The Shipyard (A Short Story by Chester Cabalza)

Copyright © 2010 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved.

“IMAGINE HOW MANY GALLEONS ducked in this site, do you?” the chief archaeologist asks his wife after he wore his mini telescope that could peek the farthest sight and where bluish seascape laps with clouds like aphids.

He traverses the beach resort at the Golden Black Seaport in Appari, thinking some great galleons drowned in the seabed and its treasures untouched by the fishermen and local divers. That was almost five hundred years ago but until now some locals confirmed none of the treasures below had neither been recovered nor stolen for the past decades. As a prime archaeologist, Charles is commissioned by the National Museum after his controversial discovery of the ancient bones and the brick kiln in Liwan Valley. In his new mission, the now famed archaeologist, exuding a bright aura, will carve another history in the making to unearth treasures of the lost Dutch galleon.

The Golden Black Seaport is indeed an archaeological site. A known resort and storage of great legends and artifacts. Some says that it was an erstwhile metal smelting archaeological site during the Manila-Acapulco trade. The vast property maybe a shipyard for ship fastenings in the past.

Charles spots an abrupt change in his domain; not by its geomorphology, but because a dangerous, threatening living specimen steps in his property. The barangay captain broaches him to Darwin – a young yet aloof balikbayan anthropologist from University of Arizona. The wannabe protégé has debunked contentious discoveries of his uncle Charles in either academic journals or international forums as both untrue and hoaxes, and later to claim honor and prestige in the academe. He even maligns the older Indiana Jones’ credibility in front of his imported team.

The noon roofs the archeological site as the sun ascends and reaches its strategic throne. Charles stops his workers from clearing wild grasses, cogon and bamboos. He heads straight to the site laboratory where his wife Minerva and research assistant Bridgett stay for lunch.

He freaks out!

The seasoned archeologist amoks with immense frustration with Darwin’s sudden unfriendly visit to the site. He cuts into pieces the alidade mapping, although the ladies were used to his temper, and then they just scorn him.

“What’s your freaking problem, Charles?” Minerva inquires but he remains rough with himself.

He knows that his nephew would become his top rival in the project. He cautions the ladies inside the room to stay away from him.

“He’s a big threat to us!”

“What made you think of that, sir?” Bridget asks him.

“I just know it. I can’t explain! He has all the keys and secrets,” he says while chasing hardly his breath.

“Let me see,” his wife thinks, “it’s better if we hire a local historian, maybe this could help us…” Minerva suggests while chewing a spoon of rice.

“No!” he adamantly replies.

The night entangles the surrounding. Sea waves harmoniously blend with the strong wind dancing with sundry trees and its million foliages. Lola Juana, a native narrator and one of the fine storytellers arrives at the laboratory. She engages herself with intimate stories about the place to the ladies. Although, that time Charles retires early and refuses meeting the old oracle. Out of the blue, he changes his mind when his wife admonishes that she would not sleep beside him unless he will talk to the chronicler.

“Good evening, sir!” she utters in her sore voice.

“What can I do for you?” he asks.

Minerva starts explaining, by her suggestion that noon to hire a local historian, and so, able to convince the old woman to come. Lola Juana is articulate as ever as enchanting, possesses a surprising youthful charm then reiterates her story when seven Moro pirates attacked a Spanish galleon in the old port near the resort. In her story, the ruling Spaniards defeated the pirates. It was a bloody fight. Many foreigners died. Blood spilled to the sea. Local residents got scared when Moro virtas frequented the horizon. As a result, inhabitants abandoned the village and chose to settle in Allacapan.

“In what place?” Charles catches her saying while holding tightly his cup of coffee. His drug every time he appears haggard.

“The creepy town!” she reiterates.

“Do you know about the map?” the archeologist asks boldly.

She looks abysmal and pauses after his inquiry. He psyches then scrutinizes every detail of her words; her expressions and thoughts. Startlingly the beautiful storyteller perspires heavily, as if she sits in the inquisition, and wipes her sweats with black handkerchief. That proves his prejudged impression that she might be one of the witches in the small town based from the local historian’s facade.

“Don Vargas!” she hastily utters, “Sir...I really have to go now…” she appears so clumsy. She stands up nervously and strides toward the closed tent door. Meanwhile Minerva requests the two other scientists to accompany her at the bank after that she paddles quickly her boat.

The full moon shines so enthrallingly that its light has illuminated the shores of the famed seaport. During the anchovy season from November to March, fishing boats and outfits operating nets, the largest of the local outfits cease to work, and their absence marks the “low season” as typified by a retreating flow of fish.

