Edward von der Porten, Manila Galleon Project
Raymond Ashley, San Diego Maritime Museum
Three Galleon Cargos ? Connections
This is a brief introduction to the story of three Manila galleon cargos and the connections they have created in the past and for modern explorers and researchers.
First slide
The story starts with the search for Francis Drake?s California harbor.
Which led to studies of his ships and navigation: here the Golden Hind and a small consort are making the turn outside Point Reyes toward their harbor inside Drakes Bay.
Which in turn led to archaeological studies in Native-American sites to see if traces of his visit could be located.
Much has been found, mostly late Ming porcelains ? a rather exotic setting for such materials.
To make sense of the porcelains, studies of their sources led to Ching-teChen, the main Chinese porcelain center.
And an understanding of the industrial system which produced huge quantities of virtually identical wares.
Then trade routes within China and reaching out from China came into the study, and the Manila galleon routes, westbound and eastbound ? the latter far north to use the westerlies, then south along the American west coast. And Drake?s incursion, which captured porcelains that had come from a Manila galleon, before he reached California.
All of which left a mystery at Drakes Bay: whose porcelains were we digging up? Drake?s of 1579 or Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno?s Manila galleon wreck?s of 1595?
About two-thirds of the sherds show signs of surf tumbling, clear evidence of the 1595 wreck.
But what of the many undamaged sherds?
Forty years after the first finds, Clarence Shangraw of San Francisco?s Asian Art Museum, studied the thousand sherds intently and classified their designs in chronological sequences.
Here are the Kraak plates: white cavetto, single-line divider, double-line divider (not shown), beaded pendant, and I-wedge.
He then separated them by quality: the earlier ones well painted and potted n dark blue, the later ones more curiosity done ? a shift quite noticeable in 16 years.
Examples of both qualities exist for the first four types.
Only good quality examples, ?though in later light blue, exist of the fifth and latest type, a rare design of the mid-1590?s.
There are materials from both the Drake and Cermeno expeditions here, said Shangraw.
And every time he said ?early,? there was no sign of surf damage ? evidence of a landed cargo.
Every time he said ?late,? there was the tell-tale evidence of surf tumbling.
There are two cargos: Drake?s abandoned one of 1579 and cermeno?s lost one of 1595.
We even have enough of a small low bowl, shown here, and a plate, to be sure they came ashore intact and not surf damaged ? both from 1579.
Eventually we could create a typology of plate designs using five cargos, our two and three others.
Which created a chronology, now used worldwide by art historians and archaeologists.
But there are more people involved.
How did the Native-Americans see these exotic goods ? coveted by kings and merchant princes?
They treated them as raw materials breaking them up for making traditional beads, pendants and scapers.
With this background at Drakes Bay, California, a boat trip in Baja California in 1999 had much more significance than it otherwise would have had.
It led to a desert beach.
And within minutes to porcelain sherd lying in the sand.
Such sherds had been found by a padre?s runners two and a half centuries ago ? and recognized as the relics of an old shipwreck.
They were found by an old desert rat ? one of Earl Stanley Gardner?s fellow adventures, but not on one of Gardner?s expeditions.
The old man told a track coach, seen here, who liked to get away adventuring with a few of the ?boys? once in a while.
He and his buddies found some porcelains, and wondered what they were and what they should do with them.
They shoed them to an oriental art historian and allowed him to publish a few.
Photographs with vague captions seen by my wife, which led us to try and find the people involved ? but the art historian kept a pledge of secrecy while acting as an intermediary for us.
An archaeologist saw one of our publications about porcelains and asked if we could date some he had found in a Native-American site in Mexico. They matched the ones in the book.
The archaeologist sent us a photo of another sherd found on a beach by two women ? one of them the wife of the pilot for Earl Stanley Gardner.
A shipwreck map in the mail complete with a boat?s course and a star-marked spot, night-time telephone calls from a pay ?phone 200 miles away, pseudonyms, a meeting in the dark with four stangers who would not give their names ? all led eventually to this pot and this find.
And much work. Here is a scouting line spread across the dunes.
