Acapulco and Ulloa

In 1534 two more ships, the San Lazaro and the Concepcion, were launched from Tehuantepec, one under Grijalva’s command and the other under a captain called Diego Becerra de Mendoza. Grijalva would distinguish himself with the discovery of two of the islands, Socorro and San Benedicto, in the Revillagigedo group. To Diego Becerra, Cortes encharged a quest for the vanished Hurtado de Mendoza. Shortly afterwards events took place which Cortes had never anticipated: Ordoño (or Ortuño or Fortun Jimenez), in spite of his status as a disciplined cosmographer and a perspicacious pilot, became insanely jealous of Becerra, to the extent of murdering him in his sleep. After assuming command of the ship he reached a previously unknown area, part of which he named Vizcaino, though sixty-two years later it was to be called Baya, or Bahia de la Paz.

Fortun Jimenez took a party ashore but alt were overpowered by a group of California natives. Jimenez was killed along with twenty white men in his party. The terrified survivors returned to the Concep-cion and disembarked in Chiametia, on the Jalisco coast, where Nuno de Guzman, one of Cortes’ sworn enemies, sacked the ship. Grijalva reported these events to Cortes when he returned on the San Lazaro, and Cortes, determined to salvage his honor, sailed for Chiametia in 1535 in three more ships. He was further incited by tales involving this supposed isle of Lower California -among them only one truth, the attractive fact of the region’s pearls- but they only led to his most disastrous adventure. In the midst of his California chaos he received news from his woman. Among other items of information he was told that the First Viceroy in New Spain was due to arrive. Reluctantly, Cortes returned, and from Acapulco proceeded directly to the Capital. Later, his men ill and himself half dead from starvation, Ulloa also decided to return. But...

But: Cortes’ obstinacy was unequalled. In 1539 he ordered Francisco de Ulloa back from Acapulco to California in the same vessels he himself had used, the Santa Agueda, the Santo Tomas and the Trinidad. It was to be Ulloa’s last journey. Almost as soon as the sails had been raised the smallest ship, the Santo Tomas, was lost. Ulloa explored the Gulf of California in Cortes’ name and established that the long tongue of inhospitable land was a peninsula, not an island. He sailed along the western coast and then, in the region of Cerros Island (later Cedros), sent his report back to Acapulco on the Santa Agueda while he, on the Trinidad, accompanied by a faithful crew, was mysteriously lost forever.