Francisco Cortés Ojea (also spelled Hojea or Ojeda) was a 16th-century Spanish sailor and explorer who took part in the first expeditions sent from the General Captaincy of Chile to the Strait of Magellan.
He was a map-maker with the expedition of Francisco de Ulloa sent in 1553 by the governor of Chile to survey the southern coast of the country and the Strait of Magellan.
He later commanded the San Sebastián under the orders of captain Juan Ladrillero in the expedition sent in 1557 by governor García Hurtado de Mendoza.
On May 29, 1555, Joanna of Castile, the princess-regent of Spain, issued a real cédula (royal ordinance) ordering the governor of Chile to conduct a recognizance of the lands situated in the other part of the Strait of Magellan.
They equipped their vessels in Valdivia on 17 November 1557 and after sailing for eight days arrived at a bay they called Nuestra Señora del Valle, probably at the entrance of the Fallos Channel.
Having reached the latitude where the western mouth of the strait was supposed to be, Cortés Ojea had concluded that following some sort of cataclysm, an island must have blocked its entrance.
For a time this hypothesis spread among the population, and the poet Alonso de Ercilla picked up this account in the first song of La Araucana.