BajaNomad - Bronze Sculpture from 16th Century Found in Baja

Bronze Sculpture from 16th Century Found in Baja

BajaNews - 7-12-2011 at 09:43 PM

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=406491&Categor...

MEXICO CITY – A bronze sculpture more than 430 years old was found on the Pacific coast in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.

The discovery was made by INAH members and researchers from the United States two weeks ago and is a unique piece within the collection of goods recovered over a 12-year period by the Manila Galleon Project in Baja California.

The sculpture, 12 centimeters (4 3/4 inches) tall and of an equal width, represents a Chinese “Dog of Fo,” and the first analyses have determined that it is either the lid of a censer or a candlestick.

The find comes from one of the first galleons of the 16th century to set sail from Manila in the Philippines en route to Acapulco in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, INAH marine archaeology unit member Roberto Junco said.

The route “was the longest on the high seas...in this case the ship could have been carried off by the various currents along the coast of the Californias, with no survivors to continue the crossing,” Junco said.

The remains of the goods found probably belonged to the San Felipe galleon, which sailed carrying a large cargo of Chinese porcelain from the Ming Dynasty and which disappeared without a trace in 1576, maritime historian Edward Von der Porten said.

The Asian sculpture, located underwater by means of signals from a metal detector, coincides with descriptions noted in the 18th century by Jesuit missionaries such as Fr. Fernando Consag at an earlier moment and later by Fr. Miguel del Barco, Junco said.

“The goods we are studying coincide with the notes of Fr. Miguel del Barco, who in his chronicles says that some Indians brought to one of the missions a bronze candlestick in the shape of a dog,” the archaeologist said.

“The object we found is probably similar to the one described by the priest, or it could be the lid of a censer,” Junco said.

The so-called “Dogs of Fo” – the Chinese word for Buddha is Fo – actually represent lions and were considered protectors of sacred sanctuaries, usually Buddhist temples.

The Manila Galleon Project is led by U.S. researchers Jack Hunter and Edward Von der Porten with archaeologists from the INAH’s marine archaeology unit.

The project is also receiving support from other institutions.

The team carries out archaeological prospecting in an area stretching approximately 11 kilometers (7 miles) along the coast where the greatest variety of cargo has been found.

16th-century-bronze-sculpture-2.jpg - 49kB

16th-century-bronze-sculpture-2.jpg - 49kB

redhilltown - 7-12-2011 at 11:30 PM

Fascinating! I realize they aint gonna give the gps cords of where this was found but does anybody know the general location?

mtgoat666 - 7-13-2011 at 07:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by redhilltown
Fascinating! I realize they aint gonna give the gps cords of where this was found but does anybody know the general location?

pacific coast, a beach with dunes, you will have to sleuth yourself to find it.

bufeo - 7-13-2011 at 07:35 AM

The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum had an exhibit of some of the relics found from this galleon. I think it was 2005. One of the leaders of the expedition, Van der Poten or something like that, gave a talk about the galleon and the searches up to that time. His name is not mentioned in the article above, so I don't know if this is a new team or an extension of the earlier one.

In any case, it's a fascinating discovery. There have been more. I'm sure, if you're interested, that a search using Galleon San Felipe or something similar you can find more.

Allen R

BajaNews - 7-13-2011 at 04:52 PM

http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/11952

A team of U.S. researchers and marine archaeologists from Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute (INAH) found a Chinese bronze sculpture from the 16th century on the Pacific coast of Baja California, a peninsula south of the US state of California. At just under five inches square, the statue is either a censer or a candlestick. It is decorated with a Chinese “Dog of Fo,” a lion figure that protected Buddhist temples.

It was discovered under water using a metal detector two weeks ago as part of the ongoing 12-year Manila Galleon Project which surveys 7 miles along the Baja coast for the remains of Spanish ships known as the Manila Galleons, ships that carried trade cargo from the Philippines to Acapulco. The trade began in 1565 when Andrés de Urdaneta, explorer, Augustinian friar and the second man to circumnavigate the globe, discovered that if ships departing from Cebu City went north first, the Pacific trade winds would carry them east to the coast of California.

