CONQUEST OF TASMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 456, 11 September 1928, Page 7

CONQUEST OF TASMAN

PIONEER VOYAGES POLYNESIAN VIKINGS Almost to the very day the Southern Cross’s venture celebrates the 75th anniversary of the crossing of the Tasman by the first steamship. Centuries ago, before when the civilised people of Europe were afraid to. sail too far out to sea lest they should fall over the edge of the world, hardy Polynesians set out from somewhere in the Pacific to find a new country. They sailed and paddled for weeks, navigating by crude but fairly effective means, and at last they reached what they sought. The land, which they called Ao-tea-Koa, was New Zealand. Theirs was, perhaps, history’s finest example of pioneering, ranking even above the early discovery of America by the Vikings. For centuries again the broad stretches of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific were untouched by any vessel. It was a Dutchman, Abel Janszoon Tasman, who was the next conqueror. On December 5, 1642, he left Tasmania, or Van Diemen’s Land, as he called it, and eight days later found “a high mountainous country,” which he named Staten Landt. Now we call it New Zealand. There was another period of years before Tasman’s pioneering effort was followed by others. Captain James Cook we know as another explorer of unknown seas. Whalers were the next to come south, and they had the Tasman almost to themselves till the emigrant ships from England began to bring their passengers to settle in the new land of the south. The next step in the conquest of the Tasman Sea was its crossing by a steamer. H.M. steam sloop Driver was the first to succeed in this. This was in 1846, and it was two more years before the survey ship Acheron, of 760 tons, and 160-h.p., got across. The fiist merchant vessel to come across under steam, though, was the little screw steamer An, of 154 tons.

She made Nelson her first port of call, and reached Wellington on September 3, 1853. ' By this time the Tasman must have realised that it was not such a great obstacle to man. Canoes had paddled across it, sailing vessels had crossed it dozens of times, and steamers had laughed at its wildest moods. More steamers followed, till in these days a trip over the Tasman is very small beer for the traveller. fill this year man had restricted his efforts to the surface of the waters. No one had ever attempted the much more dangerous feat of flying over the Tasman.

Almost to the very day of the 75tli anniversary of the crossing of the Tasman Sea by the first, steamer, though, four adventurous men are expected to leave Sydney in an airplane, confident that they can still further humiliate that 1,200 miles of water that lies between Australia and New Zealand. Everything poiiats to the conclusion that they will succeed, and if they do they will certainly make the fastest Tasman crossing on record. Even 20 hours, the time for the South- . ern Cross, makes the four days of the . steamers look remarkably silly. i But the Tasman Sea, in spite of its humiliations, will still roll on.