Near Santa Maria, the need for food drove a landing despite resistance and arrow wounds. An apparent agreement to trade encouraged another attempt the following day, 9 November 1599. The ship's council had decided that only two or three men should go ashore. Instead, the captain led twenty-three armed men inland, and the landing party was reported killed. The letter's claim of more than a thousand attackers is treated as an unlikely estimate. The survivors scarcely had enough hands to raise the anchor, and a later reunion revealed serious losses among another ship's officers.
Chapter · 39:38-42:55
A provisioning landing ends in the loss of the officers
Adams's letter describes how hunger and a captain's departure from an agreed landing plan left the survivors dangerously short of men.