Pedro Fernandes de Queirós

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Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (1565 - 1614), also known in Spanish as Pedro Fernández de Quirós, was a Portuguese seaman and explorer. Queirós was born in Évora. As a young man he entered Spanish service and became an experienced seaman and navigator. In 1595 he served as pilot with Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira on his explorations in the south-west Pacific, and after his death he led the only remaining ship of the expedition to Philippines.

A devout Catholic, Queirós visited Rome in 1600, where he obtained the support of the Pope, Clement VIII, for further explorations. He went to Peru in 1603 with the intention of finding Terra Australis, the mythical "great south land," and claiming it for Spain and the Church. Queirós's party of three ships, San Pedro y Paulo, San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes left Callao on 21 December 1605, with 300 crew and soldiers.

In May 1606 the expedition reached the islands later called the New Hebrides and now the independent nation of Vanuatu. Queirós landed on a large island which he took to be part of the southern continent, and named it La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo (the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit). The island is still called Espiritu Santo. Here he founded a colony which he called Nova Jerusalem.

Queirós's religious fervour found expression with the founding of a new Order of Chivalry, the Knights of the Holy Ghost. But the colony was soon abandoned due to the understandable hostility of the Ni-Vanuatu and to disagreements among the crew.

After some weeks Queirós put to sea again. He became separated from the other ships in bad weather and was unable (or so he later said) to return to shore. He then sailed to Acapulco in Mexico, where he arrived in November 1606. His second-in-command, Luis Váez de Torres, after searching in vain for Queirós, left Espiritu Santo and successfully reached Manila.

Queirós returned to Madrid in 1607. Regarded as a crank, he spent the next seven years in poverty, wrote numerous accounts of his voyage and begged King Philip III for money for a new voyage. He was despatched to Peru with letters of support, but the King had no real intention of funding another expedition. Queirós died in Panama in 1615.

During the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, no one of Queirós's sailors died, which was an unusual achievement in the beginning of the seventeenth century (because of scurvy). It is probable that Queirós knew a solution to the illness and took fresh fruits or juice on board. However, no sailor was known to be doing this for about 150 years after Queirós.

An account of his voyage - "A note of Australia del Espiritu Santo, written by Master Hakluyt" - was published in English by Samuel Purchas in 1625 - Purchas, vol. iv, p. 1422-1432. Luis Váez de Torres's discovery of the strait was mentioned in Spanish archives but is not known to have been published. Torres's account of the expedition was first seen by Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple in 1759. In 1762 the English found a Spanish archive in Manila with the Torres's map), and James Cook, who finally found Torres Strait in 1770 and also distributed juice to his sailors, was using Queirós's and Torres's knowledge in both cases.

In the 19th century some Australian Catholics, living under a Protestant ascendancy^{[citation needed]}, claimed that Queirós had in fact discovered Australia, in advance of the Protestants Abel Tasman and James Cook. The Archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911, Francis Cardinal Moran, asserted this to be a fact, and it was taught in Catholic schools for many years. He claimed that the real site of Queirós's New Jerusalem was near Gladstone in Queensland.^{[citation needed]}

Building on this fact, the Australian Catholic poet James McAuley (1917-76) wrote an epic called Captain Quiros (1964), in which he depicted Queirós as a martyr for the cause of Catholic Christian civilisation (although he did not repeat the claim that Queirós had discovered Australia). The heavily political overtones of the poem caused it to be coldly received at a time when much politics in Australia was still coloured by Catholic-Protestant sectarianism. The Australian writer John Toohey published a novel, Quiros, in 2002.

"Bitter indeed the chalice that he drank
For no man's pride accepts to cheap a rate
As not to call on Heaven to vindicate
His worth together with the cause he served."

(James McAuley, Captain Quiros)

This article is partly based on material from the Discoverers Web website.