page_title: 1582 Cagayan battles
section_title: Battle
hierarchical_section_title: 1582 Cagayan battles / Battle
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Photographies peintes du Japon datant d'avant 1886, d'après une note marqué sur le livret contenant les photos. Auteur présumé des photos originales: Adolfo Farsari. English: Painted photograph from Japan, dating from before 1886, according to a written note on the album containing the photographs. Presumed Author of the original photographs: Adolfo Farsari.
context_page_description: The 1582 Cagayan battles were a series of clashes between the forces of Colonial Philippines led by Captain Juan Pablo de Carrión and wokou headed by Tay Fusa. These battles, which took place in the vicinity of the Cagayan River, finally resulted in a Spanish victory.
  This event is a recorded battle between European regular soldiers against Japanese pirates. This unique event pitted musketeers, pikemen, and Spanish rodeleros against mostly Japanese and Chinese pirates, mostly formed by rōnin, soldiers, fishermen, and merchants. The pirates had 18 Sampans which are flat bottomed Chinese fishing wooden boat. The word "sampan" comes from the original Hokkien term for the boats, 三板, literally meaning "three planks".
context_section_description: As they passed the Bogueador cape, the Spanish flotilla encountered a heavy Wokou sampan. It had recently arrived at the coast and its sailors were abusing the native population. Carrión, although outnumbered by the Wokou, engaged in naval battle with the sampan, eventually boarding it. The Spanish rodeleros then encountered armored Japanese Wokou wielding swords. Though initially successful, the Spanish soldiers were repelled back to their own ship, whose deck became a battlefield. Eventually the Spanish turned the battle again in their favor by improvising a parapet with Spanish pikemen at front and arquebusiers and musketeers at the rear, thanks to the well-timed reinforcement of the rest of the fleet. The Wokou abandoned the ships and swam away, with some of them drowning due to the weight of their armor. The Spanish had suffered their first casualties, among them the galley's captain Pero Lucas.
  The flotilla continued down the Cagayán River, finding a fleet of eighteen sampans and a Wokou fort erected inland. The Spanish fleet forced their way through using artillery and disembarked onshore. They dug in, assembling the artillery unloaded from the galley in the trenches, and continually bombarded the pirates. The Wokou decided to negotiate a surrender and Carrión ordered them to leave Luzon. The pirates asked for gold in compensation for the losses they would suffer if they left, which was denied outright by Carrión. After this, the Wokou decided to attack by land with a force of some six hundred strong.
  The Spanish trenches, manned by both soldiers and sailors, endured a first assault, then another. In response to their pikes being seized by the Wokou soldiers, the Spanish oiled the shafts of their pikes in order to make them difficult to grasp. The Spanish were running low on gun powder by the third attack, which became a close-quarters fight that almost breached the trenches. Finally, with the Wokou assaults diminishing, the Spanish emerged from the trenches and attacked, routing the remaining Wokou. They then plundered the Wokou weapons left on the battlefield, which included katanas and armor, and kept them as trophies.
caption: Japanese sampan-like river boat. Dating from before 1886 are relatively flat bottomed Chinese wooden boat.
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