Prehistory There is no archaeological evidence of human visitation prior to European discovery of the islands. Descriptions of a shard of early
Polynesian pottery having been discovered below the surface on the main island in 1886, and housed in the collections of the
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa are unsubstantiated. The museum has not been able to locate such a shard in its collection, and the original reference to the object in the museum's collection documentation indicates no reference to Polynesian influences.
Sealing The island group was seen on 25 March 1800, by Captain
Henry Waterhouse commanding
HMS Reliance.
Matthew Flinders was first lieutenant, and his younger brother Samuel was a midshipman on the vessel; Samuel prepared the chart of the islands. Waterhouse reported the presence of seals. In 1803, Waterhouse's brother-in-law
George Bass applied to Governor
Philip Gidley King of New South Wales for a fishing monopoly from a line bisecting southern New Zealand from
Dusky Sound to the
Otago Harbour to cover all the lands and seas to the south, including the Antipodes Islands, probably because he knew the latter were home to large populations of
fur seals. Bass sailed from Sydney to the south that year and was never heard of again, but his information led to a sealing boom at the islands in 1805 to 1807. In February 1805, the first sealing gangs arrived on the island from the American schooners
Favorite and
Independence. They killed about 60,000 seals over the course of the year they were stationed on the islands. At one time, 80 men were present; there was a battle between American and British-led gangs and a single cargo of more than 80,000 skins—one of the greatest ever shipped from Australasia—was on-sold in
Canton for one pound sterling a skin, a multimillion-dollar return in modern terms. Prominent Sydney merchants such as
Simeon Lord,
Henry Kable and
James Underwood were engaged in the trade as well as the Americans Daniel Whitney and Owen Folger Smith.
William W. Stewart, who claimed to have charted
Stewart Island, and probably
William Tucker who started the retail trade in
preserved Maori heads, were present during the boom. After 1807, sealing was occasional and cargoes small, no doubt because the animals had been all but exterminated.
Shipwrecks A much later attempt to establish cattle on the islands was short-lived (as were the cattle). When the ship (with a crew of 16) foundered off the main island's coast in 1893, the eleven surviving crew spent nearly three months living as castaways on the island, living on raw
muttonbirds, mussels and roots for 87 days before gaining the attention of the government steamer by a flag made from their sail. at Antipodes' northern end A well-supplied
castaway depot was available on the other end of the island, but the survivors' weak condition and the island's mountainous terrain prevented them from searching for depots. The depot was found and used by the crew of the French barque
President Felix Faure, wrecked in Anchorage bay in 1908, who were stranded for sixty days until rescued by . The last wreck at the Antipodes was the yacht
Totorore, with the loss of two lives,
Gerry Clark and Roger Sale, in June 1999.
Nuclear testing proposals In 1955, the British Government required a large site remote from population centres to test the new thermonuclear devices it was developing. 500 miles was considered the minimum safe distance from inhabited land or from shipping routes. Accordingly, various islands in the Pacific and Southern Oceans were considered, along with Antarctica. The Admiralty initially suggested the Antipodes Islands but in May 1955 proposed the
Kermadec Islands as the preferred site. == Flora and fauna ==