It was a punishingly long trip. Urdaneta lost most of his crew the first time, and even once the trade got going in earnest, the galleons took four months to sail from Manila to Acapulco. From there the cargo of spices, porcelain, ivory, silk and bronze devotional statues, etc., was transported overland to the Gulf of Mexico where it was added to the Spanish treasure ships heading back to the motherland. Tedious, long and dangerous as it was, this trip allowed Spanish ships to avoid using unfriendly foreign ports and the Portuguese routes in the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope.

The Manila Galleon Project began when some of that Ming porcelain was discovered on a Baja beach in 1999. The surveys have found thousands of pieces of porcelain, chunks of beeswax, lead sheathing from the ship and other artifacts, but this is the first bronze “Dog of Fo” sculpture they’ve discovered. Jesuit missionary chronicles from the 18th century note on more than one occasion Indians having bronze candlesticks shaped like dogs. Perhaps they were describing something like this object traded from China off a Manila galleon.

It was an enormous market, starting with American silver which the Spanish shipped to the Far East. Historians estimate that as much as a third of all the silver mined in the Spanish colonies of America ended up in Asia. With that silver the traders bought goods to fill up their huge ships — the Manila galleons were built particularly large for cargo and so the crew could actually survive once in a while — and headed back to Mexico. On its way from Baja to the Gulf, some of the cargo would be sold and traded locally. You can see the influence of Asian porcelain and ivory in Mexican ceramics.

The Manila galleons finally stopped sailing in 1815 when the Mexican War of Independence against Spain broke the cycle.

Searching for sunken 16th century ship

BajaNews - 7-13-2011 at 04:56 PM

http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=7905

December 9, 2010
By Dave Boyce

Inductive reasoning. It's what detectives use to work backwards from evidence at a crime scene to develop a chronology of events that, with luck and diligence, will lead to a suspect.

It's also the modus operandi for Portola Valley resident and geophysicist Sheldon Breiner and a team of archaeologists and a historian who meet periodically along the Mexican coast of Baja California. They're investigating the disappearance of a Spanish galleon believed to be the San Felipe.

The San Felipe left China in 1576 headed for Acapulco by way of Manila with a cargo that included silk, beeswax and tons of Ming Dynasty porcelain. Records show the details of the cargo but not the San Felipe's arrival at its destination, and the Spanish were meticulous with their records, Mr. Breiner says in an interview.

Mr. Breiner spoke about this exploratory adventure at Portola Valley's Historic Schoolhouse on Nov. 16. The town's Nature & Science Committee sponsored the free event and about 20 people showed up.

Shipments of porcelain left China for Spain twice a year for some 250 years starting in 1565, Mr. Breiner says. There is debris indicating that the 100-foot, 400-ton San Felipe may have run aground off the desert coast of Baja.

Lying on and under the shifting sands of this corner of Mexico's Sonoran Desert are about 1,000 artifacts. While the researchers haven't yet found any silk, which would have been encased in wax, they have found beeswax, some lead sheeting used on the hulls of 16th century ships to discourage underwater pests, and a great many pieces of porcelain scattered along a two-mile-long line in the sand, Mr. Breiner says.

Why might the ship have grounded? Strong prevailing winds, scurvy among the crew of 200, a need for food or water, or a new mast or spar -- the reasons are not known. Had the ship reached Acapulco, its cargo would have been offloaded and hauled overland to the Gulf of Mexico and then shipped to Spain, a two-year to three-year trip altogether, Mr. Breiner says.

With hundreds of thousands of years of predictable winds, waves and depositions of sand as reference points, the line of debris is readable. The team has worked backward from the locations of these artifacts to place the likely remains of the sunken hull. After scanning the area with an ultra sensitive magnetometer, the team now has tracking data showing magnetic anomalies consistent with a buried hull. In short, they have a strong suspicion as to where it is.

