james cook

Early European explorers

Spanish and the Portuguese had an active presence in the Pacific from the early 16th century, but there is no firm evidence of Europeans reaching New Zealand before Abel Tasman in 1642. Nor is there evidence that Arab or Chinese ships (trading in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea) were ever off New Zealand's coast.

There was speculation that a terra australis incognita (unknown southern land) existed, but European presence in the Pacific remained well north of New Zealand before the mid 17th century.

James Cook features in The A to Z of New Zealand stamp series produced by New Zealand Post in 2008.

Gannets roost at Cape Kidnappers in 2005. Now protected, gannets were used by James Cook for his Christmas 'Goose pye' in 1769.

Abel Tasman's New Zealand Christmas 

The Christian origins of Christmas meant that before European contact, the celebration had no place in the calendar of Aotearoa. The first celebration of Christmas in New Zealand coincided with Abel Tasman’s voyage to New Zealand in 1642. Unfortunately, things did not get off to a good start.

By raising the British Colours at Mercury Bay on Coromandel Peninsula, Cook claimed the area in the name of King George III.

As James Cook rounded the northern tip of the North Island from east to west, the French explorer Jean François Marie de Surville was in the same waters, sailing in the opposite direction. A storm prevented any chance of an historic meeting.

Image: satellite view of the northern tip of New Zealand.

Ship’s boy Nicholas Young received a gallon of rum and had Young Nick’s Head named in his honour for being the first aboard the Endeavour to spot land. It was 127 years  since Abel Tasman’s Dutch expedition made the first recorded European sighting of New Zealand.

Cook concluded the land he sighted was an island and named this after the expedition’s botanist, Joseph Banks. The mistake was realised in 1809 when Captain Chase of the Pegasus tried to sail between Banks ‘Island’ and the Canterbury mainland.

Captain Cook assisted his astronomer Charles Green’s observation of the transit of Mercury at Te Whanganui-o-Hei (Mercury Bay) on Coromandel Peninsula.

The inner planets, Mercury and Venus, occasionally pass across the Sun and can be observed as small black dots. Timing these ‘transits’ from different locations was the first accurate method of determining the distance of the Earth from the Sun.

During his second voyage to New Zealand in 1773, James Cook released a ewe and a ram from the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) in Queen Charlotte Sound. They survived only a few days, an inauspicious start to this country’s long association with sheep.

The Endeavour’s arrival at Cape Turnagain, halfway between Hawke Bay and Cook Strait, completed James Cook’s circumnavigation of the North Island and confirmed that the island was not part of the fabled continent, Terra Australis Incognita (‘unknown southern land’).