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- The original Maori name, Te Punga o Te Waka a Maui positions Stewart Island firmly at the heart of Maori mythology. Translated as "The Anchorstone of Maui's Canoe", the Island's land mass held the canoe secure whilst Maui and his crew caught and raised the great fish, the North Island.
Rakiura is however the more commonly known and used Maori name.
In 1809 the Pegasus, sailing from Port Jackson, Australia, on a sealing expedition had aboard it as first officer William Stewart. Whilst the boat was in the large south eastern harbour which now bears its name Stewart began charting the southern coasts and his work is acknowledged to this day in the Island's present name.
The Pegasus returned to New Zealand waters in August 1809, under the command of Captain S. Chase with William Stewart as first Officer. Stewart produced a chart of the island that now bears his name and he also surveyed the harbour now known as Port Pegasus. Later Chase and Stewart were the first to discover that Cook's "Banks Island" was in fact a peninsula.
A London firm of chart publishers, Laurie & Whittle, published Stewart's chart of Port Pegasus, in 1814.8 Laurie & Whittle and other London publishers of the period also issued Pacific charts which, in the New Zealand area, correctly portrayed Banks Peninsula and Stewart Island.
Others credit the discovery to William Stewart (1767-1851) who in 1803 was on the Pegasus when it brought a sealing gang here. Certainly in 1809 Stewart took observations and made an excellent chart of Port Pegasus, which was published in 1816 and still in use in 1840. Stewart went to Britain in 1824 to float a flax and timber company which established a shipyard settlement on Port Pegasus, but the venture failed. The small group of sawyers he had brought from the Bay of Islands completed work on a schooner later named Joseph Weller, the first vessel known to be built on the island. In the course of time Stewart returned to act as pilot to HMS Herald on her visit to proclaim sovereignty in 1840.
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1767 - 1851 (84 years)
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