If this anomaly is a sunken galleon, it may never be known for certain whether it is the San Felipe. Ship owners back then did not paint names on hulls, Mr. Breiner says. The porcelain can be dated by experts skilled at matching a design with the year in which that design was current.

Mr. Breiner says he plans to return to the site in February to survey the wreckage in detail and create a grid-based map of the debris field. The magnetometer can detect ballast stones, cannon barrels, and iron spikes used to hold the ship's ribs to its keel. Other items with a smaller footprint but still detectable include weapons, tools, boxes, furniture parts and personal effects of the crew. The lack of oxygen under the sediment inhibits corrosion.

Team members, when they do speak about this project, hold back its exact location. Search and recovery work is undertaken only with the explicit permission of the Mexican government and in the presence of archaeologists from the INAH, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mr. Breiner says.

Once Mexican specialists isolate and recover the hull and debris, the pieces will be restored to the extent possible -- perhaps a five-year enterprise -- and displayed in a museum in Ensenada, the capital of Baja California, Mr. Breiner says.

The joy of a journey like this one, Mr. Breiner says, is that it takes on a breadth of field of its own. Geology, oceanography and map-making are as critical as magnetism in solving this puzzle.

The questions Mr. Breiner poses in a paper on the subject are many. Why is the line of debris so straight? Why are there more objects at the southern end? How do the answers to these questions help reconstruct the events of the shipwreck? Where are the ship's anchors and why are they where they are? What has happened to the hull over four centuries? How did the porcelain stay in relatively good condition for hundreds of years in such a sandy and abrasive environment?

"There's a lot of information that can come from a well understood search and study of an ancient ship," Mr. Breiner says.

Finding buried objects

One piece of equipment Mr. Breiner has not used and that wouldn't do much good in this exploration is a metal detector. That device transmits an electrical signal; if something metal is within range, the transmitted signal creates within the metal an electrical current detectable by the device.

The magnetometer, by contrast, is passive. It senses the Earth's magnetic field, which is present everywhere all the time. The device notes anomalies in that field caused by materials that have or do not have magnetic properties.

Airport and courtroom devices that screen for metal objects on a person are magnetometers that can sense a belt buckle's disturbance to the planet's magnetic field. The device in use by Mr. Breiner in Baja is thousands of times more sensitive.

At the shipwreck, grains of magnetic minerals in the sand will provide a uniform background noise, Mr. Breiner says. Any interruption in that noise, such as would be made by a buried nonmagnetic pile of wood and ceramics, will indicate its presence by the absence of that background noise.

woody with a view - 7-13-2011 at 06:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by mtgoat666

Quote:

Originally posted by redhilltown
Fascinating! I realize they aint gonna give the gps cords of where this was found but does anybody know the general location?

pacific coast, a beach with dunes, you will have to sleuth yourself to find it.

oooh, OOOOHHHH, i know!!!! CANTAMAR. :light:

EdZeranski - 7-22-2011 at 01:01 PM

Quote:

represents a Chinese “Dog of Fo,” .

Dog of Fo is also a Chow Chow, Chow, or Chinese Lion Dog. Blue tongue, fuzzy fur, and curly tail.

EdZ KG6UTS....friend of all things Chow

BajaGeoff - 7-22-2011 at 02:04 PM

This is really cool. It really makes you wonder what else could be hidden in the waters off of Baja!

Woooosh - 7-22-2011 at 08:02 PM

Sure it's not a trinket thrown from a cruise ship?

pappy - 7-25-2011 at 12:56 PM

perhaps in the punta marquez region??

BajaNomad - 7-25-2011 at 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by pappy
perhaps in the punta marquez region??

Quote:

Originally posted by BajaNews
...found on the Pacific coast in the northwestern Mexican state of Baja California...

Not in BCS. As noted already, can - for better or worse - be determined with a little Google searching.

Cantamar, DUH!

Gypsy Jan - 7-25-2011 at 02:56 PM

Just a mile-and-a-half south at Los Medanos.

