1517, morning
The retreat to the boats
With only one soldier, Berrio, unhurt and their captain barely conscious, the Spaniards close their ranks and cut a way through the warriors to the shore. There the formation breaks up in a rush for the boats. Warriors wade into the sea after them with arrows, stones and spears and upset some of the overloaded boats. The survivors reach the ships half swimming and clinging to the gunwales, and most of the water casks stay on the beach.
The battle lasts about an hour. Bernal Díaz counts 57 men lost, two of them taken alive, and five more die of their wounds in the following days. The Spaniards call the place the Costa de Mala Pelea, the coast of the bad fight. Too few men are left to sail three ships, so they burn the brigantine.
Fishing boats on the beach at Champotón, 2015Wikimedia Commons, AlejandroLinaresGarcia, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Champoton002.JPG)
Alaminos steers for Florida, where a landing party finds water and beats off an attack by the local people. The two ships reach Havana, and Hernández de Córdoba dies of his wounds a few days later. His report and the two prisoners from Catoche, who speak of gold in Yucatán, lead Velázquez to send a new expedition.
Sources
- Inga Clendinnen, Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517 to 1570 (2nd ed. 2003), pp. 10 to 13.
- Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler, The Ancient Maya (6th ed. 2006), p. 759.
- Bernal Díaz del Castillo, The Conquest of New Spain, tr. J. M. Cohen (1963), pp. 22 to 26.
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