Esteban Rodriguez

I certify thereto: 

Gonzalo de Santiago, notary by appointment

In the city of Manila, on the nineteenth day of the month of April, one thousand five hundred and seventy-nine, the very illustrious Doctor Francisco de Sande, governor and captain-general for his Majesty in these Western Islands, and his auditor in the royal Audiencia of Mexico in Nueva Espana, declared that he has heard that a war-galley of the king of Portugal was lost on the coast of Mindanao, and in order to ascertain where it was going, and whose it was, he ordered to be made, and did make, the following inquiries.

In verification of the abovesaid, the said governor summoned to his presence a man, who declared his name to be Bartolome Fernandez, a native of the city of Goa in Yndia.  He said that he was there a freeman, serving as page a Portuguese named Luis Fragoso; and that he is a baptized Christian.  The oath was taken and received from him before God and the blessed Mary, and on the sign of the cross, in the form prescribed by law; under which obligation, being questioned, this witness said that he left the city of Goa, in Yndia, about a year or so ago, in a galleon called “San Jhosef,” under Captain Martin Lopez de Sossa, a nobleman.  With the said ship was a merchant ship from Cochin.  The said ship “San Jhosef,” had one hundred old Portuguese soldiers, and one hundred others, young mestizos of that land.  It was equipped with twelve large pieces and certain culverins.  The soldiers were armd with arquebuses and other weapons.  This said vessel was despatched to Maluco, by order of the governor of Yndia, Don Diego de Meneses, and the said Martin Lopez de Sossa was captain.  In Malaca, more of the mestizos of Yndia, sons of Portuguese, were shipped, to the number of three hundred men.  These with the mestizos brought from Yndia, made somewhere about five hundred men in the said galleon.  A galley of twenty-four benches accompanied it, each oar being manned with three men.  They carried lead.  The galley was old and was given to them in Malaca by the captain of Malaca, named Arias de Saldeva, who is captain of the fortress.  The captain of the sea is Matias de Alburquerque.  Because of the said Martin Lopez de Sossa falling sick, he remained in Malaca, very sick; and one of his brothers, Pedro Lopez de Sossa, came in his place as captain of the said galleon.  Another nobleman, Tome de Sossa, a former page of the said Matias de Alburquerque, captain of the sea, was made captain of the said galley.  This witness was aboard this galley, in the service of the said Tome de Sossa, who brought this witness from Yndia to Malaca.  Thus the said galleon and galley, with the people above mentioned (of whom some fifty soldiers were aboard the galley and the rest aboard the galleon), set sail for Maluco in the month of August of last year seventy-eight.  After sailing for a week, they anchored at Borney, near the island of Mohala.