The Borja brothers and the fifth wife are fighting over ownership.

pappy - 7-26-2011 at 07:54 AM

missed that sentence. my bad!

Ship's story revealed in 435-year-old wreckage

BajaNews - 12-24-2011 at 12:54 PM

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/23/...

http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-08-23/bay-area/29917323_1_sa...

Artifacts on beach help reveal story of 1576 shipwreck

By Carl Nolte
August 23, 2011

Edward Von der Porten, a San Francisco nautical historian and archaeologist, has a sea story to tell - of disease and death and the shipwreck of a Spanish galleon full of the treasures of Asia.

He holds up a piece of delicate blue and white porcelain, part of a broken bowl. It shows a bird standing in a pond, a boat, a Chinese pagoda.

It is a piece more than 435 years old, salvaged from a bleak and remote beach in Baja California. It is part of the cargo of the galleon San Felipe, which sailed from Manila in the Philippines for the nearly unknown coast of California and the port of Acapulco, Mexico, in the summer of 1576.

The San Felipe was never seen again until the wreck was found not long ago, allowing its story to be told for the first time.

It is a centuries-old tragedy - a horrible last voyage that ended with the crew starving and racked with scurvy or some other dietary disease, so weak they could not sail the ship any longer. The San Felipe ran aground, everyone aboard dead or dying, "like a ghost ship," Von der Porten said.

The beach where the San Felipe ended up had no water, no food, no people. Even now, it is remote - "the middle of nowhere," Von der Porten said.

Everything lost

The mariners aboard the San Felipe had risked everything on that voyage. Had it succeeded, they would have become rich. "Instead," Von der Porten said, "they lost everything."

Von der Porten and his associates - who include American beachcombers; Mexican archaeologists; the late Clarence Shangraw, curator of the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; George Kuwayama of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and dozens of volunteers - have acted like maritime detectives to discover the story of the shipwreck.

The story began in 1576 when Spanish authorities in their new Philippine colony sent the San Felipe, a three-masted ship about 115 feet long, on a voyage eastward to Acapulco.

The officers were Spanish, probably from Mexico, and the crew was mixed, some Spanish but mostly Filipinos, who were known for their seafaring skills.

The cargo was silk and spices, beeswax in big blocks, porcelain and some bronze figures. It came from China; the Spanish and Chinese had just developed a trade relationship - silver from Mexico for Chinese silk and trade goods.

The San Felipe sailed north from the Philippines, to pick up the Japan Current, then eastward to make a landfall on the rocky and inhospitable California coast, possibly near Cape Mendocino.

There was a ship every year along the route. The Manila galleon trade - westbound from Mexico, eastbound from the Philippines - lasted until 1815, 250 years. However, it was one of the most difficult voyages in the world - four months long, if the mariners were lucky, six months if the weather was bad. Some years the ships would arrive in Mexico with the sailors so sick they could barely stand. On some voyages sickness killed them all, and the ship was found adrift.

One galleon, the San Agustin, was wrecked in what is now Marin County in 1595, but the skipper, Sebastian Rodriguez Cermeno, sailed with the survivors in an open boat 2,500 miles to Acapulco; the only casualty was the ship's dog.

Buried for centuries

The San Felipe had no such luck. Its hulk remained offshore for perhaps a year after the ship ran aground and then was scattered by a storm and the cargo spread on the beach over an area seven miles long.

There it sat, half buried in sand, for centuries. About 1997, Americans on a summer vacation trip found pieces of curious blue pottery.

Some of it turned up in San Francisco; Von der Porten in the meantime had been exploring the remains of the San Agustin - he knew Ming Dynasty china when he saw it.

He got hold of some of the shards of porcelain; Kuwayama and other experts in Asian art helped identify it.

"These people had been picking up souvenirs, but they discovered - whoops - these things were not just souvenirs. They were important," Von der Porten said.

The rest of the tale was like a detective story - the jagged pieces of porcelain were clues. Some were imprinted with the names of Chinese emperors and the years of their reign. Some of the figures on the shards of pottery told allegorical stories from Chinese legend.

