The Second Expedition

While European expeditions along the Northcoast remained rare during the 1500s and 1600s, a number of their ships did pass by the coastline of Del Norte. Most notably among them were the Manila Galleons.

These ships formed a trade route that connected Acapulco and the Philippines and brought the riches of the Indies to Europe. In 1565, the Spanish discovered the Japanese Current that made their travels across the Pacific considerably easier. Sometimes as they turned south, they spotted the fog-laden Northcoast.

With English piracy in the Pacific on the rise, the Spanish decided to set up a harbor on the Northcoast that the Manila Galleons could use as a refuge. So sailing from Manila in 1595, Sebastían Rodríguez Cermenõ passed into and sailed about Trinidad Bay.

Afraid of rocks, however, he decided not to anchor and went south to Acapulco. Eight years later, Sebastian Vizcaíno led another Spanish expedition to explore the Northcoast.

Illness and poor weather prevented the expedition’s two ships from fully surveying the coast. Mapping of the northern coastline never was much of a priority for the Spanish.

Though claimed by Spain, this section of California was remote, and the Spanish found themselves preoccupied with conquering South America, maintaining their colonial holds in Mexico and fending off piracy across the Caribbean and Atlantic. The second Spanish expedition whose mission was to formally claim lands north of Alta California for that nation’s crown, brought Bruno de Heceta and Bodega y Quadra past the coast of what would later become Del Norte County.