful, then in a purely geographical sense it could not justify itself. The Australian ring had too large a radius: inside this ring were Australia with Tasmania and New Guinea.

Tasman only touched New Zealand and, without examining it, mistook it for the western ledge of the Land of the States of Schouten and Lemaire. However, passing from New Zealand through the islands of Tonga and Fiji to New Guinea, he separated the Australian-New Guinean land from the mythical southern mainland. Since the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit of Kyros also happened to be west of the route laid out by Tasman in the Pacific Ocean, the cartographers had to separate it from this mainland and attach it to Zeidlandt. This very real land that appeared on the maps with the New Guinean "pendant", Van Diemen's Land and the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit, was called New Holland (on maps of the 17th and first half of the 18th century, its entire eastern half was shown as a solid "white spot").

The Tasman Expedition of 1642-1643 was one of the most outstanding overseas ventures of the 17th century. Tasman discovered Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), New Zealand and the islands of Tonga and Fiji. He “separated” the New Dutch land from the southern mainland, opened a new sea route from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific in the band of stable westerly winds of the fortieth latitudes, he rightly suggested that the ocean washing Australia from the south captures a vast expanse in the forties and fiftieth latitudes. Contemporaries did not use these important discoveries of Tasman, but they were duly appreciated by James Cook; he owes much to Tasman for the success of his first two voyages.

Immediately after the return of Tasman from the voyage, Van Diemen decided to send him again to the shores of Zeidlandt. The fact is that neither Janszon, nor Carstens, nor Gerrit Paul managed to penetrate the Gulf of Carpentaria. Therefore, it was not clear whether this vast water basin was a bay or, in its southernmost part, it turned into a strait leading to Neates Land. Tasman was charged with surveying the coast of New Guinea south of 17° south latitude and ascertaining whether it connected with the land known as Seidlandt.

On modern maps, only the tip of the "tail" of New Guinea reaches 10 ° south latitude. However, Van Diemen, like all people of that time, believed that the eastern coast of Carpentaria, surveyed in 1623 by Carstens up to 17 ° south latitude, was part of New Guinea.

At the beginning of 1644, three small ships were equipped in Batavia and a team of one hundred and ten people was selected. Frans Vischer was appointed chief helmsman of the expedition. Records of the participants in this voyage have not been preserved, but the route of the expedition is shown on the "Bonaparte map", which is stored in the Mitchell Library in Sydney (it is called so because it came to Australia from the personal archives of one of Napoleon's relatives). The map is based on Tasman's data and contains his own handwritten notes.

The results of this voyage exceeded all expectations. Tasman passed along the western coast of the Cape York Peninsula, then along the southern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria and discovered a number of small islands near it. He explored the western coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria, then proceeded along the northern coast of the Arnhemland peninsula, crossed the Dundas Strait between the Coburg Peninsula and Melville Island and entered the bay, which he named after Van Diemen. Without going deep into this bay, Tasman again went out to the open sea, rounded the islands of Melville and Bathurst from the north (he took these islands for part of the mainland) and went southwest along the still unexplored northwestern coast of Australia. At times, because of reefs and small islands, he had to keep at a considerable distance from the coast, but he found that there were no wide breaks anywhere in it, and went along it until places south of 21 ° south latitude, which had already been surveyed in 20 years of the 17th century. From the Northwest Cape, Tasman headed for Java and arrived in Batavia in early August 1644.

Thus, Tasman erased from the map large "blank spots" in the Gulf of Carpentaria and the northwestern coast of Australia. After this voyage, the western part of the mainland took on the contours that we see on modern maps. The northern coast of Australia on the Tasman map received only a general outline, and only painstaking research carried out almost two centuries later made it possible to clarify its data and map a number of bays, capes and islands in this part of the mainland. But it was Tasman who discovered that the coastline stretches continuously from the Northwest Cape to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

However, the results of both Tasman expeditions disappointed the East India Company. Tasman did not find any gold or spices - he explored the deserted shores of desert lands. In fifty years the company had seized so many rich lands in the Asian East that it was now most concerned with how to retain these distant possessions. The routes laid out by Tasman did not promise her any benefits, because she already held in her tenacious hands the sea route leading to the East Indies past the Cape of Good Hope. And in order to prevent competitors from seizing these new routes, the company considered it good to close them and at the same time stop further searches in Seidlandt. “It is desirable,” they wrote to Batavia from Amsterdam, “that this land should remain unknown and unexplored, so as not to draw the attention of foreigners to the ways, using which they can damage the interests of the company ...”

In April 1645, Van Diemen died, and the new trend in the overseas policy of the company finally triumphed.

Tasman, in essence, remained out of work. He fell out of favor, took part in small expeditions, then in 1651 he was reinstated, but left the service in the company and, at his own peril and risk, conducted trading operations on the islands of the Malay Archipelago for several years. He died in 1659.

Tasman Tasman (Abel Janson Tasman) is a Dutch sailor who became famous for his discoveries. By order of the Dutch East Indian governor Van Diemen, he went to explore Australia and on November 24, 1642, he stumbled upon a land that he called Van Diemen's Land, not