Voyages of Christopher Columbus

Around 1484, King John II submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who rejected it on the basis that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 nautical miles was about four times too low (which was accurate).[3]

In 1488 Columbus again appealed to the court of Portugal, receiving a new invitation for an audience with John II. This also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal following a successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa. With an eastern sea route now under its control, Portugal was no longer interested in trailblazing a western trade route to Asia crossing unknown seas.[4]

In 1486, Columbus was granted an audience with the Catholic Monarchs, and he presented his plans to Isabella. She referred these to a committee, which determined that Columbus had grossly underestimated the distance to Asia. Pronouncing the idea impractical, they advised the monarchs not to support the proposed venture. To keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the Catholic monarchs gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 maravedís for the year, or about the annual salary of a sailor.[5] In May 1489, the queen sent him another 10,000 maravedis, and the same year the monarchs furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their domain to provide him food and lodging at no cost.[6]

Columbus and Queen Isabella. Detail of the Columbus monument in Madrid (1885).

After continually lobbying to multiple kingdoms, Columbus was summoned to the Spanish court for renewed discussions.[7] Queen Isabella's forces had just conquered the Moorish Emirate of Granada for Castile. Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until January 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talavera, found Columbus's proposal to reach the Indies implausible. Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened,[lower-alpha 2] first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen.[8] Isabella was finally convinced by the king's clerk Luis de Santángel, who argued that Columbus would bring his ideas elsewhere, and offered to help arrange the funding.[lower-alpha 3] Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus, who had travelled several kilometers toward Córdoba.[8]

In the April 1492 "Capitulations of Santa Fe", Columbus was promised he would be given the title "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" and appointed viceroy and governor of the newly claimed and colonised for the Crown; he would also receive ten percent of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity if he was successful.[10] He had the right to nominate three people, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. The terms were unusually generous but, as his son later wrote, the monarchs were not confident of his return.

Many Europeans of Columbus's day assumed that a single, uninterrupted ocean separated Europe and Asia, although Norse explorers had colonized areas of North America beginning with Greenland c. 986.[11][12] Following hundreds of years of Norse presence in North America,[13] in 1420, some Inuit captives and their kayaks were taken to Scandinavia.[14]

Europe had long enjoyed a safe land passage to China and India—sources of valued goods such as silk, spices, and opiates—under the hegemony of the Mongol Empire (the Pax Mongolica, or Mongol peace). With the Fall of Constantinople to the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1453, the land route to Asia (the Silk Road) became more difficult as Christian traders were prohibited.[15] In response to this, by the 1480s, Christopher and his brother Bartholomew had developed a plan to travel to the Indies (then construed roughly as all of southern and eastern Asia) by sailing directly west across what was believed to be the singular "Ocean Sea," the Atlantic Ocean. By about 1481, Florentine cosmographer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli sent Columbus a map depicting such a route, with no intermediary landmass other than the mythical island of Antillia.[16] In 1484 on the island of La Gomera in the Canaries, then undergoing conquest by Castile, Columbus heard from some inhabitants of El Hierro that there was supposed to be a group of islands to the west.[17]

A popular misconception that Columbus had difficulty obtaining support for his plan because Europeans thought the Earth was flat can be traced back to a 17th-century campaign of Protestants against Catholicism,[18] and was popularized in works such as Washington Irving's 1828 biography of Columbus.[19] In fact, the knowledge that the Earth is spherical was widespread, having been the general opinion of Ancient Greek science, and gaining support throughout the Middle Ages (for example, Bede mentions it in The Reckoning of Time). The primitive maritime navigation of Columbus's time relied on both the stars and the curvature of the Earth.[20][21]

Columbus's geographical conceptions

Eratosthenes had measured the diameter of the Earth with good precision in the 2nd century BC,[22] and the means of calculating its diameter using an astrolabe was known to both scholars and navigators.[20] Where Columbus differed from the generally accepted view of his time was in his incorrect assumption of a significantly smaller diameter for the Earth, claiming that Asia could be easily reached by sailing west across the Atlantic. Most scholars accepted Ptolemy's correct assessment that the terrestrial landmass (for Europeans of the time, comprising Eurasia and Africa) occupied 180 degrees of the terrestrial sphere, and dismissed Columbus's claim that the Earth was much smaller, and that Asia was only a few thousand nautical miles to the west of Europe.[23]

The "Columbus map" was drawn c. 1490 in the workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus in Lisbon.[24]

Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on the Latin edition of Marco Polo's Le livre des merveilles

Columbus believed the incorrect calculations of Marinus of Tyre, putting the landmass at 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water.[25][23] Moreover, Columbus underestimated Alfraganus's calculation of the length of a degree, reading the Arabic astronomer's writings as if, rather than using the Arabic mile (about 1,830 m), he had used the Italian mile (about 1,480 meters). Alfraganus had calculated the length of a degree to be 56⅔ Arabic miles (66.2 nautical miles).[23] Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Earth to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation, and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan as 2,400 nautical miles (about 23% of the real figure).[26]

There was a further element of key importance in the plans of Columbus, a closely held fact discovered by or otherwise learned by Columbus: the trade winds. A brisk westward wind from the east, commonly called an "easterly", propelled the ships of the first voyage for five weeks from the Canary Islands off Africa. To return to Spain eastward against this prevailing wind would have required several months of an arduous sailing technique upwind, called beating, during which food and drinkable water would have been utterly exhausted. Columbus returned home by following prevailing winds northeastward from the southern zone of the North Atlantic to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where prevailing winds are eastward (westerly) to the coastlines of Western Europe, where the winds curve southward towards the Iberian Peninsula. So he used the North Atlantic's great circular wind pattern, clockwise in direction, in both legs of his voyage.

