From there, Quirós set out to establish the extent of the land they had found.
On the evening of 11 June, the ships were beating back to their anchorage against a headwind when they became separated.
The generally accepted version of events has Quirós, aboard the flagship, forced to abandon their mission and return to Acapulco.
In the end, it probably does not matter whether the turnaround resulted from an outright mutiny, the threat of one or some other factor. Quirós and the flagship were gone, and they had left no indication of a reason for their disappearance.
Torres searched for signs of a shipwreck, waited at the rendezvous for a fortnight, then attempted to complete the mission.
After adverse winds curtailed his attempt to make his way around the island's western shore, he tracked southwest into the Coral Sea, reaching as far as 21° south.
At that point, he was probably around three hundred kilometres east of the Whitsunday Islands.
He then turned northwards, looking to pass to the east of New Guinea en route for Manila.
On 14 July, Torres was in the Louisiades, east of New Guinea's Milne Bay. Unable to clear the reefs and islands and make his way north against fresh easterly trade winds, Torres steered west along an uncharted island chain.
After five days, the islands gave way to an almost continuous low shoreline to their north,.
Unable to make his way around onto the island's north coast, Torres was left without a choice. For good or ill, he would have to continue tracking west.