Sunrise over Tres Marias Mountains northeast of Naval.
(Photo courtesy of the Biliran Provincial Government.)

Serendipity refers to "the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident." Like my belief in man’s innate "sixth sense," I share the belief that man possesses a serendipitous sense. I have cultivated this sense over time, and this has served me well both in my scientific researches and in my writing about historical and popular issues. Reading has also provided me with a lot of useful accidental discoveries.

When I served as chronicler and member of the think-tank for the Biliran Provincehood Movement in the late 1980s, I saw to it that I had access to various published and archival materials pertaining to Biliran history, culture, and tradition. For this, I found a gold mine in the collections of the Leyte-Samar Museum and Library at the Divine Word University of Tacloban.

It was the related effort to collect a complete set of Leyte-Samar Studies that drove me deeper into historical research. While leafing through a newly bought early edition of the journal, I came across a translation of a chapter of the Alcina manuscript of 1668. This chapter included the ethnic definition of sombol (i.e., a trophy of war), which significantly differed from previous speculations about the root word of Bagasumbol, the old name of Naval.

One thing led to another. In due time, I had collected books, documents, literatures, and oral accounts that I referred to in writing revisionist articles on Leyte-Samar history in general, and Biliran and Naval history in particular.

The article "Beginnings of Naval, Biliran Island" is our revisionist account of the history of Naval. It corrected and enriched the earlier versions and was the second historical article I attempted to write. With a greater familiarity of the documents and references at hand, I wrote the initial draft and used it as basis for discussions with my co-authors: the late Alberto Bago, Ben Granali, the late Jose Gahum, and Atty. Antonio Abilar. Several consultations and revisions were made over a period of three months before we agreed on the final content of the paper in early February 1990. I submitted the manuscript to Kinaadman, the journal of Xavier University that same month. It was accepted by Fr. Miguel A. Bernad, SJ, the editor and a noted historian himself.

The published article came out in mid-1992. The cover letter for the authors’ copies contained the following rave from Father Bernad:

"... This article of yours is an example of the best kind of local historiography that we need. So much writing of local ‘history’ is either superficial or poorly researched and therefore inaccurate. Your article, thoroughly documented, is a fine example of scholarship."

Our account pushed back the recorded history of Naval by 250 years to 1600, the benchmark year for the report written by the Jesuit priest-historian Pedro Chirino. The Chirino account devoted a whole chapter (Chapter 76, "Of the Mission to Panamao") which described the shipbuilding activities and the Jesuit missions in this island now named Biliran. This chapter is reprinted here.

I first came across Father Chirino’s work as a course reading in Philippine history in 1977. Yet it took me years to connect the knowledge about Panamao with fixed geographic locations, which happen to be in Naval and were familiar scenes of my childhood.

I have theorized that the first large-scale Spanish shipyard in the Philippines was in the vicinity of Sabang Beach, at the mouth of the Caraycaray River. This area had been a haven, a shipbuilding and repair ground, and a graveyard for wooden-hulled sea-crafts until the 1960s. Now neglected, the area is worth improving and preserving for excursions, and memorialized as our proud link to national history.

The village mentioned by Father Chirino seemed to have been located in the vicinity of Sitio Ilawod in Barangay Caraycaray. Father Francisco Colin, detailing facts cited by Father Chirino in his own account dated 1663, mentioned about a church and a convent that were constructed through free labor of the inhabitants. The church had posts and walls made of pampango wood (teak) and had the following dimensions: 27 fathoms (162 feet) in length, 7 fathoms (42 feet) in width, and 3-1/2 fathoms (21 feet) in height.

There used to be a lantawan or watchtower in Sitio Ilawod. A local fisherman called it trinchera sa Moros, a fort against the historical Moro raiders. But this fort was also used as garrison of the American-officered Insular Constabulary during the Pulahan War in Biliran Island early this century. Time, neglect, and indifference had reduced this relic to its present state: just traces of coral stone blocks overgrown with weeds and nipa palms at ground level overlooking the river. The land is now owned by the Solite Family.

I hope the Solite Family will donate a small piece of land adjoining the lantawan. The donated lot could be developed into a municipal or provincial park, where our children could romp and feel their cultural roots and local history. Families may also have excursions in the nearby Inagawan/ Banderahan Beach, another vital link to our valiant and colorful past.

Every inch of ground in Sabang, Ilawod, and Inagawan/ Banderahan seems to pulsate with history. I therefore cannot understand why they have been allowed to deteriorate into virtual wastelands.

