San Juan de Ulua

San Juan de Ulua appears in 693. Elizabeth I vs The Catholics: England’s Greatest Hero (Part 3) as the Spanish port near Veracruz where John Hawkins’s 1567-1568 expedition collapses. After weather drives the English fleet there, a Spanish attack sinks four ships, kills more than 300 sailors, and leaves 114 prisoners.

For Francis Drake, the event becomes a formative grievance. The source treats San Juan de Ulua as the hinge between attempted participation in Spanish-controlled trade and a later strategy of raiding that tests Spanish Imperial Monopoly Vulnerability.

Connections

• John Hawkins and Francis Drake - English commanders whose expedition is broken there.
• Spain and England - rival powers around the port.
• Atlantic Slave Trade-Privateering Link, Piracy-Privateering Boundary, and Spanish Imperial Monopoly Vulnerability - concepts made visible by the episode’s use of the event.