Hi, Pappy -

The YouTube recording has good notes which contend that the song is fictitious, and I'd tend to agree:

The original Kingston Trio of Bob Shane, Dave Guard, and Nick Reynolds performs a song from their 1961 album "Goin' Places," the last one by the group to include Guard, who was shortly to strike out in his own musical direction. The song was composed by Guard and Texas songwriter Jane Bowers, deriving its melody from an anthem of the Republican faction in the Spanish Civil War entitled "Si Me Quieres Escribir." The performance is notable for the skillful interweaving by Guard of three distinctively different styles of playing the five-string banjo - frailing, strumming, and Scruggs picking.

The incidents described in the Bowers/Guard lyrics are fabricated and non-historical, and the group was criticized in some quarters for trivializing a song regarded by some as near-sacred.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-fHx3Yy8Hs

Here are the liner notes (click) from the album Goin' Places (1961): "COAST OF CALIFORNIA There's a strong Spanish flavor to this dark and moody ballad which tells a tale of adventure, piracy, and hidden gold. As students of early California history will agree, the story has a strong factual basis."

I think of this song along with South Coast, which has a similar feel to it. I've always loved the area inland from the Central Coast of California, and these are two of many songs that remind me of this Steinbeckian location - Another is Kate Wolf's "Pacheco/Redtail Hawk."

Whatever the case, there's not much history in either "Coast of California" or "South Coast," but they're great songs and they convey the mystery of this area to me. I was there just a few weeks ago, visiting Mission San Antonio de Padua on the Hunter Liggett Military Reservation - once the property of William Randolph Hearst.