Did the galleon San José explode into pieces before sinking in the 18th century in Caribbean waters near Cartagena de Indias? The famous painting by Samuel Scott depicting the captain of the Mainland Fleet jumping through the air “does not correspond well to the probable sequence of events” which caused its shipwreck on June 8, 1708, in the heat of the battle of Barú against an English squadron. This is what American Hispanicist Carla Rahn Phillips, recently awarded the Spanish Orders International History Prizedespite the fact that the British painter’s dramatic work illustrated the English edition of his book ‘Treasures of the San José galleon’.
However, the emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota (USA) – possibly the researcher who best knows the last voyage of this Spanish ship of state – is suspicious of the Colombian “new hypothesis”, which seeks to rewrite the narrated history, as they say, “from the global north.”
«In my opinion, the most probable cause of the sinking of the galleon San José This is what I wrote in my book: a fire between decks of the galleon, probably near the Santa Barbara ranch, which caused an explosion. This explosion opened a large hole which allowed a large amount of water to enter very quickly, causing the sinking,” Rahn Phillips responds in an email to ABC. If, as he points out in his work, the Santa Bárbara exploded on its side, the ship would not have been blown up, but the hole opened in its hull would have sunk it, “which would be in line with the testimony of several witnesses.”
Alhena Caicedo, director of the Colombian Institute of History and Anthropology (ICANH), stated last week in a Colombian newspaper that testimonies from the time collected by the research team of the expedition ‘Towards the heart of the San José galleon’ suggest that “there was no an explosive charge, as previously suggested, that the Santa María, which was the part of the ship where the cannons and gunpowder were, had been hit by the English pirates and that this caused the breakup and sinking of the ship.
The Hispanist Carla Rahn Phillips, awarded the International Prize of the Spanish Orders
By mistake, Caicedo referred to the gunpowder warehouse of Spanish ships as Santa María and not by its name of Santa Bárbara, in reference to the patron saint of artillerymen, miners or firefighters who face the dangers of explosions and storms. The Hispanicist also clarifies that the four English ships that attacked the Spanish fleet formed a squadron of the English crown during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). “They were not ‘pirates'”he remarks.
At a court martial in Port Royal after the battle, English captains and officers stated that the galleon exploded and sank immediately, without them being able to seize the ship and take its treasures. According to the Colombian anthropologist from ICANH, that version that prospered over time was “basically built from English testimonies” and Colombian historians are now contrasting with “other types of sources that had been effectively consulted by researchers, but to which they had not been given the weight which in this case is being given to them.
A single and dubious testimony
“What those sources are saying is that what happened may not have been a huge explosion that caused the ship to break into pieces over a huge radius but rather it may have been a sinking due to structural failures that had already been evident», Caicedo declared to Efe. The director of ICANH referred specifically to the testimony of Pedro García de Asarta, sea and land captain of the ‘San Joaquín’, the admiral ship of the Tierra Firme Fleet. According to this Spanish sailor, the San José “gave open and sank due to how bad fairing or for the stranding that occurred when leaving Cartagena for Portobelo.
Carla Rahn Phillips, who already cited García de Asarta’s words in her book, tells ABC that He found no other reference to a “poor repair” of the ship in the several thousand documents he consulted during the decade he dedicated to the study of San José. The Hispanist also denies that she did not give adequate weight to testimonies such as that of the sea and war captain of the admiral ship. “In my case, I consider the various testimonies of García de Asarta and other people before and after the sinking of the San José very broadly and carefully,” he says.
Although García de Asarta testified as if he had witnessed the sinking, “without a doubt, could not be an eyewitnessbecause the ship he was sailing on, the San Joaquín, was very far away, not only from the San José, but also very far from the battle at the time the San José sank. There were many testimonies from men on other ships who said so,” recalls Rahn Phillips. The historian does not know García de Asarta’s reasons, but believes that he agreed his testimony with that of Admiral Miguel Agustín de Villanueva, his commander on the San Joaquín, whom he suspects “also did false testimony» to justify the action in the battle of the admiral ship, which escaped from the English and managed to reach a safe harbor.
Undated remains of the San José galleon
As the historian was able to verify in her research, «There was confusion about the cause of the sinking among witnesses on ships near the San José. Only one Spanish declarant, Luis de Arauz, who served as captain on the Patache Nuestra Señora del Carmen, mentioned a noise that could be attributed to an explosion. Several Spaniards spoke of a fire inside the galleonbut they said they had not heard the sound of an explosion. However, to Rahn Phillips it seems “very possible” that given the situation of the ships in the fight and the confusion inherent to the fray, The English could hear the explosion and not distinguish it, on the other hand, the Spanish. Even more so if it did not blow the galleon into pieces.
No winners
The Colombian authorities want to “have the luxury of doing research that allows them to tell the story from their point of view” because “the story has always been told by others, people from outside: from Spain, Europe, the United States, the global north.” . But this idea that “history is built and written by the winners” is “very exaggerated, especially nowadays,” in the opinion of Rahn Phillips.
In the case of the sinking of the galleon San José “It is difficult to identify winners”he emphasizes, since surely neither the survivors and their families in Spain, nor the merchants and those who had belongings on the San José, nor the Spanish Crown, nor even the English Commodore Wager and his crews, who did not manage to capture even the San José nor San Joaquín.
“In my book, I tried to find out what happened, no more and no less, based on careful research of the voluminous documents of the time,” says Rahn Phillips, who welcomes other perspectives “with equal respect for the historical past.”
Historical research has not been able to resolve questions that the Hispanist transfers to underwater archaeologists who study the wreck. In his opinion, the biggest unknown is why the galleon sank so quicklytaking with him 600 lives. The unrecorded value of money and other belongings of private persons is also unknown, but not that of the wealth belonging to the crown (valued at about 4.4 million silver reales), which, as he recalls, were well recorded. “The underwater archaeologists I know are interested in the cause of the sinking, but they are as fed up as I am with speculation about the value of the treasure. There are much more interesting and important topics than that,” he says.
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