![]() ![]() Philippine authorities have distributed pictures of the bells to U.S. They’ve located one, Morgan said, but the other two are reported to have been sold to a collector named “Phil” in California. To the displeasure of Philippine authorities, all three mission bells disappeared, and were presumably sold to collectors. Because the cargo of the ship came from Singapore, Borneo and elsewhere in southern Asia, Morgan suspects these bells were cast in Burma. But the San Jose mission was not established until 1797, so the destination of that bell remains unclear.Īccording to records of the Catholic church, bells for the missions were made in Russia, China, Japan and Burma. The San Antonio mission, about 5 miles from Jolon in Monterey County, was established in 1771 and could have been the destination of the first. One says San Antonio and 1784, while the other says San Jose and 1783.īecause of the names and dates, Morgan thinks the bells might have been destined for California missions. The three other bells, each about 3 feet tall and weighing 800 to 1,000 pounds, have the traditional “crown” mount that was used only in churches and missions. “That’s not necessarily the name of the ship, but may be one of the saints protecting it,” Morgan said. Because of its mounting, it may have been associated with the ship. The second bell, about 1 1/2 feet tall, is bronze and is inscribed S. No date is on the piece, and it is believed to have been owned by a Jesuit priest. ![]() It stands about 7 inches tall and is inscribed SJ Evang, which stands for St. The small one is a “Mass” bell used during the Catholic service. But another vessel, the Princessa, also is being researched.įive bells have been recovered from the wreckage: three large, one medium and one small. One of the ships lost during the period, the San Antonio de Padua, is near the top of their list, said Morgan. “Now we really need to find out its name,” said Cecilio Salcedo, assistant director of the Philippine National Museum. Chinese ships from the period were held together with wooden spikes. ![]() But the remains that have been found were held together by iron spikes, indicating that the ship is most likely Spanish in origin, according to Morgan. If the cargo hold was that big, that means the ship itself was at least 100 feet long, Morgan said. The remains were found by local divers who came upon what they described as “a reef on the bottom that is not really a reef.” That “reef” proved to be the ship’s cargo, arranged in a pile 60 feet long, 4 feet high and 20 feet across. ![]() The effort is time-consuming because of the depth, which allows divers to make only one 30-minute dive per day. Weather permitting, the team hopes to have recovered all the artifacts by the end of October. “We’ve had a grand old time dodging hurricanes and typhoons,” Morgan said by telephone last week. The team has been at the site for more than four months, documenting it and then beginning the tedious and exhausting process of bringing artifacts to the surface. The most important part of the recovered cargo, the mission bells, disappeared soon after native divers stumbled onto the wreck last year, however, and the team has so far tracked down only one of them. “It’s like a big museum sank, rather than a ship.” “The mixture of artifacts makes no sense,” said San Pedro-based salvor Steve Morgan of Black Coach Management Inc. ![]()
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