Pedro Fernandez de Quiros & Louis Vaez de TorresPrint Page

The bust commemorates the explorers Pedro Fernandez De Quiros and Louis Vaez De Torres.

Pedro Fernandez De Quiros was a Portuguese navigator in the service of Spain. He is best known for his involvement with Spanish voyages of discovery in the Pacific Ocean.  He was recognized as a competent and experienced navigator when in 1595 he was appointed chief pilot of an expedition of four ships under Alvaro de Mendaña setting out to colonize the Solomon Islands and for leading a 1605–1606 expedition that crossed the Pacific in search of Terra Australis. 

Luis Vaez de Torres was a Spanish subject, but nothing is known of his birth or early life. He must have been an experienced navigator when in 1605 he was given command of the San Pedro, 40 tons, the second in size of three vessels with which Pedro Fernandez de Quiros set out from Callao, Peru, on 21 December in search of the supposed southern continent.

Quiros placed great reliance on Torres, and when they reached an island usually sent him ashore in command of the landing party. Torres protested when, in mid-Pacific, Quiros altered course from WSW., which might have taken them to south-eastern Australia, to WNW., which did take them to Espiritu Santo (New Hebrides) on 1 May 1606.

Before the end of the month Quiros decided to abandon Espiritu Santo and sail onward. In bad weather Quiros was driven out of the bay, and when Torres failed to find him, he opened his sealed orders, which ordained that Quiros's second-in-command, Don Diego de Prado, was to take command, and that he was to search for land as far as 20°S. but, if none was found, to sail to Manila. Prado seems to have allowed Torres to exert actual command, and Torres wrote that he was determined to carry out the viceroy's orders.   

In company with the small Los Tres Reyes,, the third vessel, he went south to 21°, found no land (he was then west of New Caledonia and about 493 kilometres from the coast of Australia and, failing to reach the east coast of New Guinea, coasted closely along its south side, and sailed through Torres Strait, thus discovering that New Guinea was not the northern peninsula of a southern continent. For more than two months the Spaniards sailed along the coast of New Guinea which they claimed for Philip III, fought with the natives, and captured some.

On 22 May 1607 Torres reached Manila, where he disappears from history. The report of his voyage seems to have been filed and forgotten, and knowledge of it was not recovered until the British occupied Manila in 1762.

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