You sunk my battleship

Earlier today I heard a reference made to Hernán Cortéz sinking his own ships during the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, which prompted some further reading to ascertain the cause for such a scuttling (a great word I was up until an hour ago unaware of its meaning), and of course to determine whether there was any truth behind the reference.

I won't use this space to recount the conquest step-by-step, as that's a long story. A story I can't really claim to have "learned", since I've only really explored it this evening - far from committing it to memory for future retelling. It is however a pretty interesting and important piece of history, well worth a portion of your attention. You can read a pretty reasonable chronological summary over on Wikipedia.

As for Cortéz's ships, most reference to them indicate that he did intentionally destroy them - whether by running them aground, sinking them or burning them remains unclear. After establishing what's now the modern day city of Veracruz, Cortéz held grave concerns of further mutiny from his crew, who he suspected of harbouring desires to return to Cuba. In what could be considered the conquistador's equivalent of a toddler packing up his toys and going home, he instead decided to strand them all in Mexico. What's funny to me is the irony - at the time, Cortéz was considered a mutineer in the eyes of the Spanish Crown and King Charles for failing to obey certain directives and acting in some ways as a bit of a lone wolf - key, as it turned out, in the successful colonisation and conquest of South and Central America.

That's what I learned today.