See also: Torres

Luis Váez de Torres is a Portuguese navigator of the 17th century to the service of the Spanish crown. He was the first navigator having officially sailed in the strait which separates the Australia from the island of New Guinea and which now bears its name, the Détroit of Torres.

The year and its birthplace are unknown. It is supposed that it was born with the neighborhoods from 1565 because it had the end of about thirty, beginning of forty in 1606. Almost nothing is known on its life before the forwarding of Queiros. It is generally considered that it is Portuguese even if certain historians emit the possibility that it was born in Brittany, Portuguese ancestors as Prado there Tovar which sailed with him and which defines it as Breton. However, it was recently shown that at this period was described as Breton any person with Celtic blood, which could simply mean that it was originating in Galicia, province in the North-East of Spain.

It was useful in the marine on behalf of the Spanish crown and sailed then probably towards the South American possessions of Spain. At the end of 1605, one finds trace of his nomination like second of forwarding in the Pacifique of Pedro Fernandes de Queirós.

In December 1605, forwarding started from Callao in the Spanish colony of the Peru, with Torres as captain of the San Pedro . In May 1606, it reached the islands that Queirós named Austrialia of Espiritu Santo (currently in the archipelago of the Vanuatu).

Whereas it sailed with the accesses of these islands, the ship of Queirós disappeared at the time of a storm. After seekhaving sought it without success, Torres declared it lost and taken again at sea the voyage envisaged towards Manila while passing by the Moluques. On its side, the ship of Queiros succeeds in joining the Mexico.

In June 1606, Torres continued its navigation. Head winds prevented it from taking the most direct route along the northern coast of the New Guinea, it of thus passing by the southern part, the strait of 150 km which bears its name now. For a long time, it was supposed that Torres had skirted the coast of New Guinea, but in 1980 the historian and Australian sailor Brett Hilder, of the Université of Queensland, showed that it was much more probable than Torres took a route more in the south in the strait and thus which it would certainly have seen the Cape York, the end the septentrional one of the Australia.

October 27th, Torres reaches the Western end of New Guinea and fact road in the north of Seram and Misool towards the Mer of Halmahera. At the beginning of January 1607, it reaches Ternate, in the islands with the Spices, which it leaves on May 1st bound for Manila where it unloads on May 22nd.

Torres passed apparently the remainder of its life to Manila. It left a written report of its voyage that the Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple, which gave to the strait the name of the Portuguese navigator, published in 1759. James Cook, informed of the existence of this strait, crosses it after its discovery of the Eastern coast of the Australia in 1770.