Gulf of Urabá Antioquia Colombia

Rodrigo de Bastidas, a well-to-do notary of the town of Triana, a suburb of Seville, had sailed with Christopher Columbus during his second voyage to the New World about 1494.

He had petitioned the Spanish Monarchy to start his own quest to be financed totally with his own money.

In exchange for granting Bastidas the right to explore various territories in the New World, the Crown requires him to give them one fourth of the net profits he acquires.

The King and Queen had issued a charter that is still preserved in the National Archives in Spain.

He had sailed to the New World from Cádiz in October, 1499, with two ships, the San Antón and the Santa Maria de Gracia, accompanied on this voyage by Juan de la Cosa and Vasco Núñez de Balboa.

At the South American coast, he had sailed westward from Cabo de la Vela, Colombia, in an attempt to reconnoiter the coastline of the Caribbean basin.

He discovers the mouth of a river he names the Magdalena River and the Gulf of Urabá on the Panamanian/Colombian coast.

Though the poor condition of his ships, caused by shipworms that eat the wooden hull, forces him to turn back and head to Santo Domingo to effect repairs, he is acknowledged to be the first European to have claimed that part of the isthmus, and therefore is credited with the discovery of Panama