For his westward voyage to find a shorter route to the Orient, Columbus and his crew took three medium-sized ships, the largest of which was a carrack (Spanish: nao), the Santa María, which was owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa, and under Columbus's direct command.[27][lower-alpha 4] The other two were smaller caravels; the name of one is lost, but is known by the Castilian nickname Pinta ('painted one'). The other, the Santa Clara, was nicknamed the Niña ('girl'), perhaps in reference to her owner, Juan Niño of Moguer.[28] The Pinta and the Niña were piloted by the Pinzón brothers (Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez, respectively).[27] On the morning of August 3, 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera, going down the Rio Tinto and into the Atlantic.[29][30]

Christopher Columbus depicted on his ship by Carl von Piloty

Three days into the journey, on August 6, 1492, the rudder of the Pinta broke.[31] Martín Alonso Pinzón suspected the owners of the ship of sabotage, as they were afraid to go on the journey. The crew was able to secure the rudder with ropes until they could reach the Canary Islands, where they arrived on August 9.[32] The Pinta had its rudder replaced on the island of Gran Canaria, and by September 2 the ships rendezvoused at La Gomera, where the Niña's lateen sails were re-rigged to standard square sails.[33] Final provisions were secured, and on September 6 the ships departed San Sebastián de La Gomera[33][34] for what turned out to be a five-week-long westward voyage across the Atlantic.

As described in the abstract of his journal made by Bartolomé de las Casas, on the outward bound voyage Columbus recorded two sets of distances: one was in measurements he normally used, the other in the Portuguese maritime leagues used by his crew. Las Casas originally interpreted that he reported the shorter distances to his crew so they would not worry about sailing too far from Spain, but Oliver Dunn and James Kelley state that this was a misunderstanding.[35]

On September 13, 1492, Columbus observed that the needle of his compass no longer pointed to the North Star. It was once believed that Columbus had discovered magnetic declination, but it was later shown that the phenomenon was already known, both in Europe and in China.[36][lower-alpha 5]

First voyage (conjectural).[lower-alpha 1] Modern place names in black, Columbus's place names in blue

After 29 days out of sight of land, on October 7, 1492, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds", some of which his sailors trapped and determined to be "field" birds (probably Eskimo curlews and American golden plovers). Columbus changed course to follow their flight.[40]

On 11 October, Columbus changed the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through the night, believing land was soon to be found. At around 10:00 in the evening, Columbus thought he saw a light "like a little wax candle rising and falling".[41][lower-alpha 6] Four hours later, land was sighted by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodríguez Bermejo) aboard La Pinta.[42][lower-alpha 7] Triana immediately alerted the rest of the crew with a shout, and the ship's captain, Martín Alonso Pinzón, verified the land sighting and alerted Columbus by firing a lombard.[43][lower-alpha 8] Columbus would later assert that he had first seen land, thus earning the promised annual reward of 10,000 maravedís.[44][45]

Columbus called this island San Salvador, in the present-day Bahamas or Turks and Caicos; the indigenous residents had named it Guanahani.[46] According to Samuel Eliot Morison, San Salvador Island[lower-alpha 9] is the only island fitting the position indicated by Columbus's journal.[39][lower-alpha 10] Columbus wrote of the natives he first encountered in his journal entry of October 12, 1492:

Many of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn our language.[48]

A depiction of Columbus claiming possession of the land in caravels, the Niña and the Pinta

Columbus called the indigenous Americans indios (Spanish for "Indians")[49][50][51] in the delusion that he had reached the East Indies;[52] the islands of the Caribbean are termed the West Indies after this error. Columbus initially encountered the Lucayan, Taíno, and Arawak peoples.[lower-alpha 11] Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of the Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold.[54] Columbus noted that their primitive weapons and military tactics made the natives susceptible to easy conquest.[lower-alpha 12]

Columbus proceeded to observe the people and their cultural lifestyle. He also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, landing on October 28, 1492, and the north-western coast of Hispaniola, present day Haiti, by December 5, 1492. Here, the Santa Maria ran aground on Christmas Day, December 25, 1492, and had to be abandoned. Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including the interpreter Luis de Torres,[55][lower-alpha 13] and founded the settlement of La Navidad.[56] He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship, until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January.