In their childhood days, the generation of Mang Beroy Abad and Mang Candido Garcia used to swim near the lantawan in Sitio Ilawod. In scaling up this once elevated fort, from the top of which the swimmers would dive into the river, they would step on a rounded piece of metal protruding under the water. It was a piece of cannon, which had sunk with parts of the tower.

According to the late Mr. Jose Gahum, this sunken gun, which could fit a cannon ball the size of a shelled coconut, was extracted from the lantawan. This was done around 1940, just before the outbreak of the Pacific war, during the incumbency of Magdaleno Batiquin as barrio captain of Caraycaray. The cannon was transported to Tacloban, escorted by two PC soldiers, and deposited for safekeeping at the Leyte Provincial Capitol.

Perhaps it is time to take back this relic and display it in the proposed park in Sitio Ilawod. Mr. Gahum opined that the cannon now mounted near the gate of the Baluarte Beach Resort in Tacloban City looks like the one that our town owned.

Many old Philippine towns were named after their leaders, or the feats and virtues of these leaders. For instance, tradition tells us that the island of Limasawa in Southern Leyte was named after a native chief who had five wives (i.e., lima asawa).

In the case of Naval, I tried to dig further into the historical basis of Bagasumbol (like a trophy of war). My thoughts got hooked on three old street names: Gran Capitan, San Fernando, and Magallanes. These three names seemed to refer to Ferdinand Magellan. Was there some subconscious reason in our collective memory for the redundant references to one person?

When the streets were renamed after famous local forebears sometime in the 1930s, the local officials retained one old name: Magallanes Street. I tried to link the persistent echoes of Magellan’s name with the possibility that baga sombol might be a subtle reference to the native hero, Lapu-lapu, who conquered Magellan in the Battle of Mactan in 1521.

This made me think that Lapu-lapu may have been the chief settler of Bagasumbol. I wrote a paper expounding this theory, supported by Pigafetta’s account and other references that focus on the time of the Spanish contact. I submitted the first version to the journal of a well-known university in Cebu. It was virtually rejected.

Nearly two years and a few revisions later, I submitted the paper to Kinaadman, which had earlier published our revisionist account of Naval history. Fr. Bernad accepted the paper for publication with the following comments:

"... Thanks for the new article on Lapu-lapu. Many will consider it audacious and even outrageous. But since it is proposed as a tentative hypothesis, and since it is supported by reasoning and documentation with prima facie validity, why not? So I am glad to accept it for publication."

"Lapulapu in Biliran? (A Tentative Hypothesis)," is the published version of this paper which came out in mid-1995.

Of course, there are rabid critics of my "Lapulapu was Bagasumbol theory." The common put-down before the article’s publication was that I probably possess a copy of Lapulapu’s baptismal certificate. After its publication, it has become the subject of a scholarly debate in the Kinaadman journal. The initial salvo is found in the addendum to the article.

The rest of the articles are self-explanatory.

I was disappointed by the report that the previous (pre-1992) municipal council, apparently without conducting proper public hearings, decided to change the name of Magallanes Street to Icain Street. I have no quarrel with the fact that the late Isaias Icain (Mang Iyas), the Japanese appointed mayor of Naval during World War II, successfully shepherded our town at a critical period of our history. He ought to be memorialized. But our councilors picked the wrong street to fulfill their wish.

Instead, our councilors could have retained Magallanes Street and assigned Icain Street to the unnamed Trece, our short thirteenth street linking Vicentillo Street and Padre Inocentes Street near the Naval Institute of Technology (NIT). There is no more need to fear the superstition associated with an unlucky number (13). We already have a fourteenth street, Zamora Street, fronting the seawall. This street was presumably named after the late Dr. Jorge Zamora, a successful public health doctor and a former lieutenant governor of Biliran Sub-province.

Very few townmates know about this, but Naval had bred a world boxing champion. He was Ceferino Garcia (baptized Cipriano and nicknamed Predo), who hailed from a family of blacksmiths in Barangay Caraycaray. Garcia was the world middleweight champion in 1938-1939. He provided the country’s boxing spectacle of the 1930s when he successfully defended his title by beating the black American challenger, Glen Lee, at the Rizal Track-Football Stadium in 1938.

In a 1994 column in Ring Magazine, the bible of boxing, Garcia was ranked third in the All-Time Top 10 of the Philippines (behind Pancho Villa and Flash Elorde). Garcia’s contribution to boxing was the "bolo punch," of which he was the recognized inventor.