how long did columbus second voyage take

The Second Voyage of Christopher Columbus

Second Voyage Adds Colonization and Trading Posts to Exploration Goals

Preparations for the Second Voyage

Dominica, guadalupe and the antilles, hispaniola and the fate of la navidad, cuba and jamaica, columbus as governor, the start of the enslaved indigenous peoples trade, people of note in columbus’ second voyage, historical importance of the second voyage.

• Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University
• M.A., Spanish, University of Montana
• B.A., Spanish, Penn State University

Christopher Columbus returned from his first voyage in March 1493, having discovered the New World—although he didn’t know it. He still believed that he had found some uncharted islands near Japan or China and that further exploration was needed. His first voyage had been a bit of a fiasco, as he had lost one of the three ships entrusted to him and he did not bring back much in the way of gold or other valuable items. He did, however, bring back a group of Indigenous people he had enslaved on the island of Hispaniola, and he was able to convince the Spanish crown to finance the second voyage of discovery and colonization.

The second voyage was to be a large-scale colonization and exploration project. Columbus was given 17 ships and over 1,000 men. Included on this voyage, for the first time, were European domesticated animals such as pigs, horses, and cattle. Columbus’ orders were to expand the settlement on Hispaniola, convert the population of Indigenous people to Christianity, establish a trading post, and continue his explorations in search of China or Japan. The fleet set sail on October 13, 1493, and made excellent time, first sighting land on November 3.

The island first sighted was named Dominica by Columbus, a name it retains to this day. Columbus and some of his men visited the island, but it was inhabited by fierce Caribs and they did not stay very long. Moving on, they discovered and explored a number of small islands, including Guadalupe, Montserrat, Redondo, Antigua, and several others in the Leeward Islands and Lesser Antilles chains. He also visited Puerto Rico before making his way back to Hispaniola.

Columbus had wrecked one of his three ships the year of his first voyage. He had been forced to leave 39 of his men behind on Hispaniola, in a small settlement named La Navidad . Upon returning to the island, Columbus discovered that the men he left had raped Indigenous women and angered the population. Indigenous people had then attacked the settlement, slaughtering the Europeans to the last man. Columbus, consulting his Indigenous chieftain ally Guacanagarí, laid the blame on Caonabo, a rival chief. Columbus and his men attacked, routing Caonabo and capturing and enslaving many of the people.

Columbus founded the town of Isabella on the northern coast of Hispaniola, and spent the next five months or so getting the settlement established and exploring the island. Building a town in a steamy land with inadequate provisions is hard work, and many of the men became sick and died. It reached the point where a group of settlers, led by Bernal de Pisa, attempted to capture and make off with several ships and go back to Spain: Columbus learned of the revolt and punished the plotters. The settlement of Isabella remained but never thrived. It was abandoned in 1496 in favor of a new site, now Santo Domingo .

Columbus left the settlement of Isabella in the hands of his brother Diego in April, setting out to explore the region further. He reached Cuba (which he had discovered on his first voyage) on April 30 and explored it for several days before moving on to Jamaica on May 5. He spent the next few weeks exploring the treacherous shoals around Cuba and searching in vain for the mainland. Discouraged, he returned to Isabella on August 20, 1494.

Columbus had been appointed governor and Viceroy of the new lands by the Spanish crown, and for the next year and a half, he attempted to do his job. Unfortunately, Columbus was a good ship’s captain but a lousy administrator, and those colonists that still survived grew to hate him. The gold they had been promised never materialized and Columbus kept most of what little wealth was found for himself. Supplies began running out, and in March of 1496 Columbus returned to Spain to ask for more resources to keep the struggling colony alive.

Columbus brought back many enslaved Indigenous people with him. Columbus, who had once again promised gold and trade routes, did not want to return to Spain empty-handed. Queen Isabella , appalled, decreed that the New World Indigenous people were subjects of the Spanish crown and therefore could not be enslaved. However, the practice of enslaving Indigenous populations continued.

• Ramón Pané was a Catalan priest who lived among the Taíno people for about four years and produced a short but very important ethnographic history of their culture.
• Francisco de Las Casas was an adventurer whose son Bartolomé was destined to become very important in the fight for the rights of Indigenous people.
• Diego Velázquez was a conquistador who later became governor of Cuba.
• Juan de la Cosa was an explorer and cartographer who produced several important early maps of the Americas.
• Juan Ponce de León would become governor of Puerto Rico but was most famous for his journey to Florida in search of the Fountain of Youth .

Columbus’ second voyage marked the start of colonialism in the New World, the social importance of which cannot be overstated. By establishing a permanent foothold, Spain took the first steps toward its mighty empire of the centuries that followed, an empire that was built with New World gold and silver.

