Explorers, whalers & tattooed sailors

Early New Zealand was a magnet for explorers, adventurers and entrepreneurs - those who wanted to go beyond the edge of the civilised world and find out what it had to offer. These eye-witness accounts are written by the first Europeans to come to New Zealand: from Abel Tasman in 1642 and naturalist Joseph Banks in 1769 to the sealers and whalers, missionaries, traders, artists, scientists and adventurers of the early 1800s. They include the stories of New Zealand's first European settlement, the first Māori to visit England, living as an outsider in a Māori world, and of strange journeys through an unmapped and often dangerous land.