Journey 2 Overview

Traces the case for an earlier Portuguese arrival in New Zealand through three connected themes: Cristóvão de Mendonça’s 1522–1523 voyage from Malacca in search of the Isles of Gold, the cartographic evidence of the Vallard Atlas and related Dieppe maps, and the striking geographical parallels between those maps and New Zealand’s North Island. Across the series, the argument develops from Mendonça’s likely route and maritime capability, to the atlas’s detailed depiction of coastal features such as Taranaki, Wellington Harbour, Hawke Bay, East Cape, and the Hauraki Gulf, building a cumulative case that Portuguese navigators reached and charted New Zealand more than a century before Abel Tasman.

Strengthens the Portuguese case by moving beyond cartographic interpretation to a broader body of supporting evidence. Across the series, it brings together artefacts recovered from Wellington Harbour, Māori oral traditions describing square-rigged ships and armoured sailors, British Admiralty charts that recorded earlier Portuguese knowledge of New Zealand, and the views of respected New Zealand and British historians who treated the Dieppe maps and the Vallard Atlas as credible evidence of early exploration. It also explains why this history may have been obscured, pointing to Portuguese secrecy, the Treaty of Tordesillas and Zaragoza, the destruction of Lisbon’s archives in the 1755 earthquake, and the later dominance of Dutch and British historical narratives, before concluding that the cumulative evidence deserves serious recognition in New Zealand history.