Luis Váez de Torres

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Luis Váez de Torres (fl. 1606) was a 17th century Iberian maritime explorer serving the Spanish Crown, noted for the first recorded navigation of the strait which separates the continent of Australia from the island of New Guinea, and which now bears his name (Torres Strait).

The year and place of his birth are unknown; assuming him to have been in his late thirties or forties in 1606, a birth year of around 1565 is considered likely. Almost nothing is known of his life before the Queirós expedition. Most accounts attribute his nationality as Portuguese though some historians raise the possibility that he was born in Brittany of Portuguese extraction as one who sailed with him, Prado y Tovar, refers to him in his account as a Breton. However recently it has been pointed out that at the time anyone of Celtic blood was called a Breton in which case it is most likely that he originated from Spain's northwest province of Galicia.^[1]

Nothing is known of Torres's early life, but at some point he entered the naval service of the Spanish Crown and found his way to its South American possessions. By late 1605 he first enters the historical record as the nominated second-in-command of an expedition to the Pacific proposed by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós.

In December of 1605 the expedition sailed from Callao in Spanish Peru, with Torres in command of the "San Pedro." In May 1606 they reached the islands which Queirós named Austrialia de Espiritu Santo (now Vanuatu).

While sailing around the islands Queirós's ship was swept out to sea, eventually returning to Mexico. After unsuccessfully searching for Queirós, and assuming him lost at sea, Torres resumed the intended voyage to Manila via the Moluccas.

In June 1606 Torres set sail. Contrary winds prevented him taking the more direct route along the north coast of New Guinea, so he went via the south coast instead, through the 150km strait which now bears his name. For many years it was assumed that Torres took a route along the New Guinea coast, but in 1980 the Queensland historian and seaman Brett Hilder demonstrated that it was much more likely that Torres took a southerly route, from which he would certainly have seen Cape York, the northernmost extremity of Australia.

On 27 October Torres reached the western extremity of New Guinea and made his way north of Ceram and Misool toward the Halmahera Sea. At the beginning of January 1607 he reached Ternate, part of the Spice Islands. He sailed on 1 May for Manila arriving on 22 May.

Torres apparently spent the rest of his life in Manila. He left a written account of his journey which the Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple saw in 1759, and it was he who named the strait after Torres. James Cook knew of the strait and sailed through it after his discovery of the east coast of Australia in 1770.