Tasman had sailed from Batavia in August 1642 for the Dutch East India Company, hoping to find a great southern continent and new trade routes. After reaching the island later named Tasmania, he sailed east and sighted "a large land, uplifted high". Days later, in a bay at the north of the South Island, Māori in canoes attacked a boat from his ships, killing four of his crew. Tasman sailed on without landing and named the country Staten Landt.
Tasman commanded two ships, the Heemskerck and the Zeehaen. On November 24, 1642, he sighted the west coast of the land he named Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, after the company's governor-general. He then sailed east across the sea that now bears his name, and on December 13 saw the Southern Alps rising near what is now Hokitika.
The ships followed the coast north and anchored in Golden Bay. On December 18, Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri canoes approached, and their crews blew a trumpet-like shell. The Dutch replied with their own trumpets, perhaps unknowingly accepting a challenge. The next day, canoes rammed a small boat carrying messages between the ships, and four sailors were killed. Tasman named the place Murderers' Bay.
He charted parts of the west coast of the North Island, named the Three Kings Islands, and sailed on to Tonga and Fiji before returning to Batavia in 1643. The company was disappointed that he had found no trade opportunities. New Zealand's name, from the Dutch province of Zeeland, was given later by Dutch mapmakers. Europeans did not return until James Cook in 1769.
Key people: Abel Tasman