Midnight enclosed the place yet both of them could not sleep. Perhaps baffled of the accounts told by the local historian. Suddenly he froze by the cold wind, prompted from the shore. He wrapped doubly his body with coat and blanket. As he turned to her, he smacked his wife a stolen kiss before sleeping, and suddenly, she pushed him away and wept.

“You shouldn’t have asked about the map!” her voice quaked.

“What are you talking about my lovely wife,” he snorted haughtily, “next time when you get a squealer, make sure she is credible,” as he embraced her, “common, let’s sleep now. You promised!”

“Shut up! What if she’s telling the truth?” she murmured.

“Show me the evidence! Simple as that,” he reasoned out.

The next sunny day, Darwin commanded his workers and built the grid system located near the pond.

“Geomorphology…” he conversed with his workers, “…this site is prone to flood. This is a stream delta surrounded by mangrove under the brackish swampy to marshy environment,” thus referred to the area, “adjust it to S7 E25 and move to the east, instead change it to S7 E26,” he taught his team, measured the grid before laying it out with strings and stakes.

“Stop!” warned his Uncle Charles, “you don’t have a permit from the National Museum to excavate!”

Darwin did not listen to his livid, fuming Uncle Charles and persevered in his task. Immense wrath invaded the archeologist’s nerves. He even neared him and blocked the presumptuous dilettante anthropologist. But tactful, as a result, in Darwin’s haste displeasure to his rival excavator, he haughtily showed the permit in front his uncle’s two stuffed eyes.

“This is a lesson for you, Uncle Charles!” Darwin ridiculed him.

But Charles stared minutely at him and then turned his back. Late in the afternoon, the thwarted archaeologist sat aguishly at the beach and threw pebbles and dead shells back to the sea. Excitedly, he sighted dolphins which had consequently uplifted his drive. It was a therapeutic view for him. Those marvelous sea mammals passed the luminous sea; chased by a motorized boat that ferried French and Taiwanese tourists and a local folk. They crusaded its path and photographed. Tourists and fishermen always got excited of that tame underwater species. As he watched them, his mind wandered mysteriously - the sun quickly vanished into the twilight then it settled at its cot, clouds moved fast forward and transformed from orange to gray, the stars and moonlight glowed extremely then planets revolved in three dimensional positions, tsunamis and tidal waves flooded his face, drowned him together with a vast galleon. All of the things he saw, including him had been drowned by a corpulent shark. His vista turned so surreal.

“Remove it!” he pulled out the fingers covering his eyes. Immediately he recovered his consciousness but saw everything around him back to normal. The sleepy sun was descending from its throne and boats strolled the waves of a dazzling seascape.

“Sorry, lonely boy,” equipped Bridget and took out her fingers from his weary eyes. She appeared horny in her bathing suit and jumped off the big waves.

“No!” he shouted at them. “Don’t swim!” he cautioned after a strain in his bizarre daydreaming.

“Why sir?” responded loudly by his associates, already half-naked and guys chased the lone babe in the cold waves. They swam gaily. They braved each other and swam farther away from the shoreline. Charles stammered at the coastline. He quickly returned to the laboratory. As he passed the site, Darwin’s team had already dug deeply, about two hundred meters from the LDP at quadrant one and one hundred fifty meters at quadrant two. They exposed a strange stone formation. Some of them wondered that it might lead to the hidden treasures but the budding anthropologist was still secretive about it. Then, he intentionally roofed his prized artifacts with pages of newspapers from the eyes of his archrival.

“This is espionage!” he alleged to his men while his uncle passed by their square.

Charles arrived enraged at the villa. His wife gladly saluted him in great ecstasy especially that she could already present proofs to him about the tales of her informant that she indeed was telling the truth based from historical literatures of the town. Hastily, she showed some books but frustrated by her husband’s vacillating feeling.

“We could not make it. I’m totally lost!” he consulted her, “he has the map!”

“Who? Your evil nephew? Don’t lose hope, darling? We have one more alas,” she fortified his ego. She believed that his husband’s strength would rebound after he read the notes she jotted.

He rested on his favorite chair. It comforted his back. Then, she took off his shoes and odorous socks. Sit back and relax. While he read those thick ethnographies and notes his wife shown to him about the shipyard, suddenly, it pasted him an envious smile. It certainly shimmered his odd feeling. He fell to sleep but waves of noises disturbed and drove him mad. As he stood and peeked at the window, he went out, and sternly summoned his staff by his irate voice.

