Based on the Diary of Rodrigo Ranjel
His Private Secretary
On Sunday the 25th of May, 1539, a fleet of nine Spanish ships entered a bay on the west coast of modern Florida which they named “Espiritu Santo”. Aboard the ships were some 600 Europeans (largely Spanish), 200 horses, 300 pigs, and several dogs. They had sailed from Spain in early April of 1538 and arrived in Cuba on June 7 of that year. They remained in Cuba, preparing for the coming expedition, until May 18, 1539 when they departed for La Florida. The leader of the expedition was a battle harden veteran of the Spanish conquests of Central and South America, Hernando de Soto. He used the fortune he had amassed as his share of those conquests to finance the impending expedition into the unknown southeastern United States where he hoped to duplicate those earlier successes. The expedition would last five years and cost him his life.
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