On January 13, 1493, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the Americas, in the Bay of Rincón at the eastern end of the Samaná Peninsula in northeast Hispaniola.[57] There he encountered the Ciguayos, the only natives who offered violent resistance during his first voyage to the Americas.[58] The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow in his chest.[59] Because of this and because of the Ciguayos' use of arrows, he called the inlet where he met them the Bay of Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows).[60] On January 16, 1493, the homeward journey was begun.[61]

Four natives who boarded the Niña at Samaná Peninsula told Columbus of what was interpreted as the Isla de Carib (probably Puerto Rico), which was supposed to be populated by cannibalistic Caribs, as well as Matinino, an island populated only by women, which Columbus associated with an island in the Indian Ocean that Marco Polo had described.[62]

While returning to Spain, the Niña and Pinta encountered the roughest storm of their journey, and, on the night of February 13, lost contact with each other. All hands on the Niña vowed, if they were spared, to make a pilgrimage to the nearest church of Our Lady wherever they first made land. On the morning of February 15, land was spotted. Columbus believed they were approaching the Azores Islands, but other members of the crew felt that they were considerably north of the islands. Columbus turned out to be right. On the night of February 17, the Niña laid anchor at Santa Maria Island, but the cable broke on sharp rocks, forcing Columbus to stay offshore until the morning, when a safer location was found to drop anchor nearby. A few sailors took a boat to the island, where they were told by several islanders of a still safer place to land, so the Niña moved once again. At this spot, Columbus took on board several islanders who had gathered onshore with food, and told them that his crew wished to come ashore to fulfill their vow. The islanders told him that a small shrine dedicated to Our Lady was nearby.[63]

Columbus sent half of the crew members to the island to fulfill their vow, but he and the rest of the crew stayed on the Niña, planning to send the other half to the island upon the return of the first crew members. While the first crew members were saying their prayers at the shrine, they were taken prisoner by the islanders, under orders from the island's captain, João de Castanheira, ostensibly out of fear that the men were pirates. The boat that the crew members had taken to the island was then commandeered by Castanheira, which he took with several armed men to the Niña, in an attempt to arrest Columbus. During a verbal battle across the bows of both craft, during which Columbus did not grant permission for him to come aboard, Castanheira announced that he did not believe or care who Columbus said that he was, especially if he was indeed from Spain. Castanheira returned to the island. However, after another two days, Castanheira released the prisoners, having been unable to get confessions from them, and having been unable to capture his real target, Columbus. There are later claims that Columbus was also captured, but this is not backed up by Columbus's log book.[63]

Leaving the island of Santa Maria in the Azores on February 23, Columbus headed for Castilian Spain, but another storm forced him into Lisbon. He anchored next to the king's harbor patrol ship on March 4, 1493, where he was told a fleet of 100 caravels had been lost in the storm. Astoundingly, both the Niña and the Pinta had been spared. Not finding King John II of Portugal in Lisbon, Columbus wrote a letter to him and waited for the king's reply. After receiving the letter, the king agreed to meet with Columbus in Vale do Paraíso despite poor relations between Portugal and Castile at the time. Upon learning of Columbus's discoveries, the Portuguese king informed him that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas. After spending more than a week in Portugal, Columbus set sail for Spain. Columbus met with Ferdinand and Isabella in Barcelona on March 15, 1493, to report his findings.[lower-alpha 14]

Columbus showed off what he had brought back from his voyage to the monarchs, including a few small samples of gold, pearls, gold jewelry from the natives, a few Taíno he had kidnapped, flowers, and a hammock. He gave the monarchs a few of the gold nuggets, gold jewelry, and pearls, as well as the previously unknown tobacco plant, the pineapple fruit, the turkey, and the hammock. The monarchs invited Columbus to dine with them.[lower-alpha 15] He did not bring any of the coveted East Indies spices, such as the exceedingly expensive black pepper, ginger or cloves. In his log, he wrote "there is also plenty of 'ají', which is their pepper, which is more valuable than black pepper, and all the people eat nothing else, it being very wholesome".[64][lower-alpha 16]

Upon first landing in the Americas, Columbus had written to the monarchs offering to enslave some of the indigenous Americans.[lower-alpha 12] While the Caribs may have met the sovereign's requirements for such treatment on the grounds of their cannibalism and aggressiveness towards the peaceful Taíno, Columbus had yet to meet them and only brought Taínos before the sovereigns.[65] In Columbus's letter on the first voyage, addressed to the Spanish court, he insisted he had reached Asia, describing the island of Hispaniola as being off the coast of China. He emphasized the potential riches of the land and that the natives seemed ready to convert to Christianity.[66] The descriptions in this letter, which was translated into multiple languages and widely distributed,[67] were idealized, particularly regarding the supposed abundance of gold:

Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. ... There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals...[68]

