Today (14 August 2017) is the 375th anniversary of the day the Heemskerck Zeehaen sailed from Batavia (now Jakarta) to begin their search for the Great South Land and its untold riches. As we know, his main discoveries were what became known as Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga and Fiji and their peoples.

Below is a preliminary notice of this years events marking the actual anniversary (18/19 December) of the first encounter between Tasmans crew and Maori resident in Golden Bay/Mohua. We are also marking the 75th anniversary of the establishment of Abel Tasman National Park in 1942 (300th anniversary). [Notice subsequently removed]

More information on these events will follow as funding and other details are confirmed. Please contact us on firstencounter375@gmail.com if you would like to go on the mailing list for information about the commemoration.

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The 375th anniversary commemoration will be marked in Tasmania on Sunday 3 December with a trip to Tasman Bay and a community lunch at the Bangor Wine and Oyster Shed. For more information contact Tom Dunbabin (tom@bangor.com.au).
The site where Tasmans ships carpenter Pieter Jacobsz swam ashore and planted the VOC flag on that day in December 1642 (and claiming possession) is now on private farmland, but regular trips are held to the site of a 1923 memorial (pictured). The strong Dutch community and a Dutch Consul in Hobart ensure history is remembered, and this year the Tasmanian government is also involved.
We will be keeping in touch with Tom about their eventsand they with us about ours. Its a shared story of discovery.

@Artbank, 57 Commercial Street, Takaka, during July 2017.

Acknowledging First Encounter 375 (1642-2017)

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Music history: Thinking about Abel Tasmans contribution
Dr Philip Norman is writing a history of New Zealand composers. He recently identified a few major features.
First theres our distinctive birdsong and then there are the musical sounds of early Maori in Golden Bay/Mohua. Tasman was the first to describe our indigenous music, in December 1642.

Dr Norman comments:
Abel Tasman, in the diaries of that time, said they heard some chanting on shore and what sounded like trumpets. They assumed the Maoris were giving them a welcoming concert. So they started singing a few bawdy Dutch sailors songs and tooted their trumpet, but what the Dutch were hearing was the Maori haka and the trumpet sound was probably the war trumpet calling all the tribes around.
The next morning, all was revealed that it wasnt a concert, but a challenge. To me, that is a prime example of music not being a universal language.

Image is of a putatara (conch trumpet) in the collection of Te Papa. The putatara is the centre feature of our FE375 logo.

Whakamaharatanga toru rau ma whitu tekau ma rima Commemoration 375

Changing perspectives upon Māori colonisation voyaging, by Atholl Anderson

Changing perspectives upon Maori colonisation voyaging

In 1996, in Making Peoples, Belich wrote that if Polynesian navigators could travel from some possible Hawaiki to New Zealand and then back again they were in danger of becoming deified rather than merely superhuman. Even the vikings, he observed, never managed more than a thousand or so kilometres in one hop. And he went on to say repeated intercourse between New Zealand and tropical Polynesia could safely be dismissed on current evidence because return voyages were not very credible for New Zealand. He left himself a bit of wriggle room though with this caveat: It may be that the Great Fleet, or at least a Little Fleet, will strike back. (pp.32-33).

In 2015 Atholl Anderson argued in  Tangata Whenua that New Zealands  Polynesian colonists had not come here in any such deliberate migration after prior two way voyages. Like Belich he considered that the waka and the sailing rigs available to them could not have made such return voyages and like Belich he pointed out that objects of New Zealand origin have not yet turned up at their likely starting points in Polynesia. So not a lot seemed to have changed in twenty years, except perhaps in our imaginations: one of the biggest movies to come out last year, Moana, focuses on Polynesian voyagers.

Two years ago I speculated in a thread here, Kupes sails, that sail-capable double-hulled waka using prop-masted oceanic-lateen sails may have been written of and drawn by Dutch in Golden Bay in 1642. Geoff Irwins reconstruction of the Anaweka Waka,  part of which is now in Takaka, shows it rigged with what academics call an Oceanic Sprit.

The Anaweka Waka is reportedly made of New Zealand Matai and was last used according to radiocarbon dating around 1400CE. Ive wondered if such a waka, by the 15th century, might have been tongiaki rigged as shown below, its owners having learned this rig from Tongans in Samoa and the Cooks during a phase of two way voyaging that lasted from perhaps as early as the 12th until perhaps the outset of the 15th century.

This is because I think, as others do, that return voyages from here to the Hawaiiki Zone were possible and even probable. New texts that bear on this have very recently become available.