“What the heck you’re shouting about?” bellowed Charles. Minerva was surprised too. The group of swimmers neared him. Still, their bodies soaked with salt water and handed down a beautiful unbroken kendi or a pouring vessel.

“We found it beneath the sea of only ten feet deep,” narrated Bridgett.

“Bring it to the laboratory,” he commanded his researchers, “and you lady, put on your clothes,” he looked at her with discontentment, “we got work to do now!”

Immediately, his fervor ingenuity and skills had flourished, challenged by the existence of that miniature kendi. He sensed it would give him a lead. It seemed his instinct had rejuvenated and his renewed zest had unfolded his mission in unveiling the kendi’s mystery. Perhaps, a key to the lost Dutch galleon he had been searching for many decades. As he entered the laboratory, he walked silently to the computer and analyzed a graphic matrix. The battle between two galleons under Spanish Lt. Gov. Gen. Antonio de Morga and Dutch Admiral Oliver Van Noort off Batangas on sixteen hundred. A first marine battle between two European powers to attain glory. Spain versus Netherlands. Unfortunately, it defeated Spain’s San Diego, also known as San Antonio. It carried bountiful relics, though. In fact, that fateful event pioneered the underwater archaeology in the archipelago.

“Bring to me the kendi. What’s the date?” he asked the stunning tall Bridgett.

“Almost five hundred years old,” she replied.

“Okay! Come to think of it! Did westerners show interest in Chinese things?”
“Of course!” glided Minerva while he attentively eavesdropping to him.

“First thing first. Let’s study the trading route of the galleons,” he drilled his team.

“But sir, this place is a shipbuilding site during the Spanish regime!” Bridget echoed, “Naturally, galleons did come in this place, right?” she stretched her point.

“Perhaps one of the many uncovered sites, “ Charles quickly added.

“So, the great archaeologist did found his momentum!” Darwin suddenly intruded around the busy team, “Well, that’s certainly good news. Now we have the same score, uncle. I also found a Dutch wine bottle, probably in the same period as that of your kendi.”

“What are you doing here?” Charles asked fiercely.

“Just adding information,” his infuriating words, “I challenge you uncle, whoever gets the first grand lead will get the recognition…” he smirked sheepishly at him, as if not afraid of the big fish.

“I certainly take the challenge!” he stated very strongly.

Charles’ team noticed that the terrain had silty clay loam with grayish color closer to black containing bountiful organic materials, eco-facts, and artifacts like brick tiles, pot fragments, mirrors, fragment of glasses, shells and corals of recent time. After the exhausting excavation, both teams finished their ordinary day with no extraordinary discoveries. But Darwin’s team, still pompous of their stone formations. Headway to new, stronger links to the treasures of the lost Dutch galleon. In no haste, Charles could not resist with enormous evidences on slag and fuel, metals and iron, proving smelting was one of the major activities undertaken in the coast before; backed up with oral and archaeological evidences. It surely showed that shipbuilding industry thrived in the newest hub.

Later that chilly night, the prime archeologist’s team worked overtime. They brainstormed. Talked about updated theoretical frameworks in doing the excavation in saving portions of the site for the next generation archaeologists who may have equipped with high-tech gadgets. Archaeology may sometimes mean destruction. They drunk cold beers while softly discussed of where to search the real map. Though at the back of his mind, he was convinced that his nephew did not have the authentic map, by reason that up to that moment he fretted his lead. Obsessively he observed the kendi. He reviewed it as one of the many artifacts retrieved from the Spanish navio (merchant ship) of San Antonio, off Fortune Islands. Startlingly, his wife appeared to them. With her wizardry of the subject, she presented the route of the Dutch armada Mauritius, thinking it would help him in his quest of the map. Then, they all headed in front the IBM computer.

“Look at this perspective,” she took a big breath while holding closely the mouse. “Noort left Holland in fifteen ninety-seven with two hundred forty-eight men and four ships,” pointed the jpeg picture to her husband, “Passing Strait off Magellan, he attacked shipping on the west coast of South America, raided Valparaiso in Chile and directly sailed to the Philippines.”

“Then what happened?” he asked more questions.

“He landed first near Capul Island just inside the Strait of San Bernardino,” she pointed the map, “and then by some circumstances, he might had passed Cagayan,” she looked at him, still thinking deeply.

“Interesting!” Bridget claimed.

“For sure we are not looking for Mauritius,” he cautioned them, “that theory may be true, but what we are searching are other Dutch galleons who may have the same path as that of victorious Mauritius...”