And the sand trying to take back a sherd found days earlier and flagged for us to number, GPS, and collect.
There are spectacular finds, such as this martaban, or storage-jar fragment.
We have a magnetometer specialist to search for the hull remains ? so far with successes.
And a ground-penetrating radar operator ? defeated so far by the sheer size of the area. That?s a National Geographic reporter pulling as a Geographic photographer records the scene.
We dig at likely targets.
Oceanographers help with reconstructions of wrecking sequences and changes in the site over time.
We have much study.
And porcelain specialists to study it.
Photographers.
What have we found? 57 porcelain types to date, from tiny cups ? both for tea and for rice wine.
Bowls in a dozen designs and two sizes.
Some by the same painter ? together all these centuries.
Wild phoenix plates.
And beaded pendant plates with Buddhist symbols and gentlemen?s purses ? one of many types with a decidedly Chinese character.
There are expensive overglaze wares.
Much of which survived the harsh environment only as ?ghosts? and has to be reconstructed on paper to make sense of it.
Some pieces give us much information, such as this one, with four discrete dating clues.
Some are of extraordinary quality ? fit for a Chinese gentleman?s cabinet as a reminder of the lovely countryside to which he hopes to retire.
Finally, we have the monkey bowl, unknown to any other collection ? a donation of one of the beachcombers.
Finds are meaningless without reports and drawings.
And reconstructions from sherds.
But how old are these finds?
Let?s go back to the chronology chart from our earlier work.
To look at the porcelains from 1643. Note the main types in the cargo.
And the ones from 1613.
The 1600 cargo shows styles in transition.
Our 1595 cargo is clearly from the first part of the series.
And our 1579 cargo even more so.
Where is our new galleon cargo?
Earlier yet!
The trade from Manila began in 1572, but that year?s ships turned back.
The 1573 ships made it to Acapulco.
We have the earliest Manila galleon wreck site, dated ca. 1574 ? 1576.
No, we don?t yet know her name.
Our leaping monkey has become our expedition mascot.
Sometimes we feel as exuberant as he.
Raymond Ashley, San Diego Maritime Museum
Three Galleon Cargos ? Connections
This is a brief introduction to the story of three Manila galleon cargos and the connections they have created in the past and for modern explorers and researchers.
First slide
The story starts with the search for Francis Drake?s California harbor.
Which led to studies of his ships and navigation: here the Golden Hind and a small consort are making the turn outside Point Reyes toward their harbor inside Drakes Bay.
Which in turn led to archaeological studies in Native-American sites to see if traces of his visit could be located.
Much has been found, mostly late Ming porcelains ? a rather exotic setting for such materials.
To make sense of the porcelains, studies of their sources led to Ching-teChen, the main Chinese porcelain center.
And an understanding of the industrial system which produced huge quantities of virtually identical wares.
Then trade routes within China and reaching out from China came into the study, and the Manila galleon routes, westbound and eastbound ? the latter far north to use the westerlies, then south along the American west coast. And Drake?s incursion, which captured porcelains that had come from a Manila galleon, before he reached California.
All of which left a mystery at Drakes Bay: whose porcelains were we digging up? Drake?s of 1579 or Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno?s Manila galleon wreck?s of 1595?
About two-thirds of the sherds show signs of surf tumbling, clear evidence of the 1595 wreck.
But what of the many undamaged sherds?
Forty years after the first finds, Clarence Shangraw of San Francisco?s Asian Art Museum, studied the thousand sherds intently and classified their designs in chronological sequences.
Here are the Kraak plates: white cavetto, single-line divider, double-line divider (not shown), beaded pendant, and I-wedge.
He then separated them by quality: the earlier ones well painted and potted n dark blue, the later ones more curiosity done ? a shift quite noticeable in 16 years.
Examples of both qualities exist for the first four types.
Only good quality examples, ?though in later light blue, exist of the fifth and latest type, a rare design of the mid-1590?s.
There are materials from both the Drake and Cermeno expeditions here, said Shangraw.
And every time he said ?early,? there was no sign of surf damage ? evidence of a landed cargo.