One, out this year, is based on the remains of early waka in New Zealand. By Irwin, Johns and others, it is a Review of Archaeological Māori Canoes (Waka) which Reveals Changes in Sailing Technology and Maritime Communications in Aotearoa/New Zealand, AD 1300–1800. Through time, it tells us there was a prevailing shift from multihulls to monohulls and general decline in the sailing performance of New Zealand waka. New types developed that were suited best for paddling and sailing downwind. But at first settlement, waka which sailed better were apparently predominant. This academic text is not yet free to read online. But I link here to two that are, and I investigate Moana, with its vastly greater audience.

An academic text published online less than two months ago is titled Mass Migration and the Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand. In this Walter et al fulfill that Belich prophesy that the Great Fleet hypothesis may yet strike back. Look into it, using the link above; I will return to it.

Another paper that I only read quite recently though it emerged in 2009 is called TRIANGULAR MEN ON ONE VERY LONG VOYAGE: THE CONTEXT AND IMPLICATIONS OF A HAWAIIAN-STYLE PETROGLYPH SITE IN THE POLYNESIAN KINGDOM OF TONGA. I like the way this partially enlarges our East Polynesian triangle, the one in which New Zealand, far to the southwest, got settled last. It does this through a close examination of anthropomorphs, carved human figures who do really look triangular. That surfer, carved into a rocky outcrop on a Tongan beach apparently around the 14th century, is food for thought.

Triangular men and women in Hawaii and the Tongan archipelago. Figures i and k are seen as surfers, f and h are turtles,  e and g are transformational, either humans changing to  turtle form or turtles to human. Compare these with the turtle on the Anaweka waka.

Disneys Moana may determine how the voyaging canoes of Polynesians are perceived by most people for years to come. And that might not be such a bad thing; its a good movie in lots of ways and I believe its images and words are worth considering alongside those of the two papers mentioned in the two preceding paragraphs.

We read the wind and the sky
When the sun is high
We sail the length of the seas
On the ocean breeze
At night we name every star
We know where we are
We know who we are, who we are

Aue, aue,
We set a course to find
A brand new island everywhere that we roam
Aue, aue,
We keep our island in our mind
And when it’s time to find home
We know the way

Opetaia Tavita Foai, who helped to write this song, grew up in Samoa and   Tokelau. A lot of modern Polynesians  dont see European sea-farers like the vikings as the best early open ocean voyagers, they see their own peoples that way, and may be justified in doing so, since while the vikings hugged the icy north Atlantic and explored the waterways of Eastern Europe, East Polynesians found and occupied Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand.

This plate from Triangular Men shows us the scale of that, and like the vikings those who made such voyages needed good ships.

The waka in Moanas fleet have oceanic lateen looking sails, not oceanic spritsails. But are they tongiaki rigged? The tongiaki rigs below were drawn by two Dutch artists, one on Eendracht in 1616 and one on Heemskerck in 1643.

The model, clearly partly based on the Dutch images, resembles voyaging canoes seen in Moana in at least some ways.

As shown here they have fork topped masts; true oceanic lateen sails were hauled up to meet such forks and held down at the front against the prow of the main hull. This differs from the tongiaki where the crutch mast fork cradles the upper spar and the front of the sail floats between two prows of equal size. As reconstructed in Te Papas model the crutch mast appears to remain fixed within one hull, though I cant work out how the sail can be raised and lowered if thats the case.

As Dave Horry and I interpret the crutch mast it was simply lifted into place on the top deck, and so could change its angle as the sail trim changed.

Moanas largest waka have raised decks on widely spaced hulls but their masts seem permanently steppd inside one larger hull.

A rig like this seems close to that of the Fijian ndrua, (double) or camakau (outrigger) canoes of the 19th century. These had true oceanic lateen rigs, and so were shunted through the wind, not tacked across it. The fork topped masts, which pivoted towards whichever end became the front, also allowed the sail to pivot round the mast

Voyaging canoe, Fiji Islands, Atlas Pittoresque 1846

Such lateen rigs did not exist in the Hawaiiki Zone before the 15th century. But tongiaki rigs, their ancient predecessors, evidently did. So if we saw Moanas voyaging canoes as tongiaki rigged, they might be closer to reality than are the current academic suppositions that East Polynesian voyagers had nothing better than the oceanic sprit.

In closeups the Moana waka seem extremely fast, as was the camakau above, and certainly they sail across the wind. They even do so rather recklessly, I think, manning and womanning large outriggers as if competing for the Polynesias Cup.

Its generally held by academics that East Polynesians in pre-European times used only two spars to support each sail, one of which functioned as a mast. Here is a Herb Kane painting of a double waka with two such oceanic spritsails.

When working reconstructions of such polynesian voyaging canoes were built, beginning with the Hōkūle‘a in the 1970s, they often used two of these spritsails, as does New Zealands  Te Aurere shown below.

This rig seems to have many modern influences. Each spritsail has effectively a separate mast onto which one of the two spars has been secured.

