5 August 1775: The “San Carlos” enters San Francisco Bay
Carl Nolte is San Francisco’s Cervantes: writer, historian, soul-of-The City. Most importantly, our friend. Today, he chronicles (all puns intended) a moment in maritime and world history. I share it here as Alfredo and I are in Andalucía, the region of Ayala’s birth, that pioneering Iberian captain.
— David Eugene Perry
This 250th anniversary in San Francisco will probably pass in silence
By Carl Nolte,
Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle
Aug 2, 2025
Tuesday is the 250th anniversary of a sea voyage that went down in history. Not long before dark on a windy and cold afternoon, Aug. 5, 1775, the Royal Spanish Navy ship San Carlos entered the harbor of San Francisco Bay and anchored for the night just off the beach at what is now the Presidio. As far as anyone knows, the San Carlos was the first ship to enter San Francisco Bay.
The arrival of the San Carlos set off a whole series of events. Once the Spanish found out the extent and potential of the area, they decided to send a party of colonists the very next year; they arrived in the spring of 1776. It was the beginning of San Francisco and the end of a way of life for people who had lived around the bay for thousands of years.
Two hundred fifty years is a big milestone, but any story about exploration comes with baggage: colonialism and the fatal impact of European contact on native peoples. So there will be no celebration of this anniversary as far as I know. But any voyage into the unknown has a certain fascination. As a kid I devoured stories about explorers: Robert Scott in the Antarctic, Roald Amundsen on the Northwest Passage. I just finished “The Wide Wide Sea,” Hampton Sides’ book on Capt. James Cook. I never outgrew these tales.
So the voyage of the San Carlos to San Francisco was a natural. The commander of the San Carlos, Teniente de Fragata(Frigate Lt.) Juan Manuel de Ayala, kept a careful log of the voyage, and it’s preserved in the Council of the Indies in Seville. The Spanish descriptions are so clear you can visit the locations Ayala wrote about. You can take a ferry to Angel Island to the cove where the San Carlos anchored for a month, or sail to Vallejo up the wide bay the Spanish named for St. Paul.
Just the other day I drove to the little beach at the edge of the Presidio where the San Carlos anchored that first night in San Francisco Bay in 132 feet of water with a sandy bottom. The spot is not far from what we call the Golden Gate. It’s part of a national park, popular with joggers and dog walkers.
Ayala anchored the ship a quarter-mile from the beach, but Ayala didn’t like the look of it: too windy, too much current, whirlpools and riptides. So in the morning he moved across the bay to Marin to a place he called Carmelita, out of the wind. You can stand on that little San Francisco beach and see that cross bay trip in your mind’s eye.
But the bottom was soft on the north side, and that wouldn’t do either. Ayala feared losing the anchor in the mud.
Ayala’s chief mate and pilot, José de Cañizares, had scouted a cove on the bay’s biggest island, not far away, and Ayala eventually took the ship there. As it was near her feast day, the island was named for Our Lady, Queen of the Angels — Angel Island. Another island was found to be inhospitable, with steep cliffs and hundreds of pelicans. Alcatraz.
Ayala sent Cañizares, the pilot, with 10 men in a launch to explore and chart the bay. They went north and east taking soundings and mapping the shore. They went as far as Carquinez Strait, which they named for the Karquin people they met, and into Suisun Bay. Another pilot, Juan Aguirre, went south toward what became San Jose. The chart they made became the first accurate map of the bay region.
Juan Manuel de Ayala was born in Andalusia and was a graduate of the Spanish naval academy. By the time he was assigned to Mexico he was 29, and after 15 years in the service was still a lieutenant. But he had a good reputation and was one of five officers hand picked by the viceroy to explore the north coast on three ships. The Spanish knew about San Francisco Bay and wanted more information.
Ayala must have been disappointed when he got to San Blas, a small base near Puerto Vallarta, to be given command of the schooner Sonora, only 36 feet long and designed for inshore work. The Sonora and two other ships sailed from San Blas on the afternoon of March 21,1775, the first day of spring.
There was trouble. The San Carlos, a two-masted packet boat that was the largest in the fleet, hoisted a signal. The captain, Diego Manrique, a senior lieutenant, was sick “and unable to continue the voyage.” He’d had a mental breakdown. He became paranoid, convinced himself that persons unknown were after him. He stashed loaded pistols all over the ship. The fleet commander relieved Manrique and picked Ayala to replace him.
On April 4, when the fleet was near the Port of Mazatlan, one of the pistols the unfortunate former captain had hidden away went off and shot Ayala in the foot. Ayala was so badly hurt he couldn’t walk. This was in 1775, and one can only imagine the medical help available on a ship at sea. Mazatlan was not far away and Ayala could have turned back. But this was his chance — an independent command with orders to go to the uncharted port of San Francisco. So, disabled as he was, he stayed in command.
The voyage was long and tedious; the San Carlos was very slow, especially when sailing against the wind and in the heavy coastal fog. It took from early April to late June to sail from Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja California, to Monterey, where they stopped for repairs, and nearly a week from Monterey to the Gulf of the Farallones. At sunrise on Aug. 5, the ship was at 36 degrees 42 minutes north latitude and Ayala could see what we now call the Golden Gate. The rest was history.
The arrival of the San Carlos was not the first contact between the people of the Bay Area and Europeans. An expedition led by Gaspar de Portolá first sighted the bay in the fall of 1769. In 1772, another expedition, this one headed by army Capt. Pedro Fages, explored the eastern side of the bay. They calculated the latitude of the entrance to the estuary. A gap in the coastal hills looked to them like “a gate.” Three years later, Ayala knew where to sail.
The Spanish sailors found the local people “affable and hospitable.” They came aboard the ship and invited the foreigners to their camps. They offered food and small gifts. Padre Vicente Santa Maria was quite taken with what he called “the heathens” and tried to learn their language and culture.
The voyage of the San Carlos did not create the historic drama that followed, but it set the stage. On one of his exploring trips, the pilot Aguirre came upon a little cove. On the shore were three people, weeping uncontrollably. He couldn’t understand the reason for the tears, but he called it “La Ensenada de los llorones” — the cove of the weepers. Today it’s called Mission Bay, San Francisco’s newest neighborhood.
Carl Nolte;
Carl Nolte is a fourth generation San Franciscan who has been with The Chronicle since 1961. He stepped back from daily journalism in 2019 after a long career as an editor and reporter including service as a war correspondent. He now writes a Sunday column, “Native Son.” He won several awards, including a distinguished career award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a maritime heritage award from the San Francisco Maritime Park Association, and holds honorary degrees from the University of San Francisco and the California State University Maritime Academy.
