The Source of the First Printed Illustration of New Zealand

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 39, 1 January 2006, Page 75

Rüdiger Mack

The Source of the First Printed Illustration of New Zealand

The first printed illustration of New Zealand, ‘Vaertuig en Gedaente der inwoonders van Selandia Nova’ (‘Vessel and appearance of the inhabitants of New Zealand’) appeared in the 1705 edition of Nicolaas Witsen’s Noord en Oost Tartarye}

It is an engraving based on an original illustration from the journal of Francois Visscher kept during Abel Tasman’s voyage. This illustration needs to be given its rightful place as a historical source. It is a visual source of prime importance for the early contact period between Maori and Europeans. It is the only illustration from Tasman’s visit to New Zealand that indicates areas of Maori occupation. It is also the only visual record of Tasman’s visit to New Zealand that provides additional information not recorded in the various accounts of his voyage. A Dutch boat under sail shown close to the Tata Islands and Abel Tasman Point, in the north-western area of Wainui Bay, is visual evidence that Dutch sailors approached much closer to the shore than the official account of the voyage documents. A vessel that could be Dutch is depicted on a beach close to Taupo Point.

The significance of the Witsen illustration and in particular the coastline, the Maori canoe in the foreground, and further Maori canoes near the shore and on beaches, as well as the Dutch boat(s), has already been discussed in an article in Volume 37 of the Turnbull Library Record (2004), to which the readers are kindly referred for images and maps. 2

There are a few aspects regarding the author of Noord en Oost Tartarye and the origin and source for the illustration that are worth examining in more detail.

Nicolaas Witsen, author o/Noord en Oost Tartarye Nicolaas Comelisz Witsen (1641-1717) was well qualified to write about Dutch exploration because in his position as director of the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, he had access to the archives of the VOC and other sources. His father was personally connected to Abel Tasman’s voyages of exploration. Witsen was an important Dutch statesman, politician, scholar, and collector, as well as a sponsor of science and exploration. He was bom into one of the leading and most powerful families in Amsterdam. His father was Dr Comelis Jansz Witsen, who served four terms as burgomaster of Amsterdam and was a director of the Dutch East India and Dutch West India companies. At the time of Tasman’s and 1644 voyages Comelis Witsen was councillor at Batavia and later on Governor of Banda. Comelis Witsen was one of the seven councillors of the VOC in Batavia who signed the resolution for Tasman’s to New Guinea and Australia Tasman was instructed to obtain detailed information about the islands east of Banda from Comelis Witsen. 3 Comelis Witsen’s name was attached to some newly discovered places during the 1642-43 voyage. 4

Nicolaas Witsen served thirteen terms as burgomaster of Amsterdam from 1682; in 1693 he was appointed a director of the VOC under which Tasman had also served. Witsen travelled in Western Europe and Russia, he corresponded widely, and was a great collector of artefacts from around the world. He welcomed scholars and dignitaries to his home on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. 5 His sources of information were numerous: During his career as a statesmen and scientific amateur, Witsen was at the center of an international web of artists, correspondents, and informants, who provided him with a steady supply of information and images, including written descriptions, maps, drawings, and specimens. 6

Nicolaas Witsen’s source for the illustration ofWainui Bay Witsen’s source was one of the original journals kept during Tasman’s voyage, the journal kept by the pilot-major and first mate of the Heemskerck, Francois Visscher. The illustration of the Maori canoe against the background of Wainui Bay in Witsen’s Oost en Noord Tartarye has repeatedly been described as being copied from the Golden Bay illustration of the State Archives Copy (SAC) of Tasman’s 1642—43 journal and thus of little importance (for example, by R. D. J. Collins, Grahame Anderson, and Patricia Wallace). 7 None of these authors actually examined the source that Witsen used although Witsen was certainly clear about it as he twice referred specifically to a schriftelijk bericht (written report) by one of

the Stuurluiden (mates) who were with Tasman on the voyage to the South Seas in 1643: ‘ Volgens schriftelijk bericht uit een der Stuurluiden, die met Tasman den Reis om de Zuid, in’t Jaer 1643, hadde gedaen, zoo is’ and ‘Dus verre het schriftelijk bericht van de Stuurman boven gemelt’. 8

