Francisco de Garay was born in the Garay tower in Sopuerta, in the county of Encartaciones located in the province of Biscay.

A companion to Christopher Columbus on his second voyage to the New World, he had arrived in Hispaniola in 1493, attracting attention when he encountered a large gold nugget worth four thousand pesos.

From 1514 Garay has served as Royal Governor of Santiago (Governor of Jamaica).

As a Governor of Santiago he stands accused of committing genocide of the Island's indigenous population.

Bartolomé de Las Casas, writing in 1516, holds him responsible for the great decline of the Indian population, whom he has enslaved and sent to work in the goldmines of Cuba.

By 1519 the original population of Jamaica has almost been eradicated.

He also raises pigs during his governorship, at one point employing five thousand Indians to herd his swine.

Ponce de León had previously mapped parts of Florida, which he believed to be an island.

Alonso Alvarez de Pineda had led several expeditions in 1517 to map the western coastlines of the Gulf of Mexico, from the Yucatán Peninsula to the Pánuco River, just north of Veracruz.

Subsequent expeditions piloted by Antón de Alaminos had eliminated the western areas as being the site of the passage, leaving the land between the Pánuco River and Florida to be mapped.

Alaminos had persuaded the governor of Jamaica, Francisco de Garay, to finance an expedition to search the remainder of the Gulf.

Garay outfits three ships with two hundred and seventy soldiers, and places them under the command of Alvarez de Pineda, who leaves Jamaica in early 1519 and sails west to follow the northern coastline of the Gulf.