Mouth of Rio Esmeraldas Los Ríos Ecuador

Hawkins, having plundered Valparaiso, has pushed north, and in June 1594, a year after leaving Plymouth, he arrives in the Bay of San Mateo, at the mouth of the Esmeraldas river, now in Ecuador.

Here the Dainty is attacked by two Spanish ships.

Hawkins is hopelessly outmatched, but Dainty's crew defends her with gallantry.

When he himself has been severely wounded, twenty-seven of his men have been killed, and the Dainty is nearly sinking, he at last surrenders on July 1, 1594 on the promise of a safe-conduct out of the country for himself and his crew.

Hawkins’ second in command, John Oxenham, is instead put on trial and eventually executed in Lima for heresy.

Through no fault of the Spanish commander, this promise is not to be not kept.

Hawkins will in 1597 be sent to Spain, and imprisoned first at Seville and subsequently at Madrid.

Released in 1602 and, returning to England, he will be knighted in 1603, eventually setting down the memories of his trip under the title Voiage into the South Sea (1622), which is to become the most famous Elizabethan adventure, republished by the Hakluyt Society and reworked in Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho! (1855).

He depicts the Spaniards in the Americas in a positive way, judging them as "temperate" and "gentle".