Point Reyes Light- September 24, 1998

Search resumes for wreck of Spanish galleon

Although divers searching for shipwrecks in Drake's Bay came up empty handed last year, they did find about 20 "promising bumps" on the seafloor, and one of those bumps may be a 16th century Manila galleon.

Park Service divers this week renewed their search for the San Agustin. and will continue their underwater study of the bay's archeology through mid-October, said John Dell'Osso, the Point Reyes National Seashore's chief of interpretation.

Last year, an underwater-research team surveyed five square miles of seafloor off Limantour Beach, along with four centuries of maritime history.

Using high-tech sensory equipment, they located several knobby "anomalies" on the seafloor, some large enough to qualify as potential shipwrecks, Dell'Osso noted.

This year, the divers won't be doing any swimming; they'll be cruising Drake's Bay in a boat outfitted with a magnetometer, which uses global-positioning systems, he said.

"Now that we have some idea where the anomalies are, we will map them into a tighter grid and make our data more detailed," he said. "This all may help us locate the San Agustin. Nobody knows exactly where it is, but we have some ideas."

Captained by Sebastian Rodriquez Cermeño, the three-masted galleon weighed up to 200 tons when it sunk laden with cargo during stormy weather in 1595.

"It's hard to say which objects of the cargo were able to withstand four centuries of saltwater immersion," Dell'Osso said. "Things like waxes and silk may not have survived. But some Chinese porcelain may have."

The most valuable find will be the galleon itself, said Point Reyes Station resident John Grissim, editor and publisher of the maritime journal Marine Watch.

"If they can find wreckage, even pieces of old wood, this will be a significant discovery," Grissim emphasized. "No one's ever found the remains of a Manila galleon before, and the San Agustin is one of only a few galleons known to be submerged in shallow waters."

If recovered, the wreck could help marine historians learn how these galleons were constructed, he said. "They were known affectionately by Spanish mariners as 'flying pigs,' because they had round-bellied hulls and were plodding and slow. But they were remarkable because they could carry so much and were intelligently built."

Like most Manila galleons, the San Agustin was built in the Philippines and used for trans-Pacific trade and exploration, he said. "They couldn't sail into the wind, so essentially they had to follow the tradewind routes. They would sail north from the Philippines across the North Pacific, and they usually tried to make landfall in Northern California, around Point Mendocino. Then they'd head south along the coast, using prevailing winds from the northwest."

Because California was relatively unmapped during Cermeño's time, the captain using his ship and its launch created maps and took exploration trips ashore, Grissim said.

In fact, Grissim noted, Cermeño owed his life to his shoreline research. "The captain and most of his crew were ashore when the storm hit, wrecking his ship. He was able to use his launch to sail all the way back down the coast to Mexico."

Unlike the San Agustin, many galleons were able to complete their missions without mishap, sailing to Mexico and then Panama. There donkeys carried the cargo across the isthmus to Spanish treasury fleets in the Atlantic, Grissim said.

But Drake's Bay has always been unforgiving. At least 22 other wrecks recorded between 1840 to 1940 are submerged in Drake's Bay or near Point Reyes.

The underwater search of Drake's Bay will continue for at least two more years and is being overseen by staff from the National Seashore, Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, and State Lands Commission.

Other organizations providing assistance include San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, the Institute for Western Maritime Archeology, Drake Navigators Guild, UC Berkeley, and Sonoma State University.

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