Maracaibo Zulia Venezuela

The expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda in 1499 visits the Venezuelan coast, arriving to the Gulf of Venezuela after passing through the present Netherlands Antilles and the Peninsula of Paraguaná.

During the voyage along the Paraguaná Peninsula the flotilla enters into the Gulf of Venezuela, where there are villages of the Wayuu people with palafito houses built over the water and supported on stilts made from tree trunks.

These villages are said to have reminded Amerigo Vespucci of the city of Venice, and so the area is given the name Venezuela meaning Little Venice.

(However, according to Martín Fernández de Enciso, who will support Ojeda's 1509 expedition, they found a local population calling themselves the Veneciuela, so "Venezuela" may derive from the local term.)

The flotilla arrives at the entrance to Lake Maracaibo on August 24, 1499.

The lake is originally named after Saint Bartholomew, as this is his saint’s day.

Ehinger makes his first expedition to Lake Maracaibo in August 1529, which is bitterly opposed by the indigenous people, the Coquivacoa.

This people may be related to (or even identical to) the Wayuu or the Caquetio people.

After winning a series of bloody battles, he founds the settlement at Maracaibo on September 8, 1529.

Ehinger names the city Neu Nürnberg (New Nuremberg) and the lake after the valiant chieftain Mara of the Coquivacoa, who had died in the fighting.

The city will be renamed Maracaibo after the Spanish take possession in 1546.

Maracaibo, situated in the northwestern part of present Venezuela on a channel linking the Gulf of Venezuela with the western side of Lake Maracaibo, the dominant feature of the oil-rich Maracaibo Basin, had been first founded in 1529 by the German Ambrosio Alfinger, who named it Villa de Maracaibo.

The lack of activity in the zone made Nicolas de Federman evacuate the village in 1535 and move its population to Cabo de la Vela nearby Coro.

A second attempt by Captain Alonso Pacheco turned into failure.

The third and definite foundation of the city, occurs in 1574 when Captain Pedro Maldonado, under Governor Diego de Mazariego's command, establishes the village with the name of Nueva Zamora de Maracaibo to honor Mazariego's place of birth, Zamora in Spain.

From this foundation, the town will begin to develop as a whole.

Favored by prevailing winds and a protected harbor, the city is located on the shores of the lake where the narrows, which eventually lead to the Gulf of Venezuela, first become pronounced.

Maracaibo is today the second-largest city in the country after the national capital Caracas and the capital of Zulia state.

Maracaibo is located on Lake Maracaibo, which can be accessed only through a narrow, winding channel twelve feet deep and sprinkled with islands and sandbars.

The French captain claims that he can direct the ships safely through it, but unbeknownst to him the Spanish had built a fort at the channel’s narrowest point since the time of the captain’s last visit.

When the fleet reaches this point, they are unable to navigate the rough terrain because of the cannon and gunfire coming from the fort, leaving Morgan no choice but to order his men to land on the beach despite their lack of protection from the Spanish guns.

When nightfall arrives, Morgan and his men cautiously enter the fort, finding not Spaniards bit only a slow-burning explosive left as a trap for the buccaneers.

In order to protect his fleet for their voyage back through the channel, Morgan stole strips all of the supplies from the fort and orders his men to bury the cannons in the sand.

Because the Spanish now know of Morgan’s plan to attack Maracaibo, the men take canoes and small vessels through the channel to the town as opposed to the lengthy process of bringing the larger vessels.

Despite this modified plan of attack, the residents of Maracaibo are able to escape with their valuables before the buccaneers arrive.

Morgan and his men, after searching the area for three week and torturing any citizens they can find, load the large vessels with their provisions and booty, as well as prisoners to be used as messengers, and set off to attack the nearby town of Gibraltar.

Morgan, in attempting to sail out of the lake, finds a reoccupied fort blocking the inlet to the Caribbean, together with three Spanish ships, the Magdalena, the San Luis, and the Soledad.

Given a choice to either surrender or be arrested, he and his men decide to fight for their freedom.

Outnumbered and outgunned, Morgan orders his largest ship, the Satisfaction, to be turned into a “fire ship” to be be sailed directly into the Spanish flagship, the Magdalen.

Filling hollowed-out logs with filled with explosives and dressed them to look like a pirate crew, Morgan instructs the twelve men manning the ship to throw grappling hooks into the rigging of the Magdalen so that it cannot sail free.

Miraculously, Morgan’s plan works and the Magdalen is destroyed.

The second largest Spanish ship, the San Luis, is run ground by the ship under Morgan’s command.

The final ship is taken by the pirates after the ropes become entangled.

After the battle, Morgan is still unable to cross the channel because of the fort, but the Spanish have no ships with which to attack.

Finally, by an ingenious stratagem, he fakes a landward attack on the fort that persuades the commander to shift his cannon, allowing Morgan to slowly creep by the fort using only the movement of the tide, eluded the enemy's guns altogether and escaping in safety.

Michel, Chevalier de Grammont, a nobleman who had come into disfavor after killing his sister's suitor in a duel and was forced to leave France, had in about 1670 gone to Hispaniola, where he had been given a French ship.

Serving as a privateer, his first success had been the capture of a Dutch convoy, valued at about four hundred thousand livres (four million US dollars).

On his next voyage he had run up onto a reef and sunk.

Grammont had then moved to Tortuga, where he bought and outfitted a new ship which he uses to attack Spanish shipping.

When war broke out between France and Holland, he had joined the fleet under the command of Comte d'Estrées for an abortive raid on the Dutch island of Curaçao in which the entire fleet of seventeen vessels had been wrecked on the Los Roques Archipelago (Las Aves).

De Grammont is in June 1678 made commander of the six ships and seven hundred men salvaged from the Las Aves Disaster.

He lands his men in Spanish-held Venezuela and captures Maracaibo, ...