Burn The Ships

Published: Sept. 4, 2022, 10 a.m.

On April 21st, in the year 1519, the Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez sailed into the harbor of Vera Cruz, Mexico. He brought with him only about 600 men, and vastly numbered they would face Montezuma and the Aztec empire. Cortez knew from the very beginning that he and his men faced incredible odds. And so, as soon as Cortez and his men had come ashore and unloaded their provisions, he ordered their entire fleet of eleven ships destroyed. His men stood on the shore and watched as their only possibility of retreat burned and sank.