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Book Giveaway: Mahurangi Matters has four copies of The Conquistador Puzzle Trail to give away. Write your name and number on the back of an envelope, post to Conquistador Competition, Mahurangi Matters PO Box 701 Warkworth or email news@localmatters.co.nz. Competition closes August 19.
A new book, written by a former Westlake Boys High School student, looks to rewrite the history books with evidence that the Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover New Zealand.
Winston Cowie has spent the past eight years researching theories that Portuguese and Spanish ships visited NZ in the 16th century.
He wrote and co-produced the documentary Mystery at Midge Bay in 2012, which explored the history of shipwrecks in the Hokianga Harbour, which suggested Dutch or Iberian explorers visited NZ well before Captain Cook or Abel Tasman.
However, his new book, The Conquistador Puzzle Trail, goes a step further, putting together 34 pieces of evidence which suggest the Portuguese charted NZ in the 1520s, and the Spanish in the 1570s.
“There have been persistent stories of European visitors to NZ before Cook and Tasman. I wanted to get to the source of these myths and present the information in one book, to allow readers to draw their own conclusions.”
One piece of evidence relies on a map created by Portuguese explorers in the 1500s showing the east coast of Australia with a large island off shore. The British admiralty also published a map in 1803 which states NZ was discovered by the Portuguese in about 1550.
“I think on the balance of probabilities the Portuguese discovered Australia and New Zealand between 1520 and 1524.
“This has been backed up by a number of historians and cartographers over the past 200 years, but recently the theory has faded out of the spotlight. There’s nothing in the school curriculum telling students about this evidence. I want to put these theories back in the public domain.”
While in Spain, Winston also found a map hanging in the Madrid Naval Museum which shows a visit by Spanish explorer Juan Fernandez in 1574. This has been supported by other historical records.
Auckland University history professor and expert on early European Pacific exploration, Jonathan Scott, says he wouldn’t be surprised if the Spanish had beaten Tasman and Cook to NZ.
“I haven’t seen any evidence to convince me of any particular voyage, but I’m very open to the possibility of a Spanish ship visiting NZ in the 16th century.
“The Spanish had been exploring the Pacific for about 120 years before Tasman’s visit and there was a lot of Spanish exploration going on in the 1570s. I’d be very interested to see these maps.
“It was also an incredibly competitive time of exploration, and all of the nations tried very hard to keep their discoveries secret.”
The book is self-published but is being sold at Paper Plus throughout NZ and at the Matakana Village Bookshop.
Winston hopes it will inspire further research to find conclusive evidence of whether the Spanish or Portuguese were the first Europeans to discover NZ.
Winston grew up at Baddeleys and Campbells Beach and went to primary school at Matakana and Warkworth. He studied law at Otago and did a Masters in environmental policy at Oxford and played in the prestigious Oxford versus Cambridge rugby game.
He now lives in Abu Dhabi, working as a marine policy manager.
