Luis Vaez de Torres

Luis Vaez de Torres (?-1613), Spanish navigator, who was the first European to travel through the narrow Torres Strait, between Cape York Peninsula in northern Australia and New Guinea. The strait was subsequently named after him.

Almost nothing is known of Torres’s life. He was the commander of a ship in the expedition of 1606 led by Pedro Fernandez de Queirós in search of the elusive Terra Australis (Spanish for “southern land”) but Queirós abandoned the party at Espiritu Santo, an island of the Vanuatu group in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, and returned in one of the ships to Mexico. Torres continued westwards with the remaining ships, reaching the coast of New Guinea. Following the southern coast, he was forced to navigate a narrow strait before sailing on northwest to reach Manila in the Philippines. This proved that New Guinea was in fact an island, but his report remained neglected for over 150 years. Torres must have glimpsed Australia to the south on his way through the strait, but in his report he only mentions seeing some large islands.