“Exactly!” his wife retorted.



THAT VERY same evening, the local historian bothered again the couple. But then, he affably conversed at her inside his well-lit laboratory. He listened conscientiously to her. He thought she could be a credible source ready to help him in his mission.

“I heard the last word you mentioned before was Don Miguel Vargas, right? That’s the father of my grandfather” he recapped.

“Yes, sir,” she nodded.

“Why you mentioned his name?” he asked her while playing his hands, “are you saying then that he...you know...that Vargas let’s say has connection to the treasures of the lost Dutch galleon?”

“A galleon? There were also mini-galleons,” she corrected him, “mini-galleons were built here,” she told him.

“Honey,” Minerva interrupted him, “I think she’s right. She must have a better clue,” she then concluded.
“Continue please madam,” he courteously uttered and addressed the guest with some respect, “and the old town you’re referring? What is the relation of all these – Don Vargas and the mini-galleons?” putting into sequence the facts.

“Very important!”

“What about?” he mellowed his temper.

“Go to Daan-Ili in Allacapan and you will meet Ildandencio. I will ask my grandson Puto to meet you at the riverbank, beside the market, early in the morning. He knows about the map. Just tell the codename, Biuag and Malana. Remember, follow the river,” her firm instruction.

“Biuag and Malana?” he snooped, “you mean the local epic heroes?”

“Do it quickly! There’s no time left…”

“Why?” his last query.

“I really have to go now,” and she hurriedly walked off.

“Daan-Ili? No, don’t go there, honey! Please, listen to me!” she hysterically cautioned him as her eyes struck with fear.

“Call them all!” he commanded his wife, “I need to talk to them!” in his trademark furious words, walloped inside the laboratory.

His whole staff was already asleep when they gathered in front of him. Bridgett was in her pajamas and her face polished with cream. Charles instructed each one of his men and women. He gave them special missions especially Bridgett to head a team to the old, creepy town by land.

“I don’t wanna go to that old town! They say it’s dangerous out there! Assign me another work, please!” Bridgett grumbled girlishly.

“I will head the team,” Minerva unwaveringly volunteered.

“Not in your condition. You will stay here. Guard our plots in the site!” he said to her.

“No!” Glenda protested.

“Mark my word!” he insisted.
“Hell! I hate it! I don’t like adventures!” Bridgett muttered. She frowned as she returned to her room.

“You’ll love it soon – it’s like the Callao Caves adventure, babe!” Charles wheedled her.

The sun had not yet risen when Charles met Puto at the riverbank. They navigated the trail of the long Cagayan River. Bridgett headed the all boys team to Daan-Ili, known to be a garrison during the Japanese invasion and cradle of fierce Huks after the liberation. It maybe the road was narrow and rough that caused the Nissan highlander to wiggle but they reached the far-off place safely. Even before the sudden expedition, sages of the town had been discouraging visitors to reach the so-called ghost town.

At the campsite Minerva guarded the tent, disturbed by the unceasing barking of dogs. Her eyes, so keen enough to her surrounding. She hid behind the half closed tent to sneak a quick look at the passersby. Darwin’s team hobbled at the camp and carried scuba gears with them, she suddenly suspected something terrible, and perhaps the rival team might have an option. She felt skeptic of my nephew’s team, thinking they might have found the authentic map. When she peeked at them, for the second time, all of the diggers grandiosely wear scuba gears, and attentively listened to Darwin.

Finally, Charles and his team met at the ‘old creepy town’. More than anything else, the place was as lovely as its orchards and gardens. Amazed eyes towed to the kaleidoscopic sceneries of mountains and river, deceived by people who claimed the place as an ugly town. The heritage Spanish villas, cemeteries, and its baroque church were still preserved.

“Never been to Oz!” Charles proclaimed upon stepping the town.

As he surfaced from the boat, Puto stayed behind. He walked freely, but not tensed. His paces tracked by his anxious team but saw people living quietly in the enamored town. And later they bumped estrange camouflaged men behind an impressive Spanish villa. The haunted-like villa silently opened its door and they hauled in sudden jolt. They were frightened to enter the house and chirped like noisy children.

“Silence!” Charles shouted, “I will go first...” and climbed up the stairs.

“Codename!” says a voice, perhaps from the guard he deemed.

“Biuag and Malana,” he replied fretfully.

The door opened. Bridget and the guys climbed up also the stairs. They entered half-heartedly but as soon as they were inside, the guards shut the huge door, and a platoon showed up. A wise bearded hermit sat at the nucleus of the archaic room, surrounded by his feisty guards.

