Doc II-64. Hermenegildo Sal to acting Gov. Arrillaga: an English ship off San Francisco, and the English at Bodega. ✎✓ LEAF-VERIFIED 2026-10-06 across n261–n263 at full resolution, with word-level crops; four errors corrected and two passages restored. ⭐ Savage transcribed this letter verbatim and in the first person, so the text below is Sal's own wording, not an abstract. At 11 a.m. on the 13th Sal had word of a large vessel near the harbour mouth, posted a guard and ordered the cattle driven in; a boat with six men came within musket shot of the Cantil Blanco and proved English, «su Capitán se llamaba Brown», out of San Luis and bound for Nootka, asking wood, water and meat. By morning the port guard had lost sight of the ship. On the 14th she lay off the rancho de San Pedro and «disparó un tiro y puso bandera Inglesa»; on the 15th she was seen twice among the Farallones. ⭐ That night «vino á mi casa un gentil isleño» to report her position behind the punta delgada, saying she did not stop but ran up and down, and that his people «tenían mucho miedo en su ranchería por estar inmediata á la Playa». ✎ Sal judges the distress feigned: «no ser cierta la necesidad que manifiestan… no caminan con buenas intenciones, pues hace 16 días que no pierden de vista á Monterey y San Francisco, pareciendo á su Guarda-Pescas». ✎ CORRECTED: SIXTEEN days, not ten (the ten days in the document are the crew's own claim about their passage to Monterey). ✎ CORRECTED: the Bodega report is «por carta del Teniente D. José Argüello» — Argüello's letter, not Sal's own impression — and reads «Por los naturales he sabido que aquí estuvieron mas de DOS meses», TWO months, not six. ✎ CORRECTED: «Del día mantengo un vigía á la vista del Puerto», a daylight watch, not a Sunday one. Capt. Brown is probably William Brown of the Butterworth traders; that identification is an inference and is not in the manuscript.
| Date | 1793, Mar 16, San Francisco (year) |
|---|---|
| From | NOOTKA/BODEGA |
| Series | State Papers, Sacramento |
| Tomo | I |
| Original tomo page | — |
| Savage copy page | 262–264 |
| Scan leaf | n261–n263 |
| Document type | Transcription |
| Source | Savage abstract |
Read this leaf on the Internet Archive ↗ · leaf n261–n263
NOOTKA/BODEGA, 1793, Mar 16, San Francisco, State Papers, Sacramento, I, —, Archives of California, C-A 54, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.Cite the document by series, tomo and original tomo page, as the literature does; the C-A number locates it in the repository. To cite this catalogue entry itself, use https://archivesofcalifornia.com/record/ca54/ca54-d161.html- Previously read The ship lingered 10 days 'sin perder de vista á Monterey y San Francisco' … 'por los naturales he sabido que aquí [Bodega] estuvieron más de seis meses' … Sal keeps livestock withdrawn, a Sunday lookout.. Leaf-verified 2026-10-06 across n261–n263 with word-level crops. The leaf reads «hace 16 días que no pierden de vista á Monterey y San Francisco, pareciendo á su Guarda-Pescas»; «Por los naturales he sabido que aquí estuvieron mas de DOS meses»; and «Del día mantengo un vigía á la vista del Puerto».