William Walker, after writing an account of…

British colonists in Roatán, in the Bay Islands, fearing that the government of Honduras would move to assert its control over them, had approached Walker with an offer to help him in establishing a separate, English-speaking government over the islands.

Walker had disembarked in the port city of Trujillo, but had soon fallen into the custody of Captain Nowell Salmon (later Admiral Sir Nowell Salmon) of the British Royal Navy.

The British government controls the neighboring regions of British Honduras (now Belize) and the Mosquito Coast (now part of Nicaragua) and has considerable strategic and economic interest in the construction of an inter-oceanic canal through Central America.

It therefore regards Walker as a menace to its own affairs in the region.

Rather than return him to the US, Salmon delivers Walker to the Honduran authorities in Trujillo, who execute him near the site of the present-day hospital by firing squad on September 12, 1860.

Walker was thirty-six years old.