Then, the archaeologist spoke gently, “You must be Ildandecio,” and he told about the map.

“Many have tried to come into this place thinking they would get the map,” the wise man had spoken, “but they failed!” he said in his stern admonition.

“What would you do once you have searched the treasures?” he asked.

“The country owns the treasures,” Charles in his bold utterance, “it is better to bring back to where it truly belonged!”

The wise man agreed and said, “Don’t forget to give a piece of that treasure to this town so that children here will remember that once, this town became part of our history.”

“I will build a museum in this town, maybe soon...” he replied.

“Where’s the map?” Charles turned so impatient.

“You already had it?” he bluffed, “you already found it Charles, do you?” the wise man beamed.

“No. I still don’t have.”

“Go home and you will see it. Go!” the wise man uttered his final say.

As he woke up that day, his joints and bones were aching, as if he had traveled so far and toiled so hard from the excavation, but as he tried to recall, he had never accomplished a heavyweight task since day one of his project. He moved to the laboratory and asked his wife if the local historian returned last night, hastily she confirmed, the sage was frightened to return, perhaps afraid of him. He felt confused. Abruptly, his scientific illustrator ran to him. He reported that Darwin’s team had begun undertaking a preliminary underwater mapping at the nearby coast. Sudden loath subdued his sanity. Immediately, Minerva prepared his coffee. As soon as Bridget entered the laboratory, fresh from bath, she went straight to dating artifacts. He looked at her. And then inquired her if she recalled a trip to the old town of Daan-Ili. Yet she responded that she had never been to the creepy town. He turned so paranoid, perhaps paranoid of his dream. He was thinking where he bore the codename Biuag and Malana? Out of nowhere. Then, the seasoned archaeologist turned his neck, stretched it with simple calisthenics. But when he came to face the kendi, suddenly the stunning scientist astounded also at the relic, as she sealed it with a plaster of Paris for restoration, words of the wise man in his dream rewind so fast, and in a haste circumstance, the kendi fell from her hands.

“Oh no!” she screamed, “I broke it!”

Charles ran. He glimpsed at the broken relic.
“It’s okay,” he said as she shriveled on his shoulder. As he looked down, he saw a crumpled map that suggested its oldness.
“Goodness! It’s a…” he deceased to name it. His men neared them; shocked of what was inside the broken kendi.

“Thanks my genie!” Charles excitedly declared, “don’t tell to anyone about this!”

But suddenly, an elderly man in patchwork attire entered the tent and searched the chief archeologist. When he turned his happy eyes to the guest, unexpectedly, he recalled a face similar in his madcap dream. He surely knew he already met him - somewhere.

“I am Ildandencio,” the man identified himself.

Charles still mystified. He scrutinized his hermit-like face. And then, he felt a bit scared as soon as he realized his dream was coming into reality.

“I could help you in your quest!” said Ildandencio.

“How?” the archeologist asserted.

“Sir, I heard about your search of the Dutch galleon. I dreamed of you many nights with the kendi,” his face bewailed trying to convince him, “that broken object came from me. Yesterday I was in the boat. I was with some tourists and I dropped it in the sea, so your men would retrieve it. I wanted to personally give it to you but I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me…so…” he punned.

“Where did it come from?” he asked him.

“My grandparents gave it to me. It was a gift of great Don Vargas to them, after saving his life from the pirates” he stressed, “the kendi was popularly known here as Biuag and Malana,” he narrated.

Charles eavesdropped attentively, though he had still queries in mind. The strange man also recounted that pirates had stolen the kendi. The kendi, in fact, turned to be a mythical object. Believed that whoever held it would become immortal. So, there was a massive search for the antique. When it was found by a group of treasure hunters in Babuyan Island from the pirates’ wrecked vista, drowned by raging sea, unluckily they died in an ambush in Happy Valley. Many decades passed when Ildandencio’s kindred found it from the communist’s camp, after a bloody retaliation of the marines in Marrag Valley.

Actually, numerous Chinese porcelains and kendis had been bartered with Dutch explorers for food and wine. But Spaniards and Dutch always fought in the high seas and a number of Dutch Galleons were drowned and for centuries, it rested on the waterbed.



