Nombre de Dios (Panama)
Coordinates: 9 ° 35 ′ N , 79 ° 28 ′ W
Nombre de Dios (Spanish for "Name of God") is a city on the Atlantic coast of the Central American state of Panama near the mouth of the Río Chagres .
The city was founded in 1510 by Diego de Nicuesa . The Spanish colonists had to fight hunger, epidemics and hostile Indians, so that the colony was abandoned in the meantime. After the conquest of Peru , the city gained importance as an Atlantic shipping port on the Central American isthmus. The gold, which was mainly mined on the Cerro Rico silver ore mountain near Potosí in today's Bolivia , was transported in annual trains to a Pacific port, shipped north along the Pacific coast to Panama and transported on land via the Isthmus of Panama to from Nombre de Dios to the last step to make the Atlantic transport by ship to Spain. In terms of military logistics, Nombre de Dios was a weak point in the colonial Spanish infrastructure for silver mining.
In 1573 Francis Drake and a motley crew plundered the Spanish silver train near the swampy town that was not to be fortified.
Already in the 17th century the malade place was given up in favor of Puerto Bellos . Today it exists again as a small town.
The place and Francis Drake's death are described in the work of the diary of the seaman Heinrich Hasebeck compiled by Peter Miller, Gasparan or Francis Drake's Last Voyage .