It is relatively easy to identify this Stuurman as Francois Visscher, the pilot-major and first mate of the Heemskerck, Tasman’s flagship. Witsen refers to an incident on the island of Amsterdam (Tongatapu) where the Stuurman was involved. While lying at anchor there and interacting with local people it was observed that the inhabitants of the island of Amsterdam did not kill flies. On 31 January 1643 the above-mentioned Stuurman accidentally killed a fly and greatly incensed a chief by doing this. 9 The same incident is mentioned in the SAC and the stuurman is here referred to as ‘onzen

stuerman’ (‘our mate’), which points to Francois Visscher, who usually was the leader of the advance landing parties. 10 Hendrik Pieterszoon, the first mate of the other Dutch ship, the Zeehaen , can be excluded as he was not present in this incident.

Witsen specifically refers to ‘de Stuurman’ as his source. He does not refer to the official account of Tasman’s voyage or any other account. The SAC, the official account, was based on various journals and logs kept by Tasman and his officers. Visscher’s journal, which is now lost, was one of the sources used to compile the official report; however, several longitudes and latitudes in Witsen’s book differ from the official account. The position of the Dutch ships on the morning of 19 December 1642 is given by Witsen as 40 degrees 35 minutes latitude and 191 degrees 35 minutes longitude. The SAC gives the position for the same day as 40 degrees 50 minutes latitude and 191 degrees 30 minutes longitude. There are other textual differences. The SAC reports four Dutch killed in the incident on 19 December 1642 in Golden Bay; 11 Witsen reports three killed. 12 The SAC reports that on that morning 22 canoes were seen on the shore ‘of which eleven, swarming with people, were making for our ships’. 13 Referring to the same incident Witsen specifically says that there were 30 people in each vessel. 14 Jan Ernst Heeres, who discussed the source used by Witsen, found that there are passages that are identical or almost identical in their wording in the SAC, but then goes on to say:

On the other hand, however, Witsen’s longitudes and latitudes do not always correspond to those in our journal [the SAC], in some cases even showing enormous differences. In one place he himself volunteers the information, that [Witsen’s] statements are partly based on a ‘written account drawn up by one of the steersmen who with Tasman had made the voyage to the South in the year 1643’, and this goes a long way to prove that he cannot have used our journal which as we know was signed by Tasman himself. The Sweers sailor’s journal in the Hague State Archives is out of the question on account of its divergent purport; so is the Huy decoper copy, since it contains no drawings. 15

Heeres did not comment on the above-mentioned incident at Tongatapu. It was Andrew Sharp who compared the SAC with the passage in Noord en Oost Tartarye and suggested that Witsen’s stuurman was Francois Visscher. 16

Francois Visscher kept a journal, and this is documented in a report dated 22 December 1643 by the Governor-General and Councillors at Batavia, which refers to ‘the daily registers kept by the aforesaid Tasman and 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.’ 17 Nevertheless, Anderson, in his letter in the Turnbull Library Record (2005), denies that documented evidence exists that Visscher kept a journal. Is

The following point also needs to be considered in this context. No journals of Tasman’s 1644 voyage to the coast of northern Australia have survived. The only known recorded details of Tasman’s 1644 voyage are found in Noord en Oost Tartary There is no doubt that Witsen had access to a journal of that voyage on which Francois Visscher was also pilot-major. An empty cover that had once contained an account of this voyage was found in the nineteenth century but Nicolaas Witsen is the last and only known person who saw a journal.' 0 It has already been pointed out that Witsen through his position and contacts was able to access information not easily available to other people.

To sum it up: we can state with confidence that the source of Witsen’s illustration of Wainui Bay was not Tasman’s official account: it was the journal kept by the pilot-major and first mate of the Heemskerck, Francois Visscher.