Dusty archives

Von der Porten enlisted Mexican authorities in the search for the secret of the lost ship. Ancient records in dusty archives were checked. Finally, they came up with a name and a date: The ship was the San Felipe and it sailed from Manila in July 1576. It was one of the oldest known shipwrecks on the Pacific Coast of North America.

Von der Porten, who has organized several expeditions to the wreck site, won't say where it is. "I can tell you only that it is south of Tijuana and north of Cabo San Lucas," he said.

Some of the artifacts have been displayed at the San Diego Maritime Museum, and some of the story has appeared in scholarly journals. Von der Porten has written a 5o-page monograph. There's a book in it, he thinks.

This summer, on the latest expedition to the site, a volunteer found something green-colored in the sand. He dug it out and brushed the sand away. It was a bronze incense burner, about 4 1/2 inches tall, capped by the tiny figure of a lion.

The lion had been guarding the shipwreck for 435 years.

--

See More Photos Here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2011/08/...

--
Photo below: At the home of Ed Von der Porten, on Friday August 19, 2011 in San Francsico, Ca., displayed are a few of the hundreds of pieces of Ming porcelain discovered along the beach in Baja California in Mexico. Against a painting of the vessel, "San Felipe" by artist Gordon Miller. Von der Porten, is the cheif organizer of an expedition that researched the Spanish galleon, "San Felipe" which sank more than 400 years ago in Baja California, Mexico.
Photo by: Michael Macor

[Edited on 12-24-2011 by BajaNews]

ba-galleon23_sm.jpg - 50kB

BajaNews - 11-22-2012 at 09:15 PM

?????

durrelllrobert - 11-23-2012 at 08:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by bufeo
The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum had an exhibit of some of the relics found from this galleon. I think it was 2005. One of the leaders of the expedition, Van der Poten or something like that, gave a talk about the galleon and the searches up to that time. His name is not mentioned in the article above, so I don't know if this is a new team or an extension of the earlier one.

Allen R

The Manila Galleon Project is led by U.S. researchers Jack Hunter and Edward Von der Porten with archaeologists from the INAH’s marine archaeology unit.

Maybe they don't even know where to look?

durrelllrobert - 11-23-2012 at 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by BajaNews
http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=7905

December 9, 2010
By Dave Boyce

In short, they have a strong suspicion as to where it is.

Once Mexican specialists isolate and recover the hull and debris, the pieces will be restored to the extent possible -- perhaps a five-year enterprise -- and displayed in a museum in Ensenada, the capital of Baja California, Mr. Breiner says.

displayed in a museum in Ensenada, the capital of Baja California

David K - 11-23-2012 at 09:58 AM

Ensenada was the capital... until about 100 years ago! :lol:

mexican specialist ??? NOT !!

captkw - 11-23-2012 at 10:19 AM

monoloco - 11-23-2012 at 11:23 AM

That video made me dizzy.

David K - 9-20-2013 at 04:44 PM

So, a couple of years have passed, the area swept clean... anyone know where the 1576 Spanish galleon came ashore?

larryC - 9-20-2013 at 05:12 PM

I was told it is just north of GN.

David K - 9-20-2013 at 05:43 PM

Variety Beach (Laguna Manuela area) north to Miller's Landing (El Tomatal area) perhaps? It matters not, it is just a curiosity thing. I think there are plenty of discoveries yet to make in Baja... I am hoping for a full dinosaur skeleton to get exposed after a big rain!

BajaNomad - 9-20-2013 at 07:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by David K
So, a couple of years have passed, the area swept clean... anyone know where the 1576 Spanish galleon came ashore?

The specific location - to my knowledge - is *not* "swept clean". It's an area of shifting sands, where more and more of the ship's contents continue to become exposed over time.

Nifty Curios

MrBillM - 9-20-2013 at 08:00 PM

I've seen similar.

In better shape.

Check out Dollar General.

Or Big Lots.