Torres, Luis Vaez de << TAWR rays, loo EES vah AYTH thay >> (?-1613?), a Spanish navigator, became the first European to see the strait that lies between Australia and Papua New Guinea. Torres sailed the strait in 1606 while on an expedition sponsored by King Philip III of Spain. The strait was later named Torres Strait in his honor.
In 1605, the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós had left Peru, in command of an expedition of three ships. The Spanish government charged the expedition with searching for a continent that was rumored to lie in the South Pacific Ocean. The Spanish called this unknown continent Terra Australis Incognita (Unknown Southern Land). Torres was the captain and navigator of one of the ships, the San Pedrico.
In 1606, the ships reached land, and Quirós named it Austrialia del Espíritu Santo (South Land of the Holy Spirit). This land now makes up the country of Vanuatu. Then, suddenly, Quirós left the expedition and sailed for Mexico. Torres continued the voyage with the remaining two vessels.
The ships, following their original instructions, proceeded southwest to search for land at 20° south latitude. Finding no land at that latitude, Torres then turned northwest intending to sail north of New Guinea toward the Philippines. Bad weather prevented him from getting around the eastern end of New Guinea, so he sailed west along the island’s south coast. This route took him through the narrow strait between Australia and New Guinea, which was full of reefs, islands, and treacherous currents. It was a bold move, because mapmakers at that time believed New Guinea was joined to Australia. Torres must have had reasons for thinking they were not joined.
Diego de Prado, an officer on the voyage, wrote that the passage through the strait took 34 days. Torres reported that he saw some big islands to the south during this passage. These islands may, in fact, have been the Cape York Peninsula of Australia. It is also possible that the explorers landed on Banks Island, climbed to higher ground, and saw the Cape York area. No member of the expedition reported a land mass as large as the Australian continent.
After passing through the strait, the ships continued to the Moluccas. They then sailed toward the Philippines and reached Manila on May 6, 1607. There, Torres wrote an account of his discoveries, but his report was soon forgotten. For more than 150 years, mapmakers, scholars, and sailors remained uncertain of the existence of a strait in this area. In 1762, an Englishman named Alexander Dalrymple found Torres’s report in the Manila archives and named the strait after him.
Little is known of Torres’s life. Some historians believe he may have been a Spanish subject who was born in Brittany, in France.
See also Quirós, Pedro Fernández de; Torres Strait Islands.
