Lost at Sea

Three ships, ninety men

On August 3, 1492, three ships left the port of Palos de la Frontera in southern Spain: the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María. About ninety men sailed with them. [1]

They stopped at the Canary Islands to restock and make repairs, then left the island of La Gomera on September 6, heading west into open ocean. [12]

Two sets of numbers

Columbus kept an accurate record of how far they had sailed, but told the men a smaller number. On September 10, he recorded 180 miles and announced 144. [2]

On September 25 he did it again, recording about 65 miles and telling the crew 39. [2] To the men on deck, home seemed closer than it really was.

Land

Before they sailed, Ferdinand and Isabella had promised a reward of 10,000 maravedís to whoever first sighted land. [2]

At about 2 a.m. on October 12, 1492, a lookout on the Pinta named Rodrigo de Triana spotted land. [3][12]

Columbus claimed the reward for himself. He wrote that four hours earlier he had seen a light "like a little wax candle rising and falling," though he admitted it was too faint to call it land. He found witnesses to back his claim. [3]

Guanahaní

The land was a small island in what is now the Bahamas. Its Lucayan people called it Guanahaní. Columbus renamed it San Salvador. [4]

No one is certain which modern island it was. It is traditionally identified with the island now called San Salvador, but scholars still debate it. [4]

What he wrote

Columbus kept a journal of the voyage. In the entry for October 11, written as he first met the islanders, he described them as intelligent and wrote that they would make good servants and could easily be made Christians. [5]

Three days later, on October 14, he wrote that with fifty men they could all be subjugated and made to do whatever was wanted. [5]

Read those dates again. Within three days of meeting these people, Columbus was already writing about how few soldiers it would take to rule them.

Where did he think he was?

Columbus believed he had reached the edge of Asia, the region Europeans called the Indies. [6] In his journal, he calls the people he met "Indians." [5]

On October 28 he reached Cuba, which he named Juana, and explored its northeastern coast until December 5. [7][12] He believed Cuba was mainland China. [6] Two years later, on his second voyage, he had a notary record a statement, signed by his crew, that Cuba was part of the Asian mainland. [8]

In fact, Japan was still thousands of miles away, across an entire continent and the Pacific Ocean. His estimate of the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan was about 2,500 nautical miles. The real westward distance is more than 10,000. [9]

The Pinta goes its own way

On the night of November 21, off the coast of Cuba, the Pinta, captained by Martín Alonso Pinzón, separated from the other two ships. It would not rejoin Columbus for about six weeks. [10]