The Witsen illustration of Wainui Bay compared to the SAC illustration When examining the well-known illustration of Golden Bay in the SAC it is easily noticeable that the large canoe in the foreground is many times the size of the other canoes and the Dutch ships. It is obviously out of place, whereas the canoe in the Witsen engraving fits perfectly well into the background of the coastline. The large canoe in the foreground of the SAC illustration was taken from another illustration, an illustration done on 18 December 1642. This is also supported by Wallace. 21 And it is this illustration, done either by the draughtsman Isaac Gilseman or Francois Visscher, that was the source of the first printed illustration of New Zealand published in Noord en Oost Tartarye in 1705. The illustration in the SAC is clearly a composite picture combining the events that took place over a period of several hours on the morning of 19 December plus a close-up depiction of the double canoe encountered by the advance party on the afternoon of 18 December 1642.“ The SAC was compiled in Batavia and a decision was made to go for a composite illustration rather than a series of separate illustrations to depict the events of 18 and 19 December 1642. It was decided to copy the depiction of the Maori double canoe into it but as it was included into the larger picture of Golden Bay the coastline of Wainui Bay

could not be included. It is thus very fortunate that a detailed engraving based on the illustration drawn on 18 December has survived in Noord en Oost Tartarye.

The main argument why the Witsen illustration can not have been copied from the SAC is that the coastline in Witsen is recognisable. This has been established by personal observation in January 2004. 23 The SAC illustration of Golden Bay does not show identifiable coastal features. It is therefore logical that an accurate depiction of a coastline cannot be arrived at by copying from an unrecognisable coastline as depicted in the SAC.

The details shown in the Witsen illustration suggest that the Dutch boats were inshore as close as 200-300 m from the foreshore. The Taupo point area on the far left of the Witsen illustration demonstrates this clearly. Taupo Point is depicted as a steep headland and just behind it the coastline turns to the left into a little bay. This is a detail that cannot be observed from more than 300 m offshore.

Anderson argues that although the background details of the coastline in Witsen’s illustration may be depicted accurately it is still ‘a cobbled-together illustration’ and that it does not prove in any way ‘that they were drawn in December 1642’. 24 This argument is simply not sustainable. The second edition of Noord en Oost Tartarye was published in 1705 and there was no other European visit to New Zealand until the voyages of Captain Cook. As Anderson made no attempt to determine the source of the Witsen illustration, his qualification of being ‘cobbled-together’ is not appropriate. Considering the kind of man Nicolaas Witsen was, and the contacts and financial resources he had, it seems unlikely that he would have published an illustration that was cobbled together. Without giving specific details Anderson also claims that there are ‘numerous inaccuracies’ in the Witsen illustration as demonstrated by ‘several researchers’ whom he unfortunately does not name in his bibliography. A comparison of the double canoe in the SAC and in Witsen reveals small differences that occurred because the illustrations were copied by different artists. The Witsen illustration is superior because it shows a recognisable coastline and many details that were omitted in the SAC illustration.

The illustration in SAC is made from a bird’s eye perspective from the anchoring place of the two Dutch ships on 19 December 1642, which was a considerable distance offshore. The Witsen illustration is made from a completely different perspective—from sea level. The details of the coastline and the Maori canoes shown on or near beaches could only have been observed from close distance. The only opportunity for the Dutch to make these observations was during the advance expedition in two boats on 18 December, led by none other than Francois Visscher, the same Visscher who was Witsen’s source for this part of his book.

The location of the first encounter between the Dutch and Maori A Maori tradition recorded by the government official Alexander Mackay in 1859 matches the pictorial record of the Witsen illustration. Mackay’s Compendium of

Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs in the South Island published in 1873 has already been quoted. 25 An even more specific reference to this first encounter is in a letter from Mackay for the information of the Government dated October 1859:

Before closing the history of the Ngatitumatakokiri it may as well be mentioned, that it was a few of this tribe who attacked Tasman’s boats crew on his visit to Taitapu (the sacred tide) from which circumstance he gave it that name of Massacre or Murderers Bay - a sandy cove within about half a mile from the Tata Islands is the locality pointed out as having been the scene of this first unfortunate meeting between the European and Maori races. 26

The cove where the Dutch boat is shown in the Witsen illustration is to the west of Abel Tasman Point, about 700-800 m from the Tata islands. Motu, one of the Tata islands, is clearly recognisable. 27 In the Witsen illustration there are three canoes on the beach in a cove and another canoe close to the beach a little to the north of this cove.

