Sir Francis Drake was an English explorer and privateer best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580. This was the first English circumnavigation, and third circumnavigation overall. He is also known for participating in the early English slaving voyages of his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, and John Lovell. Having started as a simple seaman, in 1588 he was part of the fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice-admiral.
Portobelo is a historic port and corregimiento in Portobelo District, Colón Province, Panama, Central America. Located on the northern part of the Isthmus of Panama, it is 32 km (20 mi) northeast of the modern port of Colón now at the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. It has a population of 4,559 as of 2010, and functions as the seat of Portobelo District.
Nombre de Dios is a city and corregimiento in Santa Isabel District, Colón Province, Panama, on the Atlantic coast of Panama in the Colón Province. Founded as a Spanish colony in 1510 by Diego de Nicuesa, it was one of the first European settlements on the Isthmus of Panama. As of 2010 it had a population of 1,130 people.
Chagres, once the chief Atlantic port on the isthmus of Panama, is now an abandoned village at the historical site of Fort San Lorenzo. The fort's ruins and the village site are located about 8 miles (13 km) west of Colón, on a promontory overlooking the mouth of the Chagres River.
Isla Grande is a small island and corregimiento in Portobelo District, Colón Province, Panama, off the Caribbean coast. It had a population of 1,037 as of 2010. Its population as of 1990 was 626; its population as of 2000 was 1,055. During the right times of year, the water between the island and the mainland provides an excellent surfing environment. Most of the people found in the town are of African descent and trace it back to black African slaves and those known as Cimarrones. Its historical name was Isla Grande de Bastimentos. It was discovered and named in Spanish "Isle and port of Provisions" by Christopher Columbus in 1502 during his fourth and last voyage. As the Bastimentos together with its nearby port it played an important role in history as the place where in 1726/7 the British Admiral Francis Hosier with 3,000 of his sailors died of tropical disease whilst anchored with his fleet of 20 ships during the disastrous Blockade of Porto Bello.
Bartholomew Sharp was an English buccaneer and privateer. His career of piracy lasted seven years (1675–1682). In the Caribbean he took several ships, and raided the Gulf of Honduras and Portobelo. He took command of an expedition into the Pacific and spent months raiding settlements on the Pacific Coast of South America including La Serena which he torched in 1680. His flagship, taken at Panama, was the Trinity.
This is a chronology and timeline of the colonization of North America, with founding dates of selected European settlements. See also European colonization of the Americas.
Between 1492 and 1504, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus led four Spanish transatlantic maritime expeditions of discovery to the Americas. These voyages led to the widespread knowledge of the New World. This breakthrough inaugurated the period known as the Age of Discovery, which saw the colonization of the Americas, a related biological exchange, and trans-Atlantic trade. These events, the effects and consequences of which persist to the present, are often cited as the beginning of the modern era.
The Blockade of Porto Bello was a failed British naval action against the Spanish port of Porto Bello in present-day Panama between 1726 and 1727 as part of the Anglo-Spanish War. The British were attempting to blockade the port to stop the Spanish treasure fleet leaving for Spain with its valuable cargo. However tropical disease took its toll of the seamen to the extent that the British had to leave to re-crew, during which time the Spanish were able to re-commence shipping operations.
Vice Admiral Francis Hosier (1673–1727) was a British naval officer. He was a lieutenant on Rooke's flagship at the Battle of Barfleur in 1693. He captured the Heureux off Cape Clear in 1710 and distinguished himself in action with the Spanish off Cartagena in 1711. He is chiefly remembered, however, for his role in the failure of the Blockade of Porto Bello, for which poor Government orders were largely responsible, during which he died of disease alongside thousands of his sailors.
Captain John Coxon, sometimes referred to as John Coxen, was a late-seventeenth-century buccaneer who terrorized the Spanish Main. Coxon was one of the most famous of the Brethren of the Coast, a loose consortium of pirates and privateers. Coxon lived during the Buccaneering Age of Piracy.
The Battle of Porto Bello, or the Battle of Portobello, was a 1739 battle between a British naval force aiming to capture the settlement of Portobelo in Panama, and its Spanish defenders. It took place during the War of the Austrian Succession, in the early stages of the war sometimes known as the War of Jenkins' Ear. It resulted in a popularly acclaimed British victory.
The Battle of San Juan (1595) was a Spanish victory during the Anglo–Spanish War. This war broke out in 1585 and was fought not only in the European theatre but in Spain's American colonies. After emerging from six years of disgrace following the resounding defeat of the English Armada at Lisbon in 1589, Francis Drake embarked on a long and disastrous campaign against the Spanish Main, suffering several consecutive defeats there. On 22 November 1595 Drake and John Hawkins tried to invade San Juan, Puerto Rico with 27 ships and 2,500 men. After failing to be able to land at the Ensenada del Escambron on the eastern end of San Juan Islet, he attempted to sail into San Juan Bay with the intention of sacking the city. Unable to capture the island, following the death of his comrade, John Hawkins, Drake abandoned San Juan, and set sail for Panama where he died from disease and received a burial at sea after failing to establish an English settlement in America.
Bastimentos Island is an island with eponymous town, and corregimiento located in the Bocas del Toro District and archipelago of Bocas del Toro Province, Panama. The island is about 62 square kilometres (24 sq mi), one of the largest in Panama. Bastimentos had a population of 1,954 as of 2010, giving it a population density of 31.4 inhabitants per square kilometre (81/sq mi). Its population as of 1990 was 988; its population as of 2000 was 1,344.
The Portobelo District is one of the districts that make up the Colón Province, Panama. It covers an area of 397 sq.km, and the latest official estimate of population is 10,581. The district capital is the town of Portobelo, the Spanish roadstead on the coast of Panama which replaced the original settlement of Nombre de Dios.
Santiago was a Spanish territory of the Spanish West Indies and within the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in the Caribbean region. Its location is the present-day island and nation of Jamaica.
The fortifications on the Caribbean Side of Panama: Portobelo-San Lorenzo are military constructions, built by the Spanish Empire during the 17th and 18th centuries on the Caribbean coastline of Colón Province in Panama. The ruins are located on the coast of the province of Colón. In view of their cultural importance, the sites have been inscribed by UNESCO in 1980 as a World Heritage Site under Criteria (i) and (iv), with the description, "Magnificent examples of 17th- and 18th-century military architecture, these Panamanian forts on the Caribbean coast form part of the defence system built by the Spanish Crown to protect transatlantic trade."
Drake's Assault on Panama also known as the Defence of Panama was a military event that took place in January 1596 during the Anglo–Spanish War. An English expedition under the command of Francis Drake and Thomas Baskerville attacked the Spanish Main via Nombre de Dios in order to cross the isthmus of Panama. Ravaged with dysentery and other diseases the English were repelled and defeated. Drake would die of the former and the expedition was forced to retreat back to England all the while harassed by the Spanish.
Francis Drake's expedition of 1572–1573 was an uncommissioned profiteering voyage by Sir Francis Drake in the western and southern quarters of the Caribbean Sea.
The fourth voyage of Columbus was a Spanish martime expedition in 1502–1504 to the western Caribbean Sea lead by Christopher Columbus. The voyage, Columbus's last, failed to find a western maritime route to the Far East, returned relatively little profit, and resulted in the loss of many crew men, all the fleet's ships, and a year-long marooning in Jamaica. It is deemed the first non-Amerindian discovery of mainland Middle America, and one of the first non-Amerindian, non-Norse discoveries of continental North America.
