About World Globes

Abel Janszoon Tasman (1603 - 1659), was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant.

Tasman is best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the
United East India Company. He was the first known European expedition
to reach the islands of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands, which he did in 1643. Tasman also mapped substantial portions of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

On 24 November 1642 Abel Tasman sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour. He named his discovery Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) after Antonie van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.  After some exploration, Tasman had intended to proceed in a northerly direction but as the wind was unfavourable he steered east.  On 13 December they sighted land on the north-west coast of the South Island, New Zealand, becoming the first Europeans to do so.  On route back to Batavia, Tasman came across the Tongan archipelago on 20 January 1643.
With three ships on his second voyage (Limmen, Zeemeeuw and the tender Braek) in 1644, he followed the south coast of New Guinea eastward. He missed the Torres Strait between New Guinea and Australia, and continued his voyage along the Australian coast. He mapped the north coast of Australia making observations on the land and its people.

His voyages were most important during the age of discovery, but led to nothing for over a century, until the era of James Cook, Tasmania and New Zealand were not visited by Europeans - mainland Australia was visited, but usually only by accident.

We must marvel at the courage and determination of these explorers to explore uncharted waters and territories making it possible to have to world globes of today.  Today, we use GPS systems to chart our way across town!

References:  Edward Duyker (ed.) The Discovery of Tasmania: Journal Extracts from the Expeditions
of Abel Janszoon Tasman and Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne 1642 & 1772, St David’s Park
Publishing/Tasmanian Government Printing Office, Hobart, 1992, pp. 106, ISBN 0 7246 2241 1.

Sabastian Cabot, (1474? - 1557?) Explorer, Cartographer and Navigator during the age of discovery.  During his life Sabastian Cabot was employed by England and Spain to find the Northwest Passage and a way to China.

By 1512 Sebastian was employed by Henry VIII as a cartographer at Greenwich.

About 1525, he received the rank of captain general from Spain.  He began a trip with four ships and 200 men around the world (1526-1529) that was supposed to sail to China and the
Moluccas (the Spice Islands, in Indonesia).  Upon landing in Brazil, however, rumors of the wealth of the Incan king and the nearly-successful expedition of Aleixo Garcia caused Cabot to abandon his charge and instead further explore the interior of the Río de la Plata (a river between Argentina and Uruguay in South America).

All that remains of his personal work, (the account he wrote of his journeys has been lost), is a map of the new world drawn in 1544; one copy of this was found in Bavaria, and is still preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where it still remains.

Present day world globes and maps have a rich history of courage exhibited by explorers like Sebastian Cabot.

Cartographers and explorers worked together  in mapping out the world during the times of exploration.  Henry the Navigator (1394 – 1460),  the second son of King John I of Portugal set up a school at Sagres for sailors to learn the secrets of the ocean.  He paid for many sailing expeditions out of the Portuguese treasury.  Henry employed cartographers who created the most sophisticated maps of their time.  In 1419 he summoned Jehuda Cresques a noted cartographer to map the discoveries of his sailors.  The maps made it possible for sailors to learn from previous expeditions.

 As a fruit of Prince Henry’s work João Gonçalves Zarco, Bartolomeu Perestrelo and Tristão Vaz Teixeira rediscovered the Madeira Islands in 1420, and at Henry’s instigation Portuguese settlers colonized the islands.  In 1427, one of Henry’s navigators, probably Gonçalo Velho, discovered the Azores.  Portugal soon colonized these islands in 1430.  Gil Eanes, the commander of one of Henry’s expeditions, became the first European known to pass Cape Bojador in 1434.  This was a breakthrough as it was considered close to the end of the world, with difficult currents that did not encourage commercial enterprise.  Alvise Cadamosto was one of the sailors hired by Prince Henry to explore the Atlantic coast of Africa and he discovered several islands of the Cape Verde archipelago between 1455 and 1456.  In his first voyage, which started on March 22 1455, he visited the Madeira Islands and the Canary Islands.  On the second voyage, in 1456,  Cadamosto became the first European to reach the Cape Verde Islands.