Ui-te-Rangiora
Ui-te-Rangiora or Hui Te Rangiora is believed to have been a 7th-century navigator from the island of Rarotonga in Polynesia. According to a 19th-century interpretation by Stephenson Percy Smith of Rarotongan legend, Ui-te-Rangiora sailed south and encountered ice floes and icebergs in the Southern Ocean. He identified this area of southern ocean as "Tai-uka-a-pia" ("sea foaming like arrowroot") due to the ice floes being similar to arrowroot powder (referring to "Tacca leontopetaloides", Polynesian arrowroot). It is also claimed by some that Ui-te-Rangiora reached the Ross Ice  Shelf, though he did not land on it. The veracity of Ui-te-Rangiora reaching Antarctic waters has been questioned. Subantarctic islands. It has been claimed that in 1886 Lapita pottery shards were discovered on the Antipodes Islands, indicating that Polynesians did reach that far south. However, the claim has not been substantiated; indeed, no archaeological evidence of human visitation prior to European discovery of the islands has been found. Enderby Island, considerably south of the Antipodes Islands, has been found to have proof of 13th- or 14th-century Māori use. Similarly, a craft of 'ancient design' was found in  1810 on the subantarctic Macquarie Island, considerably south and west of the Auckland Islands. It has been suggested that the craft was burnt for fuel that year in the ensuing penguin and seal oil fires, and that it was possibly a Polynesian vessel. However, in the same year, Captain Smith described in more detail what is presumably the same wreck: 'several pieces of wreck of a large vessel on this Island, apparently very old and high up in the grass, probably the remains of the ship of the unfortunate "De la Perouse".' Possible discovery of Antarctica. Very little is known  about Ui-te-Rangiora, or about early Polynesia for that matter, but it is told in Māori legends that, around the year 650, Ui-te-Rangiora led a fleet of waka tīwai southwards in the Southern Ocean until they reached "rocks that grow out of the sea, in the space beyond Rapa".