Weekend Reading

THE LONG LABOR DAY WEEKEND should give me time to read up this hoard of resources about Mangyans and Manila galleons, less tedious with marine archaeologist William M. Mathers' coffee table book Treasure of the Concepción which I got earlier this year, signed and loaded with stupendous photographs of the recovered cargo. Also glad to find Bruce Cruikshank's chronology of all Manila galleons from 1565-1815, Blair and Robertson's brief mention of the Concepción tragedy, and Catherine Lugar's detailed report on the ill-fated galleon and the corrupt governorship of Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, compiled from three years of research in seven countries by historians Peter Earle of the London School of Economics and David Webb of the University of London. From Lugar's article: "There were also more inundane trade goods, like 1,500 cakes of beeswax he was sending to Mexico." Inundane? What does does that word mean? Ora et labora! reverberates my Pinamalayan high school battlecry.

More gold from the Concepción: necklaces, a rosary cross and a figa amulet

Photographs too large to scan also appeared in the September 1990 issue of National Geographic 

The author holds one of 156 jars found intact which once held water, wine, oil and other vital supplies

A steersman in San Bernardino Strait struggles to survive a skirmish with a squall