By Alex Owens

Maritime Museum’s wizard behind the San Salvador to be knighted

May 7 will be quite a night for Dr. Raymond Ashley. That’s when he’s going to become a Spanish knight.

Ashley is the president and CEO of the Maritime Museum of San Diego. As part of his duties, he helped organize the building of a replica of the San Salvador, the Spanish galleon that Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed into San Diego Harbor on Sept. 28, 1542.

“That was the first European ship to go up the California coast,” Ashley said. “When it did, our section joined the rest of the world.”

The Spanish government was so impressed with the Museum’s devotion to this important part of Spanish and American history that it decided to honor Ashley with a knighthood — Spain’s highest distinction.

Despite the prestigious honor, Ashley doesn’t plan to make his friends and family call him “Sir.”

“Absolutely not!” he said, laughing. “But all my friends are having fun with it.”

Ashley came up with the idea of building a full-sized replica of the San Salvador 20 years ago, but the actual recreation has been a 10-year project for Ashley and the Maritime Museum.

Ashley directed the project from “start to finish,” said Iris Engstrand, a director at the museum.

“[He] raised the funds, overcame setbacks and watched its launching after a pouring rain,” Engstrand stated in a press release. “Cabrillo would have been proud.”

After its christening in July of last year, the ship made its pubic debut and was added to the Museum’s repertoire last September, but work is still needed to make the ship truly seaworthy.

“We’re still figuring how to set the sails and how they would work separately and together,” Ashley said. “There’s been a lot of reverse engineering.”

It’s impossible to understate the importance of the original San Salvador to the history of San Diego and California.

“You can’t say Cabrillo discovered the area — there were people living here for 10,000 years, but this is when our section joined the rest of the world,” Ashley said. “This is the equivalent to the Mayflower in that this is the moment that ‘we’ started.”

Recreating the San Salvador presented challenges because no plans existed for the ship.

“It was built in Guatemala, but, back then, sailors built ships in their head using rules of thumb they learned from being at sea,” Ashley said. “We looked at hundreds of period images that showed galleons, old contracts and treatises and studied ships that had been wrecked and were still underwater.”

The outward appearance of the replica San Salvador looks identical to a ship in the 16th century, but there are significant differences, Ashley admitted.

“The original ship was only expected to last around 12 years,” he said. “We had to build ours to last between 50 to 100 years. Plus, we had to add outside ballast and an engine — things the Coast Guard requires if you’re going to sail.”

There have been a lot of advancements in shipbuilding in the last 450 years, but Ashley is impressed with the original San Salvador’s trek from Guatemala to San Diego and up to Northern California.

“That’s a difficult voyage,” he said. “You’re going against the current. Cabrillo did it in a fast time despite sailing past an area with few natural harbors. Father Serra’s 1769 voyage didn’t make it as fast.”

Ashley isn’t the only person affiliated with the San Diego Maritime Museum to be granted a Spanish knighthood. Douglas Sharp, the Naval architect who designed the replica San Salvador, and Engstrand, who is also a University of San Diego history professor, also previously received the honor.

Ashley feels honored to be in their presence.

“This would not have happened without my friends who received it previously and thought I was a good candidate,” he said.

While grateful, Ashley is trying to keep his perspective.

“My daughter is studying in Spain and this story is not exactly on the radar there, but it’s a nice honor,” he said.

The official ceremony takes place May 7 at the San Diego Maritime Museum, located at 1492 N. Harbor Drive, starting at 5 p.m., in front of the docked replica San Salvador. The Consul General of Spain from Los Angeles will do the honors.

Organizers said the knighting is open to members, media, invited guests and anyone who has purchased a museum admission ticket that day and is still there at the time of the ceremony.

For more information, visit sdmaritime.org

—Alex Owens is a San Diego-based freelance writer. He can be reached at [email protected].