Upon Columbus's return, most people initially accepted that he had reached the East Indies, including the sovereigns and Pope Alexander VI,[52] though in a letter to the Vatican dated November 1, 1493, the historian Peter Martyr described Columbus as the discoverer of a Novi Orbis ('New Globe').[69] The pope issued four bulls (the first three of which are collectively known as the Bulls of Donation), to determine how Spain and Portugal would colonize and divide the spoils of the new lands. Inter caetera, issued May 4, 1493, divided the world outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a north–south meridian 100 leagues west of either the Azores or Cape Verde Islands in the mid-Atlantic, thus granting Spain all the land discovered by Columbus.[70] The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, ratified the next decade by Pope Julius II, moved the dividing line to 370 leagues west of the Azores or Cape Verde.[71]

Columbus's second voyage

The stated purpose of the second voyage was to convert the indigenous Americans to Christianity. Before Columbus left Spain, he was directed by Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain friendly, even loving, relations with the natives.[72] He set sail from Cádiz, Spain, on September 25, 1493.[73]

The fleet for the second voyage was much larger: two naos and 15 caravels. The two naos were the flagship Marigalante ("Gallant Mary")[lower-alpha 17] and the Gallega; the caravels were the Fraila ("The Nun"), San Juan, Colina ("The Hill"), Gallarda ("The Gallant"), Gutierre, Bonial, Rodriga, Triana, Vieja ("The Old"), Prieta ("The Brown"), Gorda ("The Fat"), Cardera, and Quintera.[74] The Niña returned for this expedition, which also included a ship named Pinta probably identical to that from the first expedition. In addition, the expedition saw the construction of the first ship in the Americas, the Santa Cruz or India.[75]

On November 3, 1493, Christopher Columbus landed on a rugged shore on an island that he named Dominica. On the same day, he landed at Marie-Galante, which he named Santa María la Galante. After sailing past Les Saintes (Todos los Santos), he arrived at Guadeloupe (Santa María de Guadalupe), which he explored between November 4 and November 10, 1493. The exact course of his voyage through the Lesser Antilles is debated, but it seems likely that he turned north, sighting and naming many islands including Santa María de Montserrat (Montserrat), Santa María la Antigua (Antigua), Santa María la Redonda (Saint Martin), and Santa Cruz (Saint Croix). He also sighted and named the island chain of the Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes (the Virgin Islands), and named the islands of Virgen Gorda.

On Santa Cruz, the Europeans saw a canoe with a few Carib men and two women. They had two male captives, and had recently castrated them. The Europeans pursued them, and were met with arrows from both the men and women,[76] fatally wounding at least one man. The Europeans either killed or captured all of the canoe's inhabitants, putting one to death by beheading.[77] Another was thrown overboard, and when he was spotted crawling away holding his entrails, the Arawaks recommended he be recaptured so he would not alert his tribe; he was thrown overboard again, and then had to be shot down with arrows.[76][lower-alpha 18] Columbus's childhood friend Michele da Cuneo took one of the women in the skirmish, whom Columbus let him keep as a slave; Cuneo subsequently beat and raped her.[77][76][lower-alpha 19]

The fleet continued to the Greater Antilles, and landed on the island of San Juan Bautista, present-day Puerto Rico, on November 19, 1493. Diego Álvarez Chanca recounts that on this island, the Europeans rescued some women from a group of at least 20 that the local Caribs had been keeping as sex slaves. The women explained that any male captives were eaten, and that their own male offspring were castrated and made to serve the Caribs until they were old enough to be considered good to eat. The Europeans rescued three of these boys.[79]

On November 22, Columbus returned to Hispaniola, where he found his men at La Navidad had fallen into dispute with natives in the interior and had been killed, but he did not accuse Chief Guacanagari, his ally, of any wrongdoing. Another Chief, named Caonabo in Maguana, was charged. Columbus established a new settlement at La Isabela, on the north coast of Hispaniola, where gold had first been found, but it was a poor location and the settlement was short-lived. He spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold. Finding some, he established a small fort in the interior.

Columbus left Hispaniola on April 24, 1494, and arrived at the island of Cuba (which he had named Juana during his first voyage) on April 30 and Discovery Bay, Jamaica, on May 5. He explored the south coast of Cuba, which he believed to be a peninsula of China rather than an island, and several nearby islands including La Evangelista (the Isle of Youth), before returning to Hispaniola on August 20. After staying for a time on the western end of present-day Haiti he finally returned to Spain.

Columbus had planned for Queen Isabella to set up trading posts with the cities of the Far East made famous by Marco Polo, but whose Silk Road and eastern maritime routes had been blockaded to her crown's trade. However, Columbus would never find Cathay (China) or Zipangu (Japan), and there was no longer any Great Khan for trade treaties.

