Pegasus Bay, earlier known as Cook's Mistake, is a bay on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand, to the north of Banks Peninsula.
Toponymy
thumb|left|A view of Pegasus Bay, New Brighton, New Zealand from Mount Pleasant. 30 October 2022.
Pegasus Bay takes its name from the brig Pegasus, a sealing ship that was sailing from Hobart to London via the sealing islands and was surveying this part of the South Island in 1809. Attempting to sail into Gore's Bay shown on Captain Cook's map between the supposed Island that Cook had named after Banks, the crew discovered a mistake in Cook's chart and found the island was a peninsula connected to the rest of the South Island mainland by a low-lying isthmus. Fortunately they discovered this before trying to pass between the supposed island and the mainland before dark while approaching from the north and were still in about of water. The bay is nearly across and deep, with of water that gradually shoals to about or about from shore.
Discovery
The Pegasus was the name of the sailing ship which surveyed part of the South Island in 1809. The brig Pegasus was the former Pegaso, captured at the Peruvian port of Trujillo on 28 July 1807 by the British frigate , commanded by Captain Charles James Johnston, during a cruise against Spanish shipping and ports along the coasts of Spanish America. Johnston dispatched Pegaso to Port Jackson, where she arrived at the end of October. Submitted to the Court of Admiralty in Sydney, Pegaso, was condemned as a prize on 24 January 1808 and sold off, renamed Pegasus. A few months later she was acquired by Thomas Moore and in May of that year she was made ready to go on the sealing trade to the southern part of New Zealand. This expedition took place between August 1808 and March 1809, when Pegasus was commanded by Captain Eber Bunker. Pegasus went on a second expedition under the command of Samuel Chase from Port Jackson to London by way of the sealing grounds in southern New Zealand from May 1809 to August 1810: William W. Stewart was first officer and made charts of the New Zealand coast, including Stewart Island, which was subsequently named after him. William Stewart gave Pegasus Bay its name. The captain of the ship, Captain Samuel Chase (not to be confused with his contemporary, Captain Samuel Rodman Chace), lays claim to correcting James Cook's charts by determining that "Banks Island" was in fact a peninsula. As late as 1843, the bay was referred to as Cook's Mistake.