Portencross Galleon

The story of the Portencross Galleon is an intriguing one, mainly due to the lack of positive information or even speculative ideas as to the name and the history of the vessel.

There is no doubt that there was, and probably still is, the wreck of a large wooden ship which dates from pre 1740 lying somewhere off Portencross.

A report in Defoe’s book “Tour Through Great Britain” describes the activities of Sir Archibald Grant and Captain Roe who found a wreck at Portencross in August, 1740. They followed directions given by the locals who had recorded its sinking in their folklore.

Quoting directly from the book:

‘They have a long line which they sink with leads; one end of the rope is fixed to one boat and the other to another; they row and whatever interrupts them, the divers go down and make a discovery. They soon happened on the place where the ship lay, which was scarce a quarter of a mile from the shore, in ten fathoms and a foot of water. Captain Roe immediately went down and found the vessel to be very entire, to have a great number of guns on board, but to be full of sand. The first thing he fixed upon was a cannon, which lay upon the sand at the heel of the ship. To this he fixed his tongs, which are made of strong bars of iron. They are open, when they are let down, and have teeth, which join into one another, as soon as they are fixed upon anything, he gives the signal, when they are made to shut, and the heavier the subject, the closer they hold. The cannon was drawn up with a good deal of difficulty; it measures full nine feet, is of brass, greenish in colour, but nothing the worse. On the breech there is a rose with an E on one side and an R on the other side with this inscription – ‘Richard and John Phillips, brethren, made this piece, anno 1584. But we may observe that by the E. R. on the cannon, which denoted Elizabeth Regina, and the Rose, as also the English inscription of the makers, it should seem to us that it could not belong to the Armada, but rather to some English Ship that might have been cast away there.” Ten of these brass cannon and ten iron ones have been since carried into Dublin ; they hoped to recover 60 out of this ship. The guns were all charged, and the metal of some, by lying so long under water, moulders away like clay.’

It was later noted in a book dedicated to the Armada guns that some English guns had been landed at Naples in 1587 and transported to Spain so this could be the explanation of English cannon on board a Spanish ship. To this day there is a large iron cannon, which is attributed to the wreck, lying near Portencross Castle. This cannon was first reported in a Statisical Account of the Parish of West Kilbride in 1740. There is a second, very similar, cannon also ascribed to an Armada wreck in the collection of the McLean Museum in Greenock but little other supporting evidence traces it directly to the wreck at Portencross.

Although Defoe, and other reports, refer to the galleon as a ship of the Spanish Armada of 1588 until recently the cause of the loss and even the name of the vessel have remained a mystery.  An old local legend ascribed the sinking to Geils Buchanan, a noted witch of the neighbourhood who, on seeing the enemy ship approaching, mounted the brow of a promontory and cast a spell over the ship which immediately sank.  A colourful, if unlikely, explanation for her loss. Local historian Stephen Brown of West Kilbride has extensively researched the wreck believes he has finally revealed the name of the mystery vessel.  In his book ‘The Portencross Armada Conspiracy’ he reveals his research leads him to believe the ship was the El Espiritu Santo – a two masted patache which has until now been listed as missing after the dispersion of the Armada.  The ship was designed to carry 40 crew and 10 cannon but was in fact heavily overloaded with 112 crew and 43 cannon aboard.  If indeed this information is correct the vessel would have been very unstable and this could have resulted in her loss in a storm off Portencorss.