In 1494, Columbus sent Alonso de Ojeda (whom a contemporary described as "always the first to draw blood wherever there was a war or quarrel") to Cibao (where gold was being mined for),[80] which resulted in Ojeda's capturing several natives on an accusation of theft. Ojeda cut the ears off of one native, and sent the others to La Isabela in chains, where Columbus ordered them to be decapitated.[81] During his brief reign, Columbus executed Spanish colonists for minor crimes, and used dismemberment as another form of punishment.[82] By the end of 1494, disease and famine had claimed two-thirds of the Spanish settlers.[83][84] A native Nahuatl account depicts the social breakdown that accompanied the pandemic: "A great many died from this plague, and many others died of hunger. They could not get up to search for food, and everyone else was too sick to care for them, so they starved to death in their beds."[85]

By 1494, Columbus had shared his viceroyship with one of his military officers named Margarit, ordering him to prioritize Christianizing the natives, but that part of their noses and ears should be cut off for stealing. Margarit's men exploited the natives by beating, raping and enslaving them, with none on Hispaniola being baptized for another two years. Columbus's brother Diego warned Margarit to follow the admiral's orders, which provoked him to take three caravels back to Spain. Fray Buil, who was supposed to perform baptisms, accompanied Margarit. After arriving in Spain in late 1494, Buil complained to the Spanish court of the Columbus brothers and that there was no gold. Groups of Margarit's soldiers who remained in the west continued brutalizing the natives. Instead of forbidding this, Columbus participated in enslaving the indigenous people.[86] In February 1495, he took over 1,500 Arawaks, some of whom had rebelled against the oppression of the colonists,[54][87] and many of whom were subsequently released or taken by the Caribs.[88] That month, Columbus shipped approximately 500 of these Americans to Spain to be sold as slaves; about 40% died en route,[54][87] and half of the rest were sick upon arrival. In June of that year, the Spanish crown sent ships and supplies to the colony on Hispaniola, which Florentine merchant Gianotto Berardi had helped procure.[89][lower-alpha 20] In October, Berardi received almost 40,000 maravedís worth of slaves, who were alleged to be either cannibals or prisoners.[89][lower-alpha 21]

The natives of Hispaniola were systematically subjugated via the encomienda system Columbus implemented.[91] Adapted from Spain, it resembled the feudal system in Medieval Europe, as it was based on a lord offering "protection" to a class of people who owed labor.[92] In addition, Spanish colonists under Columbus's rule began to buy and sell natives as slaves, including children.[93] Columbus's forced labor system was described by his son Ferdinand: "In the Cibao, where the gold mines were, every person of fourteen years of age or upward was to pay a large hawk's bell of gold dust;[lower-alpha 22] all others were each to pay twenty-five pounds of cotton. Whenever an Indian delivered his tribute, he was to receive a brass or copper token which he must wear about his neck as proof that he had made his payment; any Indian found without such a token was to be punished."[94] The monarchs, who suggested the tokens, called for a light punishment,[95] but any Indian found without a copper token had their hands cut off, which was a likely death sentence.[68] Since there was no abundance of gold on the island, the natives had no chance of meeting Columbus' quota and thousands are reported to have committed suicide.[96] By 1497, the tribute system had all but collapsed.[97]

Columbus became ill in 1495, and during this time, his troops acted out of order, enacting cruelties on the natives, including torturing them to learn where the supposed gold was.[98] When he recovered, he led men and dogs to hunt down natives who fled their forced duties, killing them or cutting off their hands as a warning to others.[99] Brutalities and murders were carried out even against natives who were sick and unarmed.[99]

Third voyage

Location of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, the starting point for Columbus's third journey.

According to the abstract of Columbus's journal made by Bartolomé de Las Casas, the objective of the third voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal suggested was located to the southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. King John reportedly knew of the existence of such a mainland because "canoes had been found which set out from the coast of Guinea [West Africa] and sailed to the west with merchandise."[100][101] Italian explorer John Cabot had already reached the mainland in June 1497.[102]

On 30 May 1498, Columbus left with six ships from Sanlúcar, Spain, for his third trip to the Americas. Three of the ships headed directly for Hispaniola with much-needed supplies, while Columbus took the other three in an exploration of what might lie to the south of the Caribbean islands he had already visited, including a hoped-for passage to continental Asia.[103] Columbus led his fleet to the Portuguese island of Porto Santo, his wife's native land. He then sailed to Madeira and spent some time there with the Portuguese captain João Gonçalves da Camara, before sailing to the Canary Islands and Cape Verde.

On July 13, Columbus's fleet entered the doldrums of the mid-Atlantic, where they were becalmed for several days, the heat doing damage to their ships, food, and water supply.[104] An easterly wind finally propelled them westwards, which was maintained until July 22, when birds flying from southwest to northeast were sighted, and the fleet turned north in the direction of Dominica.[105] The men sighted the land of Trinidad on 31 July, approaching from the southeast.[106] The fleet sailed along the southern coast and entered Dragon's Mouth, anchoring near Soldado Rock (west of Icacos Point, Trinidad's southwesternmost point) where they made contact with a group of Amerindians in canoes.[107][lower-alpha 23] On 1 August, Columbus and his men arrived at a landmass near the mouth of South America's Orinoco river, in the region of modern-day Venezuela. Columbus recognized from the topography that it must be the continent's mainland, but while describing it as an otro mundo ('other world'),[108] retained the belief that it was Asia—and perhaps an Earthly Paradise.[109] On 2 August, they landed at Icacos Point (which Columbus named Punta de Arenal), narrowly avoiding a violent encounter with the natives.[110] Early on 4 August, a tsunami nearly capsized Columbus's ship.[111] The men sailed across the Gulf of Paria, and on 5 August, landed on the mainland of South America at the Paria Peninsula.[112] Columbus, suffering from a monthlong bout of insomnia and impaired vision from his bloodshot eyes, authorized the other fleet captains to go ashore first: one planted a cross, and the other recorded that Columbus subsequently landed to formally take the province for Spain. They sailed further west, where the sight of pearls compelled Columbus to send men to obtain some, if not gold. The natives provided nourishment including a maize wine, new to Columbus. Compelled to reach Hispaniola before the food aboard his ship spoiled, Columbus was disappointed to discover that they had sailed into a gulf, and while they had obtained fresh water, they had to go back east to reach open waters again.[113]

