I've always been fascinated with Vasco Nunez de Balboa, who was the first European to see the Pacific. Here is a poem about Balboa from Neruda's Canto General collection:

Discoverer, centuries later, the vast sea---
my foam, lunar latitude, empire of the water---
speaks to you through my mouth.
Your plenitude came before your death.
You raised fatigue to the sky,
and from the trees' hard night
toil led you to the sum
of the seashore, the great ocean.
In your gaze the marriage of diffused
light and the little heart of man
was consummated, a chalice never
raised before was filled, a seed
of lightning bolts accompanied you,
and a torrential thunder filled the earth.
Balboa, captain---how diminutive
your hand on your visor---mysterious
marionette of the discovering salt,
bridgeroom of the oceanic sweetness,
child of the new world's uterus.

The obscure odor of the ravished
marine majesty entered your eyes
like galloping orange blossoms,
an arrogant aurora fell into your blood
until it filled your soul, possessed man!
When you returned to the taciturn lands,
sleepwalker of the sea, green captain,
the earth awaited your corpse,
eager to embrace your bones.

Mortal bridegroom, betrayal was requited.

Not in vain, throughout history
crime has trampled in, the falcon has devoured
its nest, and the serpents have assembled,
striking one another with tongues of gold.

You entered the frenzied twilight
and th lost steps that you took,
still drenched by the depths,
dressed in splendor and wed
by the greatest foam, brought you
to the shores of another sea: death.