In the late sixteen century, there existed a powerful belief amongst European explorers that a great continent must exist in the Southern Hemisphere in order to balance the huge land masses of the Northern. Two Spanish expeditions had left Peru in a fruitless search, with only the Solomon Islands reached.

A Portuguese lieutenant on this second expedition, Pedro Ferdinand de Quiros, had saved the expedition when the Pilot, Mendana, died at Santo Cruz, by successfully navigating the return voyage to the Philippines. For the next ten years de Quiros partitioned the Spanish crown to sponsor yet another expedition. In 1605 his wish was granted and he was ordered to find this great land mass, colonise it and convert any native to Catholicism. (The then Spanish king was Pope Clement VIII).

On December 21st de Quiros left Peru with three small ships and 140 adventurers, seamen, soldiers and monks. After a less than harmonious voyage, he arrived once more in the Solomon's and learned that if he travelled south, he would come across a great land called 'Mallicollo'.

On April 25th 1606 the lookout spied the tall peak of Mere Lava. De Quiros stopped briefly at Gaua then pressed on southward. On May 3rd he sailed into Big Bay and because of its great size, believed his quest was over. He called the land Australia del Espiritu Santo.

With diplomacy typical of the Spanish in this era, he landed in Big Bay, promptly shot those curious natives who showed themselves, and declared the country theirs in the name of God and Spain. De Quiros established a colony named New Jerusalem near the river Jorden. Unfortunately his mental instability surfaced and declaring himself King, promptly knighted the entire crew down to the last cook.

Fever, increased native hostility and other depravations caused the crew and colonists to revolt against the increasingly unstable de Quiros. Thus, only 54 days later, de Quiros was forced to leave. His unrealistic glowing reports of this fabulous new world had little impact on the Spanish Court and his attempts to return failed. The islands were left once more in peace for another one hundred and sixty years.

In 1766 the Frenchman Louis Antoine de Bougainville also set forth on a voyage of discovery in two ships. His explorations of the islands were somewhat more thorough and he labeled Maewo, Pentecost, Ambrym (although he could not tell if they were one continuous island) and Malekula Islands, in addition to proving that Espiritu Santo was in fact an island, not the fabled Southern Continent. In a typical explorer's fit of ego, he name the strait dividing Malekula and Santo after himself.

Bougainville's only landings were to collect timber and, to counter the onboard scurvy, fresh fruit. On each occasion his crew encountered general passive and sometimes active hostility from the natives.

Bougainville also made the observation that the people of Aoba (now called Ambae, or more popularly named by James A. Michener, Bali Hai) seemed to be of two quite distinct types, one being smaller and darker than the other. As this distinction no longer exists it is extremely likely that the most recent Polynesian/Melanesian immigration occurred no more than a few hundred years before, at most.

Before Bougainville had arrived home, James Cook, the English explorer, had set out on his first voyage of discovery. However it was not until his second voyage in 1771 that he was to find Vanuatu.

Like his predecessors, Cook sailed with two ships. In November 1773, north of New Zealand the two ships became separated by a violent storm. The second vessel "Adventurer" returned to England in the summer of 1774. Cook spend some time searching for "Adventurer", first sailing southeast then northwest. He was in the Easter Islands in May 1774 then in Tonga in June. Leaving there on the 1st July 1774 , at 3pm on the sixteen of that month he sighted land. The following day he realized he was in sight of Australia del Espiritu Santo.

Cook's sailing explorations of the islands were more extensive than either of his precursors. As he sailed south he established that Pentecost and Ambrym were separate islands, and that Ambrym had twin active volcanoes. Further south, he thought Paama and Lopevi were one island. He identified Epi sailed west and anchored in Port Sandwich on Malekula, one of the finest anchorage's in the islands.

Over the following weeks cook sailed further south, to Efate, Erromango and Tanna, meeting a mixed reception from the essentially suspicious indigenous peoples. He landed several times to collect timber and fresh water, trading cloth and in one case dogs, for food and the right to collect water and fell a tree necessary to repair a rudder. However he was universally denied entry inland to any of the islands and thus prevented from climbing Yasur volcano on Tanna Island. He finally left the group, having sailed north past the west coast of Malekula and Santo.

Like Bougainville, Cook observed that distinctly different races inhabited different parts of the islands. He also observed the peculiarly flattened and elongated skull shapes of many northern islanders but had no idea it was due to traditional head binding.

In 1786 La Perouse was sent to the South Seas by the French government. He was last heard from in Botany Bay, Australia, then disappeared without trace. Only recently has his fate been discovered, for he was shipwrecked off the Santa Cruz Islands (the southernmost islands of the Solomon's, just north of the Torres group in Vanuatu).

Explorers sent to find La Perouse, d'Entrecastaux in 1791 and Dumont d'Urville in 1825 both recorded sighting Vanuatu, though neither landed.

Dillon, also in search of La Perouse's fate (though after forty years one must wonder what they thought to discover) set out in 1826 and landed on Erromango Island, in the bay which now bears his name. However by now the South Seas had become a reasonably well known area, mostly as a consequence of the English settling Australia. Unfortunately these relatively remote islands attracted the attention of what has sadly, but accurately been described as the scum of the white race. What horrors followed saw the reduction of an estimated 1 million people in Cook's era to less than 45,000 by W.W.II.