At sea, Columbus observed that the North Star is not fixed, then, making observations with a quadrant, "regularly saw the plumb line fall to the same point," instead of moving respectively to his ship. He divined that he had discovered the entrance to Heaven, from which Earth's waters extend, the planet forming a pear shape with the insurmountable "stalk" portion of the pear pointing towards Heaven.[114][lower-alpha 24] He then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita (reaching the latter on 14 August),[116] and sighted Tobago (which he named "Bella Forma") and Grenada (which he named "Concepción").[117]

In poor health, Columbus returned to Hispaniola on 19 August, only to find that many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were in rebellion against his rule, claiming that Columbus had misled them about the supposedly bountiful riches they expected to find. A number of returning settlers and sailors lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him and his brothers of gross mismanagement. Columbus had some of his crew hanged for disobedience. He had an economic interest in the enslavement of the Hispaniola natives and for that reason was not eager to baptize them, which attracted criticism from some churchmen.[118] An entry in his journal from September 1498 reads: "From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold ..."[119]

Columbus was eventually forced to make peace with the rebellious colonists on humiliating terms.[120] In 1500, the Crown had him removed as governor, arrested, and transported in chains to Spain. He was eventually freed and allowed to return to the Americas, but not as governor.[121] As an added insult, the Portuguese had won the race to the East Indies: Vasco da Gama returned in September 1499 from a trip to India, having sailed east around Africa.

After his second journey, Columbus had requested that 330 people be sent to stay permanently (though voluntarily) on Hispaniola, all on the king's pay. Specifically, he asked for 100 men to work as wood men soldiers and laborers, 50 farmers, 40 squires, 30 sailors, 30 cabin boys, 20 goldsmiths, 10 gardeners, 20 handymen, and 30 women. In addition to this, plans were made to maintain friars and clergymen, a physician, a pharmacist, an herbalist, and musicians for entertaining the colonists. Fearing that the King was going to restrict money allotted for wages, Columbus suggested that Spanish criminals be pardoned in exchange for a few years unpaid service in Hispaniola, and the King agreed to this. A pardon for the death penalty would require two years of service, and one year of service was required for lesser crimes. They also instructed that those who had been sentenced to exile would also be redirected to be exiled in Hispaniola.[122]

These new colonists were sent directly to Hispaniola in three ships with supplies, while Columbus was taking an alternate route with the other three ships to explore. As these new Colonists arrived on Hispaniola, a rebellion was brewing under Francisco Roldán (a man Columbus had left as chief mayor, under his brothers Diego and Bartolomew). By the time Columbus arrived on Hispaniola, Roldán held the territory of Xaraguá, and some of the new colonists had joined his rebellion. Over months, Columbus tried negotiating with the rebels. At some point in these negotiations Columbus ordered Adrián de Mújica, Roldán's partner in rebellion, to be hanged. Eventually, though, he capitulated to much of the Roldán's demands. Several other revolts broke out after that, but Roldán, now restored as mayor, took part in putting them down, and tried and hanged one of the ringleaders, Adrián de Mújica.[123]

During Columbus's term as viceroy and governor of the Indies, he had been accused of governing tyrannically, called "the tyrant of the Caribbean". Columbus was physically and mentally exhausted; his body was wracked by arthritis and his eyes by ophthalmia. In October 1499, he sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Castile to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern. On February 3, 1500, he returned to Santo Domingo with plans to sail back to Spain to defend himself from the accounts of the rebels.[124]

The sovereigns gave Francisco de Bobadilla, a member of the Order of Calatrava, complete control as governor in the Americas. Bobadilla arrived in Santo Domingo in August 1500, where Diego was overseeing the execution of rebels, while Columbus was suppressing a revolt at Grenada.[125][lower-alpha 25] Bobadilla immediately received many serious complaints about all three Columbus brothers, including that "seven Spanish men had been hanged that week," with another five awaiting execution.[126][lower-alpha 26] Bobadilla had orders to find out "which persons were the ones who rose up against the admiral and our justice and for what cause and reason, and what ... damage they have done," then "detain those whom you find guilty ... and confiscate their goods."[128] The crown's command regarding Columbus dictated that the admiral must relinquish all control of the colonies, keeping only his personal wealth.[128]

