Wreck of the SAN FELIPE on Baja California coast.
1576

Oil on canvas 24" x 36"


In July 1576 the large galleon SAN FELIPE sailed from Manila, bound for Acapulco, laden with silk, spices, porcelain and other Oriental luxuries. Towards the end of the year she was sailing south off the Baja California coast, close to the end of her voyage. After six months at sea, weather beaten and probably with most of the crew dead or dying, she was far to the east of the safe galleon track, likely with no lookouts posted and poor direction from the navigation officers. The coast was very low, barely visible from offshore through sea haze, and the shallow sands ran invisibly half a mile to sea. Under sail on the starboard tack the SAN FELIPE grounded to a stop on the sands, hundreds of yards from shore. The grounding was fatal. The crewmen who had survived the scurvy would have been too weak to save the ship, and the coast where she grounded was one of the most inhospitable in the world. No one aboard survived, although the ship rested intact on the beach for at least a year before being destroyed by a storm.

When the SAN FELIPE sailed from Manila she was never seen again, and her fate remained a mystery until some of her cargo was found on a remote beach in Baja California late in the twentieth century and her remains identified in 2003.