The locality given by Mackay has never been satisfactorily explained because it does not match the official account. However, the Witsen illustration fits exactly the locality recorded by Mackay. The nameless cove just west of Abel Tasman Point should be recognised as the place where the first meeting of Europeans and Maori took place. Though we don’t know what exactly happened here in the afternoon of 18 December 1642, the cove should be given an appropriate name to document its historic significance.

Tasman’s journal does not mention that the two Dutch boats got very close to the shore (or possibly even landed). Anderson considers this as proof that the Dutch boats did not get any closer to land than an area where the water was 13 fathoms deep, which is the only clue to a position given in the SAC. This would be about two nautical miles off Whariwharangi Beach. However, the instructions for the advance party on 18 December were very clear: to explore the coastline and seek an anchorage and a watering place. 28 Given that 18 December is almost the longest day of the year, the advance expedition had plenty of time to explore. They left after noon and returned after sunset, a period of up to eight or nine hours. The speed of a seventeenth-century rowed boat can be estimated between three and five knots (5.5 to 9 km per hour). There was wind in Golden Bay on that day. The SAC mentions that the Dutch Zeehaen and the Heemskerck sailed 11 miles on 18 December and also that it became calm with the setting of the sun. 24 Anderson errs when he writes that ‘there was no wind’. 30 This wind would have increased the speed of the two boats under sail. The trip from the ships to the north-eastern point of Wainui Bay then across to the north-western point and back to the ships, a total of 12-15 nautical miles (22-28 km), was comfortably achievable in eight to nine hours. An average speed of 2.5-3.5 km/h would be sufficient to cover this distance. Anderson assumes

that with the setting of the sun the men in the small boats would have been in increasingly deep shadow by 6 p.m. 31 Here he errs again because on 18 December the sun sets in Golden Bay at around 8 p.m. (9 p.m. with daylight saving time). There would have been good light on the eastern side of Golden Bay until sunset.

Again it is vital to point out that the Witsen illustration shows details of the Wainui Bay coastline in the Taupo Point area and also near Abel Tasman Point that could have been observed only from close distance. It would have been completely impossible to depict these details from 3-4 km offshore. Anderson denies that there was any possibility that close-up coastal drawings could have been made during the afternoon of 18 December 1642 but he does not offer any satisfactory explanation how else the detailed coastline in Witsen’s illustration could have been drawn. 32

There is a marked contrast between the description of the attempt to explore the Three Kings Islands and the attempt to explore Wainui Bay. In the SAC the account of the attempted landings on the Three Kings on 5 and 6 January 1643 covers about 60 lines. Other accounts of landings in Tasmania, the Tonga islands, and so on are covered in even more detail. In contrast, the account of the advance party in Wainui Bay in the SAC is 18 lines. Francois Visscher, the leader of this advance party, had to give a detailed report as was required according to the instructions given to Tasman. 33 Tasman omitted details of the report of the advance party for reasons we can only speculate about, but the SAC for 18 December 1642 does not contradict the Witsen illustration in any way. The Witsen illustration supplements the SAC. It simply provides extra information about the movements of the Dutch advance party and of Maori canoes and settled areas in Wainui Bay.

The pictorial evidence of a coastline depicted in some places from only 200300 m offshore is evidence that the Dutch got very close to the shore. Whether a landing took place is speculation. More evidence would be needed here, be it further written records or illustrations, archaeological evidence in Wainui Bay, or even Maori artefacts in a VOC archive. A suggestion for further research is a close examination of the auction catalogue of Nicolaas Witsen private collections. This collection was described in detail in four volumes when it was auctioned in 1728 a few years after Nicolaas Witsen’s death. 34 An archaeological survey of the nameless cove at the north-western point of Wainui Bay might also advance our knowledge.

