Cermeño’s Shipwreck

The European settlement of what we now know as the city of Trinidad began when two Spanish Navy captains, Bruno de Hecata (commanding Santiago) and Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (commanding Sonora), landed there on June 9, 1775. Two days later on Trinity Sunday — hence the name — they erected a wooden cross on Trinidad Head, claiming the bay in the name of Charles III of Spain. However, if it hadn’t been for bad weather, they would have been beaten by nearly 200 years by Portuguese navigator Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho, usually referred to by his name in Spanish, Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeño.

Cermeño was in the service of the King of Spain, who had charged him with exploring the Pacific coastline north of Acapulco. The hope was to locate safe harbors where “Manila Galleons,” en route from the Philippines to New Spain, could make repairs and replenish their food and water. Each year since 1565, several galleons, laden with Chinese silks and porcelain, exotic spices and sandalwood, brought the riches of the Orient to Acapulco — and eventually to Spain itself, via Mexico City and Veracruz. The “Volta de Mar” route from Manila to Acapulco, pioneered by an aging monk 40 years earlier (“Columbus of the Pacific,” March 14 and 21, 2013), took advantage of westerly winds that brought the ships to Northern California before following the coast south to Acapulco. 

Cermeño’s San Agustin, a 200-ton three-masted galleon carrying about 130 tons of cargo, was rather unsuitable for exploring unknown shores. Much of the original deck cargo had already been tossed overboard during a Pacific storm before reaching these shores, but it was still an unwieldy craft when it came to checking out treacherous coastlines. This was made apparent soon after Cermeño and his crew first saw California on Nov. 4, 1595, three months after leaving the Philippines. Approaching land near present-day Crescent City, the ship narrowly avoided being wrecked on the St. George Reef rocks. Spooked by this near disaster, several of his officers advised him to skip his “exploration” mandate and head straight for Acapulco, but Cermeño ignored them. Instead, he sailed “half a league” (about a mile) offshore, arriving at present-day Trinidad Harbor, where he probably would have landed but for the rock-strewn harbor entrance and severe onshore winds. 

With a following wind, the San Agustin then made good time sailing south, rounding Point Reyes two days later and making landfall in what colonizers named Drake’s Bay, where England’s Francis Drake had landed 16 years earlier. Cermeño immediately took formal possession of the land in the name of the King of Spain, presumably without consulting the local Miwok people who greeted him. While most of the crew foraged for food and fresh water, others reassembled San Agustin’s launch (lancha) which had been carried in sections on the deck. Fortunately! Three weeks after arriving, San Agustin dragged anchor during an intense storm and was wrecked on the beach, with the loss of several men (between two and 12, accounts differ) and all its cargo.

A few days later the launch, hopefully named San Buenaventura and now the expedition’s lifeboat, left Drake’s Bay with about 80 souls on board. We can only guess how horrific the six-week trip down the coast must have been in that crowded vessel. Somehow all survived (other than the ship’s dog, which was ultimately eaten), making landfall at Chacala, today a beach town on Mexico’s Nayarit Coast. There, Cermeño and most of the men debarked on Jan. 7, 1596, leaving a skeleton crew to sail on to Acapulco.

The stranger-than-fiction story, gleaned from written accounts by Cermeño and his officers, was confirmed when archeologists digging around Drake’s Bay in the 1940s found dozens of blue porcelain sherds. Experts determined that these came from a huge pottery center in China, manufactured between 1573 and 1619, and exported to the Philippines. Other than these fragments and 49 iron spikes matching those used in Manila galleons, no trace has been found of Cermeño’s San Agustin.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated from a previous version that incorrectly identified the Miwok people.

Barry Evans (he/him, barryevans9@yahoo.com, planethumboldt.substack.com) notes that in 1913, a granite cross bearing the inscription Carolus III Dei G. Hyspaniorum Rex (In the name of King Charles III of Spain) replaced Hecata’s original wooden cross on Trinidad Head.

This article appears in Arcata Rises Up for Fire Victims.