The one large  double waka Cook encountered in New Zealand wasnt rigged this way.

Maori double hulled war canoe with oceanic sprit rig, 1769

It looked like this. We dont know if these spars crossed at some point or not. It doesnt look that way, but tests have shown an oceanic spritsail works better if they do.

In this, an actual Maori sail Cook collected here, they might have crossed, perhaps as indicated here, or they might not. But could a sail and spars like these have sailed across the wind? This seems more like a temporary rig that you could keep in place with ropes to catch a following wind and very little else.

Lets look now at the smaller waka which Moana sails herself. Its sail definitely isnt used here as an oceanic lateen or tongiaki rig instead in this configuration it appears to be a modern oceanic spritsail.

And its quite versatile; see it racing here, apparently across the wind, with Maui at the helm.

And here we see that like the other waka in Moana this one has a fixed and fork topped mast.

But a mast mounted at the front, not centrally. So if the upright spar was lifted from the mast and then suspended at a central point from the masts fork, and if the tack where the spars meet was held against the prow this rig would almost match those of Moanas other waka as seen earlier. It couldnt shunt, because the mast is at the front, but set up that way it would certainly suggest the tongiaki rig.

In Mass Migration and the Polynesian Settlement of New Zealand its suggested that New Zealands Polynesian settlers came in a substantial fleet from a Hawaiiki zone. This zone included the Cook Islands, which as Triangular Men suggests was well within the zone known to the tongiaki waka of the Tuʻi Tonga Empire.

Location of the Hawaiiki Zone from which New Zealands first Polynesian settlers originated.

In Mass Migration the authors go on to say: this was a planned migration, based on prior knowledge of the location of New Zealand, and it involved a number of interacting communities within a zone of regular interaction in central East Polynesia. Not only was the migration planned and led by capable leaders, but the colonisation of New Zealand itself was efficient and rapidly executed. The essential strategy of the colonists seems to have been to reproduce the social and economic structures of Hawaiiki in the new land. As in tropical East Polynesia, this involved the establishment of a communication network linking communities on an expanding colonial frontier. Archaeological investigation will probably never tell us about individual motives, ideological drivers or the role of visionary chiefs in the migration and colonisation of New Zealand. But these are precisely the issues that oral tradition addresses and it is now time to take a more nuanced and critical look at these traditions in order to further our understanding of migration, colonisation, and the relationship between early New Zealand and Hawaiiki society.

The fleet is back. Moana will not be at all surprised.

Robert Jenkin writes:

The SAC was evidently one of several Tasman Journals made in Batavia during the second half of 1643. More than one evidently reached the Netherlands in 1644 since on December 22^nd 1643 The Council of The Indies signed a report with accompanying daily registers kept by the aforesaid Tasman and the Pilot-major Francois Jacobsen Visscher, the said registers pertinently showing the winds and the courses held, and faithfully delineating the aspect and trend of the coasts, and the outward figure of the natives, etc (Heeres (Life, p.145). Presumably at least another one stayed in Batavia. Wallace believes that six were sent back to the six Dutch provinces that supported the VOC. If so and with at least one staying in Batavia, seven or more such copies were produced. Sharp guesses that the copied illustrations of the SAC went into spaces left for them by the text copyist (pp. 54, 56). Its also possible that Heemskercks draughtsman wrote his own captions on other leaves like Blok and then in 1643, back in Batavia, was textual copyist and illustrator of the SAC, there copying and improving his own art with editorial advice. If so, he then left spaces for the finely written labelling and captions Anderson sees as done by Gilsemans.

Continue reading

Robert Jenkin writes:

What we now now know as the Blok fragment is a single leaf of paper slightly less than A3 in size with ink and wash drawings on both sides. It is held in the Netherlands State Archives and online photos of it there can be seen here

In Abel Tasman in New Zealand Waters; The Pictorial Record, an article R.D.J. Collins published in the Bulletin of New Zealand Art History in 1991, Collins convincingly suggests that the Blok versions of the illustrations shown above are the originals from which those in the SAC were later  copied I agree and discuss Collins observations further in a later post.

If we accept the Blok versions as the originals, what were their origin and purpose?

Blok seems to have had more exposure to the elements than SAC. Side one of Blok is numbered 21, suggesting it was once one of a set of numbered leaves. So was it part of such another illustrated text as SAC, all of whose other pages are now lost, as Heeres supposed, or could it be the last remaining leaf of all the illustrations drawn on Heemskerck by her designated artist (tekenaar)? Storage in a small warship during such an expedition could explain Bloks weatherworn condition. For me this seems the likeliest theory based on the existing evidence, at least until more academic scholarship and perhaps some scientific testing can be brought to bear on Blok. Some of my reasons for believing that the drawings in it and in SAC are not the work of Gilsemans appear in my preceding post Van Diemen and his Councillors did not put all their artists in one barque and some on this page, Gilsemans earlier art.

