The 1576 Shipwreck of the San Felipe

When the Jesuit priests established their Missions in Baja California, they began to receive artifacts such as Chinese porcelain and much needed blocks of beeswax from the local inhabitants. In the 1740s the priests visited the beach where the mysterious artifacts were coming from and confirmed that a shipwreck had occurred there many years earlier.

Not much was done about the shipwreck for over 200 more years. That is until the 1970s, when a group of young Californian beachcombers he
ard from an old prospector about "Ming Porcelain being found on a certain beach in Mexico". After an interesting series of adventures, they began to find the illusive lost cargo of an early Spanish shipwreck. Their nearly annual visits to the site eventually gained the interest of both Mexican and American archaeologists.

It came to pass, after a few more adventures, that the beachcombers gave up their loot and joined the archaeologists as guides and regular participants in sanctioned excavations.

It was soon determined that the porcelain was of a type which would have only been on early Manila Galleons. Careful scrutiny of the art-styles on the porcelain has led team leader Ed Von der Porten to conclude that the shipwreck was none other than that of the San Felipe which was lost sailing from Manila, in the Philippines, to Acapulco, Mexico in 1576!

The procedure established by the Instuto National de Anthropologa Historia of the Mexican Government is to 1) locate artifacts of interest, 2) flag the artifact then go on to find some more. The pick up team will follow, possibly days later, and get a 3) G.P.S. fix, 4) photograph the artifact and 5) assign it a catalog number before it is 6) picked up and 7) bagged for delivery to the base-camp, where each artifact is 8) entered into a data base and 9) photographed in a studio environ
ment. All restoration is overseen by the Mexican conservators.

Captain Rick joined the team for the 2002 expedition. His assignment was to camp out for a week on the site, then walk wide to determine the lateral extent of the surface artifacts. On Captain Rick's very first day in the field he discovered not only the porcelain he had expected to find but 19th century whaling ship artifacts, and blocks of beeswax as well. Realizing that the whaling shipwreck artifacts needed to be segregated from those of the Manila Galleon, he sat down to contemplate the site.

In a short time Captain Rick discovered pieces of lead sheeting which had once been attached to the hull of a ship. The archaeologists soon cane to agree that the lead and the blocks of beeswax which were found in one specific area had come from the Manila Galleon while most of the large timbers and the copper sheeting had come from the later shipwrecks of the whaling era of only 150 years earlier.

This led the team to focus their efforts in the area nearest the lead and wax which had not been moved near as far afield as the wind-driven porcelain sherds.

A magnetometer survey was conducted along the adjacent beach and into the shallow surf, all with negative results. Dr. Sheldon Breiner then rented a local fishing panga and conducted a preliminary search in the offshore waters. This survey produced magnetic anomalies consistent with there being shipwreck remains in the shallow surf zone adjacent to what was by then being called the "lead / wax site".

During the April 2005 expedition Dr. Breiner brought a Geometrics marine magnetometer which produced a more accurate survey. Meanwhile, the land team continued to comb the sand dunes for surface artifacts.

A smaller marine team returned in August of 2005 for the express purpose of defining the off-shore magnetic anomalies and attempting an excavation. Alas, the surf was higher than forecast. This restricted the team to attempting a dig in but one small area of the surf disturbed site…Unfortunately, no submerged artifacts were recovered that week.

The surface collection portion of the project continued in April of 2007. The biggest find of this season was a complete block of wax.

Plans are currently under way for a return to the offshore site as well as revisiting the surface collection program on a regular basis.

The archaeological community and general public has been kept informed about our progress through this web-site and a traveling exhibition of artifacts and storyboards which has been visiting various maritime museums along the West Coast. There is a permanent display at the Museum in Ensenada, Baja California. Team members have authored articles in peer-reviewed publications and continue to speak at various conferences and other public events.