When Columbus brought back enslaved Indigenous peoples to Spain, he also caused the question of whether to practice enslavement in the New World to be aired openly, and Queen Isabella decided that her new subjects could not be enslaved. But although Isabella perhaps prevented a few instances of enslavement, the conquest and colonization of the New World was devastating and deadly for Indigenous peoples: their population dropped by approximately 80% between 1492 and the mid-17th century. The drop was caused mainly by the arrival of Old World diseases, but others died as a result of violent conflict or enslavement.

Many of those who sailed with Columbus on his second voyage went on to play very important roles in the trajectory of history in the New World. These first colonists had a significant amount of influence and power over the span of the next few decades.

• Herring, Hubert. A History of Latin America From the Beginnings to the Present . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962.
• Thomas, Hugh. "Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan." Hardcover, 1st edition, Random House, June 1, 2004.
• The First New World Voyage of Christopher Columbus (1492)
• La Navidad: First European Settlement in the Americas
• Amerigo Vespucci, Explorer and Navigator
• Explorers and Discoverers
• The Road to the American Revolution
• The Untold History of Native American Enslavement
• The Early American Colonial Regions
• History of the Plymouth Colony
• Facts About the Jamestown Colony
• American Revolution: Battle of Nassau
• The Mayflower Compact of 1620
• Check Your Knowledge: A 'New World' Discovered
• American Revolution: The Boston Massacre
• America's Most Influential Founding Fathers
• Colonial Governments of the Original 13 Colonies
• American Revolution: Battle of Germantown

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Christopher Columbus

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The explorer Christopher Columbus made four trips across the Atlantic Ocean from Spain: in 1492, 1493, 1498 and 1502. He was determined to find a direct water route west from Europe to Asia, but he never did. Instead, he stumbled upon the Americas. Though he did not “discover” the so-called New World—millions of people already lived there—his journeys marked the beginning of centuries of exploration and colonization of North and South America.

Christopher Columbus and the Age of Discovery

During the 15th and 16th centuries, leaders of several European nations sponsored expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and vast undiscovered lands. The Portuguese were the earliest participants in this “ Age of Discovery ,” also known as “ Age of Exploration .”

Starting in about 1420, small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast, carrying spices, gold and other goods as well as enslaved people from Asia and Africa to Europe.

Did you know? Christopher Columbus was not the first person to propose that a person could reach Asia by sailing west from Europe. In fact, scholars argue that the idea is almost as old as the idea that the Earth is round. (That is, it dates back to early Rome.)

Other European nations, particularly Spain, were eager to share in the seemingly limitless riches of the “Far East.” By the end of the 15th century, Spain’s “ Reconquista ”—the expulsion of Jews and Muslims out of the kingdom after centuries of war—was complete, and the nation turned its attention to exploration and conquest in other areas of the world.

Early Life and Nationality 

Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool merchant, is believed to have been born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a merchant ship. He remained at sea until 1476, when pirates attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.

The boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap of wood and made his way to Lisbon, where he eventually studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation. He also began to hatch the plan that would change the world forever.

Columbus’ Quest for Gold

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How Early Humans First Reached the Americas: 3 Theories

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Christopher Columbus' First Voyage

At the end of the 15th century, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid. Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea: They sailed south along the West African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope.

But Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent? The young navigator’s logic was sound, but his math was faulty. He argued (incorrectly) that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible, but comparatively easy via an as-yet undiscovered Northwest Passage . 

He presented his plan to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not until 1492 that he found a sympathetic audience: the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile .

Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe. (Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.)

Columbus’ contract with the Spanish rulers promised that he could keep 10 percent of whatever riches he found, along with a noble title and the governorship of any lands he should encounter.

Exploration of North America

The Vikings Discover the New World The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around 1000 A.D. when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands and finally Newfoundland. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) […]

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Christopher Columbus Never Set Out to Prove the Earth was Round

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Where Did Columbus' Ships, Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, Land?

On August 3, 1492, Columbus and his crew set sail from Spain in three ships: the Niña , the Pinta and the Santa Maria . On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in the East Indies, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands, likely San Salvador.

For months, Columbus sailed from island to island in what we now know as the Caribbean, looking for the “pearls, precious stones, gold, silver, spices, and other objects and merchandise whatsoever” that he had promised to his Spanish patrons, but he did not find much. In January 1493, leaving several dozen men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), he left for Spain.

He kept a detailed diary during his first voyage. Christopher Columbus’s journal was written between August 3, 1492, and November 6, 1492 and mentions everything from the wildlife he encountered, like dolphins and birds, to the weather to the moods of his crew. More troublingly, it also recorded his initial impressions of the local people and his argument for why they should be enslaved.

“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells," he wrote. "They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.”

Columbus gifted the journal to Isabella upon his return.

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The Ships of Christopher Columbus Were Sleek, Fast—and Cramped

Two of Christopher Columbus’ ships were so small that men had no refuge to sleep and poor food storage led to wormy meals.

