They made use of lateen sails which greatly helped their performance. Sleek and fast, they were skilling at sailing upwind. The smaller caravels were very popular in Columbus’ day, the sports cars of the sea. Each was likely a second hand merchant ship, the best that could be obtained at the time to be fast enough and reliable enough to do the job. None of the three ships were ever explicitly intended for exploration. Sleeping quarters were not included, the crew would have slept on the deck. Each ship carried supplies for their crews. The Nina and the Pinta were known as caravel vessels. The flagship Santa Maria was a carrack that displaced about 100 tons. The Santa Maria’s deck was around 58 feet and was the largest of the three, meant for carrying cargo. The Nina clocked in at about 50 feet of deck length. The Pinta had a deck length of only 56 feet. The Nina and the Pinta were both very small. These were not the mighty seafaring vessels some might have expected them to be. They were la Santa Clara (Niña), la Pinta and la Santa Gallega (Santa Maria). The Story of Christopher Columbus’ ShipsĬolumbus set sail with three vessels. They found a new land that no one had expected to be there. He realized right away that they hadn’t found the Orient. The problem was he thought it was a lot smaller than it truly is and that it would be a shortcut to China and India. The reason Columbus headed West was because everyone knew the world was round. Keep in mind, the popular story many people hear was that either Columbus thought the world was flat or that he thought he found China. The voyage was funded by the crown but it still must have seemed daunting at best to a crew who had never heard of anyone doing what they were about to do. He took three ships and a crew of 86 sailors. It was August of 1492 when Columbus set sail. Just how did Columbus make the journey that only a handful of Vikings had ever made before? When Columbus Sailed for the Americas But there’s one part of the story that not enough people pay attention to and that’s the ships themselves. Gone are they days when people thought Columbus thought the world was flat. The story has evolved over time to take a more realistic and practical view of the trip. Unfortunately, says The Independent, follow up work to confirm the identity of the ship have been hindered because “all the key visible diagnostic objects including the cannon ha been looted by illicit raiders.”Īn excavation of what's left of the wreck should hopefully follow soon, they say.Most schoolchildren learn the tale of Christopher Columbus and his historic voyage across the ocean. And the massacre of its garrison gave excuse, if excuse were needed, for Spanish persecution of the native population of Espanola and the Antilles.” ![]() It provided proof of occupation by Spain, necessary to gain the papal award of these new lands in the west. The fortress, says Davies, “lasted less than a year, but its brief existence had important consequences for American history. The museum says that, because of the lost ship, 39 crewmembers had to stay behind in Haiti while Columbus returned to Spain with the Nina and Pinta. That Columbus and his crew set up camp at Navidad, says Arthur Davies from the University College of the South West, was a direct consequence of the grounding of the Santa Maria. Rather, says the Santa Maria museum in Columbus, Ohio, the grounded ship was stripped down, the wood used “to build a fortress in what Columbus called La Navidad, the first Spanish settlement.” The wreck of the Santa Maria is not, as one might think, a full boat resting on the sea floor. Now, The Independent is reporting that a team of archaeologists led by Barry Clifford think they've found the remains of the Santa Maria.ĭetermining whether or not the ship-first spotted by Clifford and his team in 2003-is actually the Santa Maria will take more work, but for now the evidence described by The Independent is compelling: the ship is where Clifford thought it should be, based on Columbus' journal the debris' footprint is about the right size and artifacts seen among the wreckage, like an old cannon, match those known to have been aboard the ship. In his journal Columbus recorded the location of the ship's wreck, and over many, many years researchers have worked to figure out how the famed explorer's descriptions and maps align with the coastline, and to pin down where, exactly, the ship ended its voyage. On Christmas Day of 1492 Christopher Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria, ran aground off the northern coast of Haiti.
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