Turnbull Library Record 39 (2006), 75-82

References 1 Nicolaas Witsen, Noord en Oost Tartarye, 2nd edn (Amsterdam: Francois Halma, 1705). 2 Rudiger Mack, ‘Did Dutch Sailors Land in Wainui Bay on 18 December 1642? The First Printed Illustration of New Zealand’, Turnbull Library Record, 37 (2004), 13-28. 3 Andrew Sharp, The Voyages of Abel Janzoon Tasman (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 29, 39, 318, and 324. 4 Sharp, pp. 97, 103, 109, 236, and 242.

5 Benjamin Schmidt, ‘Nicolaes Cornelisz Witsen (1641-1717)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by Colin Matthew et al., 60 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); and Marion Peters, ‘Nicolaes Witsen and Gijsbert Cuper: Two Seventeenth Century Dutch Burgomasters and their Gordian Knot’, LIAS: Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, 16 (1989), 111-50. 6 Rebecca, P. Brienen, ‘Nicolaes Witsen (1641-1717): VOC Director, Amsterdam Burgomaster, and Collector’, Abstract title for the conference ‘Contingent Lives: Social Identity and Material Culture in the VOC world’, Cape Town, 17-20 December 2006.

7 R. D. J. Collins, ‘Abel Tasman in New Zealand Waters: The Pictorial Record’ Bulletin of New Zealand Art History, 12 (1991), 4-28 (pp. 10-11); Grahame Anderson, ‘Did Gilseman and Tasman Collude in Concealing Evidence in Batavia in 1643?’, Letter to the Editor, Turnbull Library Record, 38 (2005) 93-99 (pp. 93-94); and E. Patricia Y. Wallace, ‘Traditional Maori Dress: Rediscovering Forgotten Elements of Pre-1820 Practice’, PhD Dissertation, University of Canterbury, 2002, p. 40. 8 Witsen, Vol. 1, pp. 178 and 179. 9 Witsen, Vol. l,p. 179. 10 Jan Ernst Heeres, Abel Janszoon Tasman’s Journal (Amsterdam: Frederik Muller, 1898), pp. 33 and 107; Sharp, p. 171. 11 Heeres, p. 19; Sharp, pp. 122-23. 12 Witsen, Vol. 1, p. 177. 13 Heeres, p. 20. 14 Witsen, Vol. l,p. 177. 15 Heeres, p. 83. 16 Sharp, p. 171. 17 Quoted in Heeres, p. 145. 18 Anderson, p. 94. 19 Witsen, Vol. 1, p. 175; and Sharp, p. 332. 20 Sharp, pp. 315-16; and Heeres, p. 74. 21 Mack, p. 16; and Wallace, p. 30. 22 Wallace p. 30; and Mack, p. 15. 23 Mack, p. 15. 24 Anderson, p. 94. 25 See Mack, p. 26.

26 John White, The Ancient History of the Maori, His Mythology and Traditions. Nga-Ti-Whatua. Vol IX (Maori) (Incomplete, unpaginated). From MS papers 75, 818 & 824, Manuscripts Collection, Alexander Turnbull Library; and A. N. Field, Nelson Province 1642-1842. From Discovery to Colonisation (Nelson: A. G. Betts, 1942), pp. 17-18. 27 Mack, p. 15. 28 Heeres, p. 18; and Sharp, p. 120. 29 Heeres, p. 18; and Sharp, p. 120. 30 Anderson p. 96. 31 Anderson p. 96. 32 Anderson, pp. 96-98. 33 Heeres, pp. 129-36. 34 Marion Peters, ‘From the Study of Nicolaes Witsen (1641-1717). His Life with Books and Manuscripts’, LIAS: Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, 21 (1994), 1 —47.