The Dutch mariner and explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman (?1603-1659) undertook between 1633 and 1649 numerous trading and military voyages for the Dutch East India Company. Two of these expeditions, in 1642 and 1644, resulted in important discoveries about Australia. His journal of his 1642 voyage to Van Diemen’s Land and New Zealand was first published in England in 1694. (Van Diemen’s Land was the name originally given by Tasman to the land now called Tasmania.) There have been numerous biographies of Tasman and he has also been the subject of poems; the most well-known of the latter is Australian poet R. D. Fitzgerald’s “Heemskerck Shoals” (1949).
Tasman has often been accused of sailing right round Australia without finding it. This is not quite accurate. As Fitzgerald
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Citation: Spies, Marion. "Tasman lands in Van Dieman's Land". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 April 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1090, accessed 26 November 2024.]
