‘Goonies’ in Real Life? A Suspicious Shipwreck Discovered Off the Oregon Coast
Last month, archaeologists explored tunnels off the coast of Oregon, but they came up empty-handed about the booby-trapped pirate ship Inferno and its captain, One-Eyed Willie. However, they did discover a dozen timbers that they believe originated from the lost Spanish galleon from the 17th century that served as the basis for Steven Spielberg’s 1985 movie “The Goonies,” which starred the fictitious pirate and his treasure-filled ship.
This finding has renewed interest in finding the wreck of the Spanish galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos, which vanished in the Pacific Ocean in 1693. As artefacts said to have been on board the ship have been washing ashore for centuries, historians speculate that it may have sunk off the coast of what is now Oregon.
Uncertainty surrounds what what transpired to the Santo Cristo de Burgos in 1693. During a voyage from Manila to Acapulco, Mexico, which was a popular route for Spanish traders at the time, the ship just vanished. The ship was rumored to be transporting Chinese ceramics, rare silks, and beeswax for making candles.
People have been discovering signs of a shipwreck along the Oregon coast for more than 200 years, which has fueled the myth that the Santo Cristo de Burgos was blown off course in a storm and foundered nearby. Indigenous communities in the area have oral histories that mention a long-ago sinking, according to a National Geographic article. Since the early 1700s, shattered pieces of porcelain and blocks of beeswax marked in Spanish have washed up on the shores close to Astoria.
Archaeologists have been looking for the so-called Beeswax Wreck for 15 years. A recent discovery of ancient-looking timbers on a beach in Oregon by a local fisherman prompted a search of adjacent caverns for further examples of the aged wood. People immediately started claiming that the 12 timbers found last month, one of which was about eight feet long, came from the Santo Cristo de Burgos.
Could the Santo Cristo de Burgos still be in existence off the coast of Oregon? Williams believes it is. His team intends to do more study with the help of the Maritime Archaeological Society, a non-profit group that records shipwrecks and researches maritime history in the Pacific Northwest.
What remains of the wreckage is probably buried in sand, making it challenging to locate. “Goonies, never say die!” Apparently, neither does the Santo Cristo of Burgos tale.
Read more at:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/10/goonies-shipwreck-timbers-oregon/