Bobadilla used force to prevent the execution of several prisoners, and subsequently took charge of Columbus's possessions, including papers which he would have used to defend himself in Spain.[129] Bobadilla suspended the tribute system for a twenty-year period, then summoned the admiral. In early October 1500, Columbus and Diego presented themselves to Bobadilla, and were put in chains aboard La Gorda, Columbus's own ship.[130] Only the ship's cook was willing to put the shamed admiral in chains.[131] Bobadilla took much of Columbus's gold and other treasures.[130] Ferdinand Columbus recorded that the governor took "testimony from their open enemies, the rebels, and even showing open favor," and auctioned off some of his father's possessions "for one third of their value."[132]

Bobadilla's inquiry produced testimony that Columbus forced priests not to baptize natives without his express permission, so he could first decide whether or not they should be sold into slavery. He allegedly captured a tribe of 300 under Roldán's protection to be sold into slavery, and informed other Christians that half of the indigenous servants should be yielded to him.[133] Further, he allegedly ordered at least 12 Spaniards to be whipped and tied by the neck and feet for trading gold for something to eat without his permission. Other allegations include that he: ordered a woman to be whipped naked on the back of a donkey for lying that she was pregnant, had a woman's tongue cut out for seeming to insult him and his brothers, cut a Spaniard's throat for being homosexual, ordered Christians to be hung for stealing bread, ordered a cabin boy's hand cut off and posted publicly for using a trap to catch a fish, and ordered for a man to have his nose and ears cut off, as well as to be whipped, shackled, and banished. Multiple culprits were given a potentially fatal 100 lashes, sometimes while naked. Some fifty men starved to death on La Isabela because of tight control over the ship's rations, despite there being an abundance.[134]

A number of returned settlers and friars lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court, accusing him of mismanagement. By his own request, Columbus remained in chains during the entire voyage home.[131][lower-alpha 27] Once in Cádiz, a grieving Columbus wrote to a friend at court:

It is now seventeen years since I came to serve these princes with the Enterprise of the Indies. They made me pass eight of them in discussion, and at the end rejected it as a thing of jest. Nevertheless I persisted therein... Over there I have placed under their sovereignty more land than there is in Africa and Europe, and more than 1,700 islands... In seven years I, by the divine will, made that conquest. At a time when I was entitled to expect rewards and retirement, I was incontinently arrested and sent home loaded with chains... The accusation was brought out of malice on the basis of charges made by civilians who had revolted and wished to take possession on the land... I beg your graces, with the zeal of faithful Christians in whom their Highnesses have confidence, to read all my papers, and to consider how I, who came from so far to serve these princes... now at the end of my days have been despoiled of my honor and my property without cause, wherein is neither justice nor mercy.[135]

Columbus Before the Queen[136] by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, 1843 (Brooklyn Museum of Art)

Columbus and his brothers were jailed for six weeks before the busy King Ferdinand ordered them released. On December 12, 1500, the king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to their presence at the Alhambra palace in Granada. With his chains at last removed, Columbus wore shortened sleeves so the marks on his skin would be visible.[131] At the palace, the royal couple heard the brothers' pleas; Columbus was brought to tears as he admitted his faults and begged for forgiveness. Their freedom was restored. On September 3, 1501, the door was firmly shut on Columbus's role as governor. From that point forward, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres was to be the new governor of the Indies, although Columbus retained the titles of admiral and viceroy. A royal mandate dated September 27 ordered Bobadilla to return Columbus's possessions.[137][lower-alpha 28]

Columbus's fourth voyage

After much persuasion, the sovereigns agreed to fund Columbus's fourth voyage. It would be his final chance to prove himself and become the first man ever to circumnavigate the world. Columbus's goal was to find the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean.[138] On March 14, 1502, Columbus started his fourth voyage with 147 men and with strict orders from the king and queen which instructed him not to stop at Hispaniola, but only to search for a westward passage to the Indian Ocean mainland. Before he left, Columbus wrote a letter to the Governors of the Bank of Saint George, Genoa, dated at Seville, 2 April 1502.[139] He wrote "Although my body is here my heart is always near you."[140] Accompanied by his stepbrother Bartolomeo, Diego Mendez, and his 13-year-old son Ferdinand, he left Cádiz on May 9, 1502, with his flagship, Capitana, as well as the Gallega, Vizcaína, and Santiago de Palos.[141] They first sailed to Arzila on the Moroccan coast to rescue the Portuguese soldiers who he heard were under siege by the Moors.[142]