Every time he said ?late,? there was the tell-tale evidence of surf tumbling.
There are two cargos: Drake?s abandoned one of 1579 and cermeno?s lost one of 1595.
We even have enough of a small low bowl, shown here, and a plate, to be sure they came ashore intact and not surf damaged ? both from 1579.
Eventually we could create a typology of plate designs using five cargos, our two and three others.
Which created a chronology, now used worldwide by art historians and archaeologists.
But there are more people involved.
How did the Native-Americans see these exotic goods ? coveted by kings and merchant princes?
They treated them as raw materials breaking them up for making traditional beads, pendants and scapers.
With this background at Drakes Bay, California, a boat trip in Baja California in 1999 had much more significance than it otherwise would have had.
It led to a desert beach.
And within minutes to porcelain sherd lying in the sand.
Such sherds had been found by a padre?s runners two and a half centuries ago ? and recognized as the relics of an old shipwreck.
They were found by an old desert rat ? one of Earl Stanley Gardner?s fellow adventures, but not on one of Gardner?s expeditions.
The old man told a track coach, seen here, who liked to get away adventuring with a few of the ?boys? once in a while.
He and his buddies found some porcelains, and wondered what they were and what they should do with them.
They shoed them to an oriental art historian and allowed him to publish a few.
Photographs with vague captions seen by my wife, which led us to try and find the people involved ? but the art historian kept a pledge of secrecy while acting as an intermediary for us.
An archaeologist saw one of our publications about porcelains and asked if we could date some he had found in a Native-American site in Mexico. They matched the ones in the book.
The archaeologist sent us a photo of another sherd found on a beach by two women ? one of them the wife of the pilot for Earl Stanley Gardner.
A shipwreck map in the mail complete with a boat?s course and a star-marked spot, night-time telephone calls from a pay ?phone 200 miles away, pseudonyms, a meeting in the dark with four stangers who would not give their names ? all led eventually to this pot and this find.
And much work. Here is a scouting line spread across the dunes.
And the sand trying to take back a sherd found days earlier and flagged for us to number, GPS, and collect.
There are spectacular finds, such as this martaban, or storage-jar fragment.
We have a magnetometer specialist to search for the hull remains ? so far with successes.
And a ground-penetrating radar operator ? defeated so far by the sheer size of the area. That?s a National Geographic reporter pulling as a Geographic photographer records the scene.
We dig at likely targets.
Oceanographers help with reconstructions of wrecking sequences and changes in the site over time.
We have much study.
And porcelain specialists to study it.
Photographers.
What have we found? 57 porcelain types to date, from tiny cups ? both for tea and for rice wine.
Bowls in a dozen designs and two sizes.
Some by the same painter ? together all these centuries.
Wild phoenix plates.
And beaded pendant plates with Buddhist symbols and gentlemen?s purses ? one of many types with a decidedly Chinese character.
There are expensive overglaze wares.
Much of which survived the harsh environment only as ?ghosts? and has to be reconstructed on paper to make sense of it.
Some pieces give us much information, such as this one, with four discrete dating clues.
Some are of extraordinary quality ? fit for a Chinese gentleman?s cabinet as a reminder of the lovely countryside to which he hopes to retire.
Finally, we have the monkey bowl, unknown to any other collection ? a donation of one of the beachcombers.
Finds are meaningless without reports and drawings.
And reconstructions from sherds.
But how old are these finds?
Let?s go back to the chronology chart from our earlier work.
To look at the porcelains from 1643. Note the main types in the cargo.
And the ones from 1613.
The 1600 cargo shows styles in transition.
Our 1595 cargo is clearly from the first part of the series.
And our 1579 cargo even more so.
Where is our new galleon cargo?
Earlier yet!
The trade from Manila began in 1572, but that year?s ships turned back.
The 1573 ships made it to Acapulco.
We have the earliest Manila galleon wreck site, dated ca. 1574 ? 1576.
No, we don?t yet know her name.
Our leaping monkey has become our expedition mascot.
Sometimes we feel as exuberant as he.
