Torres Navigates the Strait Between New Guinea and Australia
- Date
- October 1606
- Category
- Exploration & colonisation
- Region
- Torres Strait, between New Guinea and Cape York Peninsula (Australia)
- Era
- Early Modern
- Significance
In October 1606 the Spanish (Galician-born) navigator Luís Vaz de Torres completed the first recorded European passage through the strait separating the island of New Guinea from the Australian mainland, a waterway later named the Torres Strait in his honour.
Torres had been second-in-command of the expedition of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, which sailed from Callao, Peru, in December 1605 in search of the fabled southern continent, Terra Australis; after Queirós's flagship became separated and returned to New Spain, Torres took command of the San Pedrico and the tender Los Tres Reyes Magos and pressed on toward Manila. Sailing along the southern coast of New Guinea, he threaded the reef-strewn channel between roughly 2 and 3 October 1606, demonstrating that New Guinea was an island rather than part of any great southern landmass. Though he may have sighted the northern tip of Cape York, Torres did not realise he had skirted a continent, and his report was filed away in Spanish colonial archives. It remained obscure until the Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple uncovered Torres's testimony among Spanish documents captured at Manila in 1762 and publicised the discovery, attaching the navigator's name to the strait around 1769-1771.
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Empires active in October 1606
- Ottoman Empire1299 CE – 1922 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
- Mughal Empire1526 CE – 1857 CE
- Ming Dynasty1368 CE – 1644 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
Related exploration & colonisation events
- Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America14 May 1607
- Champlain founds Quebec and New France3 July 1608
- The Pilgrims, Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower CompactNovember 1620
- Spanish Conquest of the Philippines and Founding of Colonial Manila24 June 1571
- Abel Tasman's Voyage: First European Contact with New Zealand, Tonga and FijiDecember 1642 - February 1643
- Cook's First Voyage Charts New Zealand and Eastern Australia1769-1770
Further reading
The wider story
A History of the Pacific Islands
Accessible overview of Oceania, including the Tongan maritime empire.
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