After using the trade winds to cross the Atlantic in a brisk twenty days, on June 15, they landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique (Martinica).[142] Columbus anticipated that a hurricane was brewing and had a ship that needed to be replaced, so he headed to Hispaniola, despite being forbidden to land there. He arrived at Santo Domingo on June 29, but was denied port, and the new governor refused to listen to his warning of a storm. While Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Haina River, Governor Bobadilla departed, with Roldán and over US$10 million of Columbus's gold aboard his ship, accompanied by a convoy of 30 other vessels. Columbus's personal gold and other belongings were put on the fragile Aguya, considered the fleet's least seaworthy vessel. The onset of a hurricane drove some ships ashore, with some sinking in the harbor of Santo Domingo; Bobadilla's ship is thought to have reached the eastern end of Hispaniola before sinking. About 20 other vessels sunk in the Atlantic, with a total of some 500 people drowning. Three damaged ships made it back to Santo Domingo; one of these had Juan de la Cosa and Rodrigo de Bastidas on board. Only the Aguya made it Spain, causing some of Columbus's enemies to accuse him of conjuring the storm.[143][144][145]

After the hurricane, Columbus regrouped with his men, and after a brief stop at Jamaica and off the coast of Cuba to replenish, he sailed to modern Central America, arriving at Guanaja[146] (Isla de los Pinos) in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras on July 30, 1502. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants—possibly (but not conclusively) Mayans[147][lower-alpha 29]—and a large canoe, which was described as "long as a galley" and was filled with cargo.[148] The natives introduced Columbus and his entourage to cacao.[149] Columbus spoke with an elder, and thought he described having seen people with swords and horses (possibly the Spaniards), and that they were "only ten days' journey to the river Ganges".[150] On August 14, Columbus landed on the mainland of the Americas at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica looking for the passage, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama, on October 16.

On December 5, 1502, Columbus and his crew found themselves in a storm unlike any they had ever experienced. In his journal Columbus writes,

For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of life. Eyes never beheld the sea so angry, so high, so covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke with such violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was like another deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to end their dreadful suffering.[151]

In Panamá, he learned from the Ngobe of gold and a strait to another ocean. After some exploration, he established a garrison at the mouth of Belén River in January 1503. By April 6, the garrison he had established captured the local tribe leader El Quibían, who had demanded they not go down the Belén River. El Quibían escaped, and returned with an army to attack and repel the Spanish, damaging some of the ships so that one vessel had to be abandoned. Columbus left for Hispaniola on April 16; on May 10, he sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them "Las Tortugas" after the numerous sea turtles there.[152] His ships next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba.[152] Unable to travel any farther, the ships were beached in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on June 25.[153]

Columbus fills the natives with fear and awe by predicting the lunar eclipse

For a year Columbus and his men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. The island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue him and his men. In the meantime, Columbus had to mesmerize the natives in order to prevent being attacked by them and gain their goodwill. He did so by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for February 29, 1504, using the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus.[154][155]

In May 1504 a battle took place between men loyal to Columbus and those loyal to the Porras brothers, in which there was a sword fight between Bartolomé Colón and Francisco de Porras. Bartholomew Columbus won against Francisco but he spared his life. In this way, the mutiny ended. Help finally arrived from the governor Ovando, on June 29, when a caravel sent by Diego Méndez finally appeared on the island. At this time there were 110 members of the expedition alive out of the 147 that sailed from Spain with Columbus. Due to the strong winds, the caravel had to stop by the road, taking 45 days to reach La Hispaniola. Previously this was a trip that Diego Méndez had made in four days in a canoe.

About 38 of the 110 men that survived decided not to board again and stayed in Hispaniola instead of returning to Spain. On September 11, 1504, Christopher Columbus and his son Hernando embarked in a caravel to travel from Hispaniola to Spain, paying their corresponding tickets. They arrived in Sanlúcar de Barrameda on November 7 and from there they traveled to Seville, where Colón denounced to the authorities that the gold that came in the caravel for the Crown had been adulterated and claimed for himself a part for having made the accusation.

• Bergreen, Lawrence (2011). Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1493–1504. Penguin Group US. ISBN 978-1101544327.
• Columbus, Christopher (1893). Markham, Clements R. (ed.). The Journal of Christopher Columbus (During His First Voyage, 1492–93) and Documents Relating to the Voyages of John Cabot and Gaspar Corte Real. et al. London: Hakluyt Society.
• Dugard, Martin (2005). The Last Voyage of Columbus: Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain's Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Swordfight, Mutiny, Shipwreck, Gold, War, Hurricane, and Discovery. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-7595-1378-5.
• Dyson, John (1991). Columbus: For Gold, God and Glory. Madison Press Books. ISBN 978-0-670-83725-0.
• Joseph, Edward Lanzar (1838). History of Trinidad. A. K. Newman & Co.
• Morison, Samuel Eliot (1991) [1942]. Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus. Boston, MA: Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0316584784. OCLC 559825317.
• Murphy, Patrick J.; Coye, Ray W. (2013). Mutiny and Its Bounty: Leadership Lessons from the Age of Discovery. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-17028-3.
• Phillips, Jr, William D.; Phillips, Carla Rahn (1992). The Worlds of Christopher Columbus. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-35097-6.
• Zinn, Howard (2003) [1980]. A People's History of the United States. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-052837-9.