In Peril on the Sea

by Michael Gannon, Ph.D.

Florida’s first pastor-to-be, Father Francisco López de Mendoza, sailed here from Spain in the summer of 1565 on the nineteen-ship fleet of Admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. Shortly after a replenishment stop at the Canary Islands, the ships encountered storms that broke up the fleet’s disciplined columns, and Father López found that only four other vessels were left in formation with the ship on which he was a passenger.

On the morning of July 20 another violent wind arose that, by two o’clock in the afternoon, became what Father López called “the most frightful hurricane one could imagine.” In a relación, or chronicle, of those events he wrote: “The sea, which rose to the very clouds, seemed about to swallow us up alive, and such was the fear and apprehension of the pilot and other sailors, that I pushed myself hard in exhorting my brethren and companions to repentance. I represented to them the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and with so much success that I passed the night in confessing them.”

When daylight came the next day, the priest observed that towering waves were breaking over his ship’s prow and gunwales. In that extremity the captain ordered that all objects of weight – millstones, cables, reserve rigging, even the cooking apparatus and many barrels of water – be jettisoned overside. But, with the ship thus lightened, it appeared that capsizing was still a possibility, and the captain ordered that the private chests of the soldier passengers also be jettisoned.

Alarmed that all they owned in this world was about to be consigned to the briny deep, the soldiers begged Father López to intercede on their behalf. The priest fell on his knees before the captain and implored him to spare the chests. “I reminded him that we ought to trust to the great mercy of Our Lord,” Father López wrote, “and, like a true Christian, he showed confidence in God and rescinded the order.”

Though the storm continued unabated, Father López’s ship remained just barely afloat. “During that whole night,” Father López wrote, “I preached to the crew and exhorted them to maintain their faith in God.” Finally, after three days and nights of peril, “Our Lord deigned to have compassion and mercy on us, and calmed the fury of the winds and waves.”

On Monday, August 27, Father López’s battered ship with four others approached the Florida shoreline. When darkness fell, Father López wrote: “God showed to us a miracle from heaven. About nine o’clock in the evening, a comet appeared, which showed itself directly above us, a little eastward, giving so much light that it might be taken for the sun, and its brightness lasted long enough to repeat two Credos [the Apostles’ Creed].”

They were just off Cape Canaveral.

Anyone who, nearly four and a half centuries later, has watched a night launch of a rocket from Cape Canaveral can relate to Father López’s experience.