Abel Tasman

Abel Janszoon Tasman, who lived from around 1603 to 10 October 1659, was a Dutch seafarer and explorer best known for two voyages, in 1642 and 1644, undertaken in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Sailing from the company's base at Batavia, now Jakarta, in 1642 to explore the uncharted southern Pacific and seek new trade routes, Tasman reached and named the coast of what is now Tasmania, calling it Van Diemen's Land after his patron, the Dutch governor-general Anthony van Diemen, before sailing on to become the first European to reach New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt; the name was later changed to Nieuw Zeeland, after the Dutch province of Zeeland, by the Dutch East India Company's official cartographer. His encounter with Maori on the South Island of New Zealand ended in a violent clash that left four of his men dead, and Tasman returned to Batavia without establishing trade relations with either people he had encountered, continuing to serve the Dutch East India Company until his death in 1659. More than a century later, knowledge gained from Tasman's voyages was drawn on by James Cook, whose own expeditions led directly to British exploration and colonization of Australia and New Zealand.