So what happened to the ship? The Bom Jesus probably got lost in a storm. Then it smashed into rocks near the coast and sank. There were few human bones found, so the sailors were probably able to get off the ship. But even if they swam onto the beach, they would have found themselves in a strange, distant land. They had no way to get home. They might as well have been on Mars. To this day, no one knows what happened to them.