Continue reading

Robert Jenkin writes:

In Traditional Maori Dress: Recovery of a Seventeenth–Century Style? Wallace has shown convincingly the documentary value of the close-up waka and its Maori  crew, as seen below in SAC and Blok alternatives.

From where and at what time was this large double waka sketched in such detail? Which of the waka mentioned in the text might it have been?

Continue reading

Robert Jenkin writes:

In 1898 Dutch Scholar J.E.Heeres produced, in Dutch and English versions, an edited edition of the State Archives Copy of the Tasman Journal (SAC) called Tasmans Journal of his Discovery of Van Diemens Land and New Zealand in 1642, with documents relating to his exploration of Australia in 1644.

This work, which includes varied documents and essays, is online. In one important section, Heeres essay Abel Janszoon Tasman: His life and labours, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0600571h.html#life he argues  Gilsemans was probably the expedition’s primary draughtsman (page 107): “As ‘supercargo’ in the Zeehaen we find Isaack Gilsemans. He was most probably the ‘draughtsman’ mentioned in the Instructions, who had been directed to join the expedition. Continue reading

CLICK HERE for the latest Abel Tasman Miscellanymainly about plans for  First Encounter 375. You can receive the miscellany newsletters automatically; email your details to tasman1642.nz@gmail.com

Yes, the 375th anniversary of the dramatic first encounter between tangata whenua (Maori, who first settled New Zealand) and another people takes place on 18 December.

In collaboration with Manawhenua ki Mohua, artist Robin Slow has created a striking logo with deep significance (explained below).

(Whakamaharatanga toru rau ma whitu tekau ma rima = Commemoration 375)

Tasmans time in New Zealand waters, which also included the first Christmas (sheltering behind Rangitoto/dUrville Island) was from 13 December 1642, when land was first sighted, to 6 January 1643 when the voyagers named Three Kings Islands as they left to sail north towards Tonga and Fiji. 

Golden Bay/Mohua representatives Mairangi Reiher (Manawhenua ki Mohua) and Penny Griffith recently attended the Netherlands Embassy Kings Day celebration in Wellington. Penny (left) and Mairangi (centre) are shown here with Monique Zaagman-Bos, the ambassadors wife, in front of a tiled reproduction of the well-known image from Tasmans journal, showing  the events of 18/19 December.

Ambassador and Mrs Zaagman will be in Golden Bay/Mohua for this years main commemoration which will run from 16 to 19 December 2017.  Details to follow:  please email  tasman1642.nz@gmail.com to receive information as plans evolve.

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Robert Jenkin (on the right) with two crew and the cardboard scale model Praeutien (small boat) referred to in Tasmans account of the events of 18/19 December 1642.  Praeutien was first across the line and also won the senior best technical design award in the 2016 Cardboard Boat Race held annually at Tata Beach, in Golden Bay/Mohua.

Praeutien is an extra string to Roberts Tasman bow his diorama and interactive are part of the rich displays at Golden Bay Museum, along with his book Strangers in Mohua. The boat race win (on 29 January) feels highly appropriate in this 375th year of remembering that first encounter and the meeting of two worlds.

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Golden Bay/Mohua welcomes ambassador Rob Zaagman and Monique Zaagman to this years commemoration of First Meeting Day (or Abel Tasman 374). This may be the first time since 1942 that an official representative of the Netherlands has been here on the actual date of when Tasmans ships sailed in the Bay, on 18 December 1642.

Our activities this year have been affected by the tides, so there wont be a walk to Taupo Point this year. Its been very popular in the past, so we hope it will be right for the 375th anniversary next year.

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Residents of Tasman Districtwhere the 1642  First Meeting took place in what is now Golden Bay/Mohuaare proud that their mayor Richard Kempthorne and his wife Jane were invited to be guests at the recent state dinner for the Dutch King and Queen in Wellington.

Not only did the honour reinforce the already strong link between Tasman District and the Grootegast municipality (close to Abel Tasmans birthplace), but it also created a wider recognition of the significance of Tasmans voyage in New Zealands documented heritage record. Heres an account from a local newspaper:

Professor Richard Woolley brings his film-making skills to the world of words. His new novel Stranger Love builds on the facts recorded in Tasmans journal to create a gripping story that begins in Amsterdam and ends in a Maori settlement where Jakob is enslaved. But how does the story end?  Read it!

Order from your bookshop (New Zealand RRP is $29.99 for the paperback) or from a supplier online: The Nile or Fishpond (for hardcopies) and Amazon for the e-version.

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