The Bligh Museum of Pacific Exploration

By 1640, very little was known of the great ocean east of New Guinea and nothing at all of what lay to the south.  Accordingly the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, Anthony Van Diemen, dispatched from Batavia on August 14, 1642, two vessels, the Heemskerch, of  200 tons and the Zeehaen, of 60  tons, under the command of Abel Janszoon Tasman to explore the great south land, south of the limits of the then known world.

 

The ships called at Mauritius, then a Dutch colony, to refit and arrived off the west coast of Tasmania or Antonio Van Diemen’s Land on November 24.1642 They turned south and then east, rounding the southern coast of Tasmania and at 5 p.m. on November 29, were off the entrance to Adventure Bay, for which they made but a gale blew up and vessels were forced to turn away to seaward.  Storm Bay received its name from this incident.The Heemskerch and Zeehaen did not come close to the coast again until December 1, when they anchored at the south end of Marion Bay.  On the following morning the Dutchman, all well armed, rowed through the Channel to Blackman’s Bay, becoming the first white men to set foot on Tasmania soil, when they landed on the sandy beach just inside the entrance to the Narrows.

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On December 3, heavy surf prevented a landing from a boat so a carpenter from the Heemskerck swam to the shore and planted a flagpole “that those who came after us may become aware that we have been here and taken possession of the said land as our lawful property.”Tasman’s 1642-43 voyage and his explorations of 1644, were more important to geographers than to the Dutch East India company.  He added more to the knowledge of  the south-west Pacific than any navigator to the time of Cook, who made use of that knowledge to good effect.Tasman’s original map of his voyage to Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand was presented to the Mitchell Library in 1933 by Princess George of Greece.  A copy this map hangs in the Bligh Museum.  Beside the map is a copy of the portrait of Tasman which hangs in the Australia Room of the Royal Commonwealth Society, London.