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Pedro Fernández de Quirós (1565–1614), Portuguese-born Spanish navigator who served as the pilot on Alvaro de Mendaña de Neira's 1595-1596 voyage to colonise the Solomon Islands and lead the 1605-1606 expedition which crossed the Pacific in search of Terra Australis. Quirós was an experienced seaman who took command of the Mendaña expedition after the leader’s death in October 1595 and brought the expedition's sole remaining ship to the Philippines in February 1596. Having returned to Europe Quirós gained support for another voyage into the Pacific from the Spanish  King Philip III and Pope Clement VIII. 

His party left Callao on three ships (San Pedro y San Pablo, San Pedro and the tender Los Tres Reyes on 21 December 1605. Travelling through present-day Kiribati the expedition may have sighted Tahiti and other islands in the Tuamotu archipelago on the way to Vanuatu, where he intended to establish a colony. On the night of 11 June 1606 Quirós and the San Pedro y San Pablo became separated from the other ships and was unable to return to the agreed rendezvous, arriving at Acapulco in November 1606.  Quirós returned to Madrid in 1607 and spent the next seven years writing accounts of his voyage and attempting to raise funds for a further voyage. He may or may not have been successful but died in Panama en route to Peru in 1614.

Some nineteenth Australian Catholics claimed Quirós had discovered Australia, ahead of Jansz, Tasman and Cook and Patrick Francis Moran, the Archbishop of Sydney (1884 to 1911) produced a book asserting that the real site of Quirós' colony was near Gladstone. Wikipedia entry Australian Dictionary of Biography


© Ian Hughes 2013