Christopher Columbus: the first voyage across the Atlantic

On the night of 11 October 1492, at ten o’clock, a man standing on the stern deck of a ship saw a light far off in the darkness, “like a candle bobbing up and down”. Four hours later, the lead ship gave the agreed signal: land had been sighted. The man on the deck was Christopher Columbus.

A sailor’s plan

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, very little is known about Columbus’s early life. Most scholars say he was born in the Italian city of Genoa to Domenico Colombo, a wool weaver and trader. He began working on Portuguese merchant ships, settled in Lisbon in 1476, and from 1482 to 1485 traded along the west coast of Africa, where he learnt about the winds of the Atlantic.

His plan was to sail straight west across the ocean to reach China, India and the Spice Islands. According to the World History Encyclopedia, he estimated the distance from the Canary Islands to China at about 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometres). King John II of Portugal rejected the plan on the ground that this estimate was far too low. According to Britannica, after Portugal’s refusal in 1484, Columbus moved to Spain by 1486. After failing at least twice, he won the backing of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in January 1492.

Three ships

According to Britannica, the expedition’s ships were fitted out at Palos, a town on the Tinto river in Spain. Groups of mostly Genoese and Florentine bankers based in Seville provided at least 1,140,000 maravedis (the Spanish coin of the time) for the preparations.

Clements Markham translated Columbus’s journal into English for the Hakluyt Society in 1893. According to Markham’s note, Columbus’s own ship, the Santa Maria, was of about 100 tons and was the largest vessel in the fleet. Its owner was Juan de la Cosa. The other two, smaller ships, the Pinta and the Nina, belonged to Palos. The Pinta’s captain was Martin Alonso Pinzon and the Nina’s was Vicente Yanez Pinzon. Markham says the original journal has been lost. It survives only in the abstract prepared by the Spanish historian Las Casas, which contains many of Columbus’s own sentences word for word.

Thirty-six days at sea

According to the journal, the fleet left the sandbar of Saltes at eight o’clock on the morning of Friday 3 August 1492 and set course for the Canary Islands. According to Britannica, this route was chosen to take advantage of the north-easterly trade winds. About a month was spent there on repairs, and on 6 September the ships put out into the open sea from the island of Gomera.

Floating weed and birds were sighted again and again on the way, but there was no land. According to Britannica, by 10 October the crew’s patience had run out, as they feared supplies would fall short and they would not get home.

According to the journal, on 11 October the sailors saw a green branch, a carved stick and a plank in the water, and “everyone breathed easier”. The king and queen had offered a reward of 10,000 maravedis to the first man to sight land, and Columbus added a promise of a silk jacket. At two o’clock in the morning of 12 October, Rodrigo de Triana, a sailor on the lead ship Pinta, sighted land about two leagues away. The ships furled their sails and waited for morning. During the day they reached a small island that the local people called Guanahani.

Islands and coasts

Which island this was is still debated. According to Britannica, it is generally taken to be San Salvador (Watlings) Island in the Bahamas, but some scholars favour other islands in the Bahamas or the Turks and Caicos Islands.

In his famous letter, translated into English by Cecil Jane for the Hakluyt Society in 1930, Columbus writes that he reached the “Indies” thirty-three days after leaving the Canary Islands. He named the first island San Salvador, the second Santa Maria de Concepcion, the third Fernandina, the fourth Isabella and the fifth Juana. According to Britannica, he landed on Juana, that is Cuba, on 28 October, and by 1 November had concluded that it was the coast of China.

On 6 December he reached a large island that its Taino inhabitants called “Ayti”. He named it “La Isla Espanola”, or Hispaniola. In his letter he writes that its trees are so tall that they “seem to touch the sky”, as green as Spain in May, and that “in the month of November the nightingale was singing”.

Christmas night

On the night of 25 December 1492, the Santa Maria met with the accident described in detail in the journal. Columbus had been awake for two days and a night and went to sleep at eleven o’clock. The sea was perfectly calm, “like glass”. The sailor at the helm also fell asleep and handed the helm to a boy, although Columbus had forbidden this throughout the voyage. At midnight a current carried the ship gently onto a sandbank, so gently that nobody felt a jolt. The ship could not be saved, even after her mast was cut away.

According to the journal, Guacanagari, the chief of the nearby settlement, wept when he heard the news. He sent all his people with large canoes to unload the ship’s goods. Columbus writes that the goods were guarded so carefully that “not so much as a needle” went missing. Columbus built a fort on the shore, named it “La Navidad”, and left 39 men there. The timbers and goods of the wrecked ship were put to use by them.

A stormy return

According to Britannica, on 16 January 1493 Columbus set out for home aboard the Nina, together with the Pinta. Severe storms on the way separated the two ships. According to the journal, during the storm on 14 February Columbus feared that if he drowned, news of the voyage would never get back. He wrote an account of his discoveries on parchment, wrapped it in waxed cloth, sealed it in a large wooden barrel and threw it into the sea.

The Nina reached Santa Maria, an island in the Azores. Another storm then carried her to Lisbon, where Columbus met King John II of Portugal. Finally, on 15 March 1493, about seven months after setting out, he returned to Palos. According to Britannica, the voyage proved that the Atlantic could be crossed, and recrossed, by using the system of seasonal winds, although Columbus believed to the end that these islands lay near Asia.

Next instalment: John Cabot: the coast of North America.