A couple of years later, a storm tore the wreck apart, spreading parts of the ship and its cargo up and down the beach for miles.
A group of American beachcombers found porcelains on a beach in Mexico.
A 1997 exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art included some of the porcelain fragments.
The associated publication, Chinese Ceramics in Colonial Mexico, led Saryl and Edward Von der Porten to believe that there must be an unknown Manila galleon wreck on the Baja California coast.
Negotiations with the beachcombers and work with Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia led to nearly twenty expeditions and identification of the fate of the San Juanillo.