Cook’s landmark map of New Zealand

The first edition of the first printed map of New Zealand by Captain Cook engraved by I. Bayley for Hawkesworth's 'An Account of the Voyages...for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere', the official account of Cook's first circumnavigation. Although the first European to discover New Zealand was Abel Tasman in 1642, it was Cook who proved that it was not part of the great 'Terra Australis' or Southern Continent. Arriving at Poverty Bay on 7th October 1769 he took six months to circumnavigate the islands: as he sailed east of the Banks Peninsula he mistook it for an island; skirting south of Stewart Island' he marked on this map as a possible peninsula.