Abel Tasman

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Born around 1603 in the northern village of Lutjegast, he settled in Amsterdam and entered VOC service, sailing to Batavia in 1633. On his 1642-1643 expedition he became the first documented European to reach Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania), the west coast of New Zealand's South Island, and the Fiji Islands, and the first European to reach the main islands of Tonga (Tongatapu group); the northern Tongan islands had been sighted by Schouten and Le Maire in 1616. A second voyage in 1644 charted parts of the northern Australian coast. He later held administrative and commercial posts in Batavia, where he died in 1659. His journals shaped European mapping of the region.