page_title: Maritime history of California
section_title: Early European explorers
hierarchical_section_title: Maritime history of California / Early European explorers
context_page_description: In the California coast, the use of ships and the Pacific Ocean has historically included water craft, fisheries, shipbuilding, Gold Rush shipping, ports, shipwrecks, naval ships and installations, and lighthouses. The maritime history of California can be divided into several periods: the Native American period; European exploration period from 1542 to 1769; the Spanish colonial period, 1769 to 1821; the Mexican period, 1821 to 1847; and United States statehood period, which continues to the present day.
context_section_description: In 1539, Francisco de Ulloa under commission from the Viceroyalty of New Spain and New Spain (Mexico) conqueror, Hernán Cortés, explored the Gulf of California to the Colorado River—establishing Baja California as a peninsula. Ulloa then went 800 miles (1,300 km) south down the Baja California peninsula in the Gulf of California and rounding the tip of the peninsula turned north and explored the west coast of the Baja peninsula—perhaps to the 28th parallel (near the Isla Natividad). Ulloa's sailing ships battered by adverse winds and his men wracked by scurvy, returned to New Spain (Mexico) without exploring further.
  The first European expedition to explore the upper California coast was led by the explorer and conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (c. 1499–1543). Cabrillo shipped for Havana as a young man and joined forces with Hernán Cortés in New Spain in about 1520 as a conquistador crossbow man. In the conquest of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) in 1521 Cortez directed Cabrillo to build thirteen 40 feet (12 m) boats to fight on the lake then in the center of Tenochitlan. Rapidly advancing in rank under Cortez's direction he participated in the conquest of El Salvador and Guatemala and was rewarded by being granted an extensive Encomienda (a feudal grant of land including the occupants on it) controlling vast land and Native American resources in Guatemala. His success in guiding the Native Americans on his Encomienda in mining gold in Guatemala, made him one of the richest of the conquistadors in Mexico and Guatemala. Sponsored by Pedro de Alvarado, the Guatemala governor, Cabrillo's directed the building of several small sailing ships in Guatemala—the first on the Pacific coast. After Alvarado's death in 1541 the new Viceroy of New Spain, Antonio de Mendoza took over control of the shipyards and directed Cabrillo to build three ships and lead an expedition further up the Pacific Coast in search of more rich Native American civilizations like the Aztec and Incas. They were also to see if there was a shorter way to China—the mythical Strait of Anián (or Northwest Passage) connecting the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean.
  To build the ships the anchors, sails, shipbuilding tools and metal fittings were imported from Spain and then ported by mule and Native American porters across Mexico and then south to Guatemala. Cabrillo, a former shipbuilder, with his Spanish assistants and Native American workers had the necessary lumber sawed out and assembled to make the first sailing ships built on the America's Pacific coast—in Guatemala. The ships finished lumber and timbers was sawed out of trees with "new" steel saws manned by Native American laborers under the direction of a few Spanish shipbuilders. The ships built for exploring the Pacific were small open caravels and bergantina built and manned by a mixture of Native Americans and Spanish sailors and conquistadors.
  The last sailing ships built under Cabrillo's direction were the California exploration fleet: caravels, San Salvador (about 100 feet (30 m) long) and the smaller Victoria, and a bergantina (small sail boat or launch), San Miguel. Cabrillo captained the San Salvador and Bartolomé Ferrer the Victoria. These vessels were the first European sailing ships to visit the future state of California.
  After the California exploration ships were built, Cabrillo and his mixed crews of conquistadors, Spanish and untrained Native American sailors totaling about 200 men, carefully made their way north from Navidad, Mexico up the Pacific coast starting on 17 June 1542. They took enough supplies to last about two years. The combination of the south flowing California Current and often opposing winds made progress north up the coast agonizingly slow. The small, rudely made open boats with only partially trained crews caused the crews to suffer miserably in the storms they encountered on their way. After landing several times on the Baja California coast for water, wood and whatever supplies they could scrounge they finally, after traveling one hundred and t
caption: Sir Francis Drake, circa 1581
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