Pedro Fernández de Quirós (1565 - 1614) (in Portuguese Pedro Fernandes de Queirós), was a Portuguese seaman and explorer.

Quirós was born in Évora. As a young man he entered Spanish service and became an experienced seaman and navigator. In 1595 he served as pilot with Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira on his explorations in the south-west Pacific, and after his death he led the only remaining ship of the expedition to Philippines.

A devout Catholic, Quirós visited Rome in 1600, where he obtained the support of the Pope, Clement VIII, for further explorations. He went to Peru in 1603 with the intention of finding Terra Australis, the mythical "great south land," and claiming it for Spain and the Church. Quiros's party of three ships, San Pedro y Paulo, San Pedro and Los Tres Reyes left Callao on 21 December 1605, with 300 crew and soldiers.

In May 1606 the expedition reached the islands later called the New Hebrides and now the independent nation of Vanuatu. Quirós landed on a large island which he took to be part of the southern continent, and named it La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo (the Southern Land of the Holy Spirit). The island is still called Espiritu Santo. Here he founded a colony which he called Nova Jerusalem.

Quirós's religious fervour found expression with the founding of a new Order of Chivalry, the Knights of the Holy Ghost. But the colony was soon abandoned due to the understandable hostility of the Ni-Vanuatu and to disagreements among the crew.

After some weeks Quirós put to sea again. He became separated from the other ships in bad weather and was unable (or so he later said) to return to shore. He then sailed to Acapulco in Mexico, where he arrived in November 1606. His second-in-command, Luis Váez de Torres, after searching in vain for Quirós, left Espiritu Santo and successfully reached Manila.

Quirós returned to Madrid in 1607. Regarded as a crank, he spent the next seven years in poverty, wrote numerous accounts of his voyage and begged King Philip III for money for a new voyage. He was despatched to Peru with letters of support, but the King had no real intention of funding another expedition. Quirós died in Panama in 1615.

During the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, no one of Quirós's sailors died, what was an unusual achievement in the beginning of the seventeenth century (because of scurvy). It is probable that Quirós knew a solution to the illness and took fresh fruits or juice on board. However, no sailor was known to be doing this for about 150 years after Quirós. It is possible that Quirós's discovery was mentioned in Spanish archives but not published, just like Luis Váez de Torres's discovery of the strait (Torres's account of the expedition was first seen by Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple in 1759, and in 1762 the English found a Spanish archive in Manila with the Torres's map) , and James Cook, who finally found Torres Strait in 1770 and also distributed juice to his sailors, was using Quirós's and Torres's knowledge in both cases.

The name of Pedro Fernández de Quirós is today chiefly remembered in Australia. Many writers credit Quirós with coining the word "Australia" in the belief that he named his islands "Australia del Espiritu Santo", whereas he actually called them Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. (The name "Australia" was actually coined by his translator in 1625 and later was strongly endorsed by Matthew Flinders.)

In the 19th century some Australian Catholics, living under a Protestant ascendancy, claimed that Quirós had in fact discovered Australia, in advance of the Protestants Abel Tasman and James Cook. The Archbishop of Sydney from 1884 to 1911, Francis Cardinal Moran, asserted this to be a fact, and it was taught in Catholic schools for many years. He claimed that the real site of Quirós's New Jerusalem was near Gladstone in Queensland.

Building on this myth, the Australian Catholic poet James McAuley (1917-76) wrote an epic called Captain Quiros (1964), in which he depicted Quirós as a martyr for the cause of Catholic Christian civilisation (although he did not repeat the claim that Quirós had discovered Australia). The heavily political overtones of the poem caused it to be coldly received at a time when much politics in Australia was still coloured by Catholic-Protestant sectarianism. The Australian writer John Toohey published a novel, Quiros, in 2002.

"Bitter indeed the chalice that he drank
For no man's pride accepts to cheap a rate
As not to call on Heaven to vindicate
His worth together with the cause he served."

(James McAuley, Captain Quiros)

This article is partly based on material from the Discoverers Web website.

External links

• The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea by George Collingridge, Chapter XI

1565 births | 1614 deaths | Portuguese explorers | Explorers of the Pacific

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