Luis Vaez Torres (1606)
Luis Váez de Torres (c. 1565-?) made the first recorded navigation of the strait separating Australia from New Guinea after an expedition in search of the supposed southern continent led by Pedro Fernandes de Quirós split in two.
Apart from that achievement, we know almost nothing of a man who may have come from Brittany, Portugal, or Galicia and entered the historical record as commander of the San Pedrico in the Quirós expedition.
One assumes he was an experienced navigator.
The expedition set out from Callao in Peru on 21 December 1605 in search of the supposed southern continent that stretched across the Pacific to the Straits of Magellan.
Quirós landed on Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides on 1 May 1606, intending to establish a settlement. However, by the end of the month, he had decided to sail on.
Accounts of what happened after that vary, but the expedition split around midnight on 11 June.
Quirós' flagship, the San Pedro y San Pablo, was forced to turn back by a mutinous crew. They reached Acapulco in November 1606.
Torres failed to find the missing vessel, waited another fifteen days at Espiritu Santo, then opened sealed orders that nominated Quiros's second-in-command, Don Diego de Prado, to take command and search for land as far as 20°S.
Prado seems happy for Torres to assume de facto leadership of the remaining two ships.
Torres took them south to 21° just under 500 km from the Australian coast without finding land and steered for Manila.
They sighted land southeast of New Guinea on 14 July 1606. However, they could not weather the island's eastern end and track along its south coast and reached Manila on 22 May 1607.
Passing through what was later known as Torres Strait proved that New Guinea was not the northern extremity of a southern continent.
While there is nothing to prove that Torres sighted the Australian mainland, his passage through the strait is the first of the six voyages that delivered an outline of the Northern coast.