THE EXPEDITION was a grandiose event. It took several months to muster experts and workers in the waterworld site. They had recovered bounty of relics and treasures of the biggest Dutch Galleon, wrecked beneath the waters of Golden Black Resort in Happy Valley. Charles led his thirty-eight-man team combined with Darwin’s dozen-man team, and some elite associates of the Underwater Archeology Division of the National Museum. It composed of professional divers trained in France, having diplomas at International Certificate of Scientific Research Diving, documenters, photographers, scientific illustrators, and technicians. They toiled impressively. Under the sea, a three hundred-meter long suction tube, and deep tow nuclear magnetic resonance magnetometers and recording equipment, imported from the U.S. and Europe helped them saved its hidden treasures. Ten professional divers including Charles and Darwin dived the cold water initially for transects. Indeed, layers of sands and tons of rocks on the seabed had tremendously sheltered the ship and its priceless artifacts.

“Do you hear me? Copy! Copy!” said Charles submerged two hundred fifty-nine meters feet like a merman in his scuba-diving gear, as he deciphered and transmitted codes to Minerva at the laboratory.

“Copy. We found the ship. Positive,” Darwin sighted with various marine species and planktons that cased the wreck galleon.

After they cleared the site with suction tubes innovated by Darwin, together they finished the daunting task of clearing the vessel, for barely six weeks, after which, the exigent underwater mapping had been undertaken. In his passion to collect almost all of its antiquities systematically, Charles planned conscientiously its recovery: small to grandiose materials, scanned through navigational screens. An astringent assignment. Charles hindered by his age to dive its depth, and so, he retired and stayed at the campsite. Inside his spacious tent, it housed hi-tech equipment. From the screens, he led and commanded his mermen workers using the enormous navigational submarine-like equipment named Superstar. A high-powered remote-controlled machine that could easily triple a human’s manual work with tape measures, to transmit information below with its plotting cameras, laser beams, and the video cameras, hanging on the exterior shooting a three-D moving pictures of the wrecked ship.

The ship was a trading Dutch Galleon. Though, he expected rigorous recovery, his very tired, laborious team retrieved half only of the relics during the first season of their expedition. Happily, Darwin discovered more Dutch wine bottles, same old as the bottle he unearthed in his excavation at the shipyard. Every time, divers cautiously ascended from the seabed, they held tightly those priceless collections, graceful in their movements. Copious Chinese porcelain wares and glazed vases probably during the Ming dynasty of Ching Tai-Chia Ching astonished them. And exquisite gold and diamonds from Europe and Mexico sparkled its luster. Earthenwares for food and water storage robed by intricate coral reef. And sailors’ bones resurrected.

“The treasures of Happy Valley are bounty,” Charles said to his nephew.

“And the collections speak for itself, my great uncle” Darwin thanked him.

During the second season of the expedition, he and his wife joined the team at the sea, but they stayed at the hundred-foot-long platform vessel. It served as their headquarters above the sea. Bridget also escorted them at the vessel. When most of the artifacts had been retrieved, the team laboriously processed it at the campsite: they cleaned, dried, accessioned and recorded all its archeological richness. Since the end of the project, Darwin changed a lot. He cordially congratulated the chief archeologist for his dedication and leadership.

They were saviors of great treasures.

Darwin wrote me in New York after their successful expedition.

He said that the galleon once shone like a gigantic star under the sea. But the sea, unmasked with mysterious tales. The earthen vessel had been deciphered with profound antiquities. Almost five hundred years, a memory withdrawn in oblivion before the truth had been revealed. A mythical history by a heroic story. It bedazzled our minds of Don Vargas’ one-act play? In Golden Black Seaport: a place of outright cowardice. When Dutch galleons fired cannon balls to admired Spanish galleons. But the largest Dutch fleet sunk. Shipwrecks haunted by a mendacious ghost. Yes buried and rebuked under the sea of disgraced tidal waves. Its antiquities spoke for it. It happened here. The once majestic Dutch galleon sunk in its purest soul. But resurrected with grandiose mysteries and discoveries. Thus, it became the soul of the past...

After that, they ferried the collections through a cargo ship to Manila with the help of Kim’s new marine transport industry and carefully wrapped in bubble bags and Styrofoam. Everything went smoothly. The biggest bonanza turned to be so extraordinary. Triumphant days for the seasoned archaeologist, rightfully able to attain his lead and owned the valued recognition. In fact, his archrival nephew recognized his ingenuity. Darwin even supported him in his reports and presentation.

The chief archeologist had saved the resort. He built a small museum at the old town of Daan-Ili as promised to the wise man in his dream. And every time tourists and investors stepped down the hub, a massive archaeological landmark would be seen, recognized historically by the National Historical Institute. Charles and Darwin weaved fabrics of the unforgotten splendor of Happy Valley.