IX
AROUND SAN FRANCISCO BAY
San Francisco. Many persons, misled by an incorrect translation of a certain passage in Palou’s Life of Serra, have ascribed the naming of the bay of San Francisco (St. Francis), to the Portolá expedition of 1769, but, as a matter of fact, the outer bay, the great indentation in the coast outside of the Golden Gate, between Point Reyes and Mussel Point, had received this name many years before. In remonstrating with the Visitador General because no mission had been provided for St. Francis in Upper California, Serra remarked, “And is there no mission for our Father St. Francis?” Señor Galvez replied, “Si San Francisco quiere misión, que haga se halla su puerto y se le pondrá (If St. Francis wants a mission, let him cause his port to be found and one will be placed there for him).” By “his port” Galvez referred to a port already discovered and named, but which had been lost sight of during the intervening years, and which he wished to have re-discovered. This is further carried out by the succeeding statements of Palou, in which he says that after failing to recognize the port of Monterey, “they came to the port of St. Francis, our father, and they all knew it immediately by the agreement of the descriptions which they carried,” referring to descriptions obtained from the papers of the first discoverers. Father Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, says: “All the descriptions which we found here we read in the log-book of the pilot Cabrera Bueno, in order to form a judgment that this is the port of San Francisco. To make it all clear, the Señor Commandante ordered that during the day Sergeant Ortega should go out with a party of soldiers to explore.” Further on in the same diary we read: “From the top of a hill we made out the great estuary, or arm of the sea, which probably has a width of four or five leagues.” This is undoubtedly the first occasion when the eye of a white man rested upon “the great arm of the sea,” that is, the inner harbor of San Francisco as we now know it.
THE CITY OF YERBA BUENA (SAN FRANCISCO IN 1846-47)
“ ... so-called in reference to the profuse growth of that charming little vine about the locality.”
It must be remembered that until the arrival of Portolá, the Spaniards only knew this part of the coast from the sea side, having no knowledge of that great inland sea known to us as the bay of San Francisco. When the party came up by land on their futile search for Monterey, they reached Fort Point, and there recognized the marks of the outer bay as given by early navigators and called by them San Francisco. Then they climbed a hill, and looking to the landward saw the “great arm of the sea,” the inner harbor, to which the name of San Francisco was finally extended.
Palou ascribed the failure of the party to recognize the port of Monterey, and the consequent continuance of their journey as far as San Francisco, to a direct interposition of the divine hand, so that Galvez’s promise of a mission for St. Francis might be carried out.
The honor of the christening of our world-famous bay probably belongs to Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeñón, a Portuguese navigator, who was commissioned in the year 1595 by Philip II to search for safe harbors along the coast for vessels in the Philippine trade. These ships usually shaped their return course so as to touch first at about the latitude of Cape Mendocino, making a knowledge of the harbors south of that point a matter of great importance, especially in stormy weather. Cermeñón had the misfortune to lose his vessel, the San Agustín, on Point Reyes, and was compelled to make his way home, with great peril and suffering, in a small boat. In his Derrotero y Relación (Itinerary and Narrative), under date of April 24, 1596, he says: “We sighted New Spain at Cape Mendocino on November 4, 1595.... We left the bay and port of San Francisco, which is called by another name, a large bay, in 38⅔ degrees, and the islets [Farallones] in the mouth are in 38½ degrees, the distance between the two points of the bay being twenty-five leagues.” It is clear from this description that he referred to that great indentation in the coast between Point Reyes and one of the points to the south, possibly Mussel Point, and that he gave the name of San Francisco to it, displacing some other name by which it had been previously known. At any rate, if this is not the origin, it is likely to remain lost in the mists of the Pacific. Bancroft says: “There can be little doubt that Cermeñón named the port of his disaster San Francisco.”