Christopher Columbus: How The Explorer’s Legend Grew—and Then Drew Fire

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Christopher Columbus's Later Voyages

About six months later, in September 1493, Columbus returned to the Americas. He found the Hispaniola settlement destroyed and left his brothers Bartolomeo and Diego Columbus behind to rebuild, along with part of his ships’ crew and hundreds of enslaved indigenous people.

Then he headed west to continue his mostly fruitless search for gold and other goods. His group now included a large number of indigenous people the Europeans had enslaved. In lieu of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some 500 enslaved people to Queen Isabella. The queen was horrified—she believed that any people Columbus “discovered” were Spanish subjects who could not be enslaved—and she promptly and sternly returned the explorer’s gift.

In May 1498, Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. He visited Trinidad and the South American mainland before returning to the ill-fated Hispaniola settlement, where the colonists had staged a bloody revolt against the Columbus brothers’ mismanagement and brutality. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over.

Meanwhile, the native Taino population, forced to search for gold and to work on plantations, was decimated (within 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred of what may have been 250,000 Taino were left on their island). Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned to Spain in chains.

In 1502, cleared of the most serious charges but stripped of his noble titles, the aging Columbus persuaded the Spanish crown to pay for one last trip across the Atlantic. This time, Columbus made it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon two of his four ships after damage from storms and hostile natives. Empty-handed, the explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506.

Legacy of Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus did not “discover” the Americas, nor was he even the first European to visit the “New World.” (Viking explorer Leif Erikson had sailed to Greenland and Newfoundland in the 11th century.)

However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. The Columbian Exchange transferred people, animals, food and disease across cultures. Old World wheat became an American food staple. African coffee and Asian sugar cane became cash crops for Latin America, while American foods like corn, tomatoes and potatoes were introduced into European diets. 

Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy —he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered.

HISTORY Vault: Columbus the Lost Voyage

Ten years after his 1492 voyage, Columbus, awaiting the gallows on criminal charges in a Caribbean prison, plotted a treacherous final voyage to restore his reputation.

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Christopher Columbus - 2nd Voyage

Columbus left from Cádiz in Spain for his second voyage (1493-1496) on September 24, 1493, with 17 ships and about 1200 men. His aim was to conquer the Taíno tribe and colonise the region. On October 13, the ships left the Canary Islands, following a more southerly course than on his first voyage. The actual course between Hierro and his landfall point is 252° true. Since the fleet was sailing WSW (258°.8 magnetic), we know that the average magnetic variation during the voyage was about 7° west.

Unlike the low key first voyage, the second voyage was a massive logistic effort. The second voyage brought European livestock (horses, sheep, and cattle) and settlers to America for the first time.

Although Columbus kept a log of his second voyage, only very small fragments survive. Most of what we know comes from indirect references or from accounts of others on the voyage.

Columbus hoped to make landfall at Hispaniola (where he had left 40 men the previous January). He sighted land in the West Indies at dawn on Sunday, November 3. The transatlantic passage of only 21 days was remarkably fast.

He named the island he saw Dominica. On the same day, he landed at Marie-Galante. After sailing past Les Saintes (Todos los Santos), he arrived at Guadaloupe, which he explored between November 4 and November 10, 1493. He then ran north namimg several islands - Montserrat (Santa Maria de Monstserrate), Antigua (Santa Maria la Antigua), Redonda (Santa Maria la Redonda), Nevis (Santa María de las Nieves), Saint Kitts (San Jorge), Sint Eustatius (Santa Anastasia), Saba (San Cristobal), Saint Martin (San Martin), and Saint Croix (Santa Cruz). He also sighted the Virgin Islands, which he named Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Virgines, and the islands of Virgin Gorda, Tortola, and Peter Island (San Pedro).

He landed at Puerto Rico (San Juan Bautista) on November 19, 1493. On November 22, he reached Hispaniola, where he found his colonists had fought with natives and had been killed. He established a new settlement at Isabella, 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 explored the interior of the island for gold, and established a small fort in the interior. Columbus then set off from Isabela with three ships, in an effort to find the mainland of China, which he was still convinced must be nearby. He reached Cuba on April 30 and sailed along its southern coast. Columbus left Cuba on May 3rd, and anchored at Jamaica two days later. The Indians here were hostile, and since he had still not found the mainland, he left Jamaica on May 13, returning to Cuba the following day. He explored the south coast of Cuba and several nearby islands, including the Isle of Youth (La Evangelista), before returning to Hispaniola on August 20.

But by the end of September, Columbus was seriously ill. His crew abandoned further explorations and returned to the colony at La Isabela. He sent a letter to the monarchs in Spain proposing to enslave some of the native peoples, specifically the Caribs. Although his petition was refused by the Crown, in February 1495 Columbus took 1600 Arawak as slaves. 560 slaves were shipped to Spain; 200 died en route, probably of disease. After legal proceedings, the survivors were released and ordered to be shipped home. Others of the 1600 were kept as slaves for the settlers in the Americas.

Soon after the settlement was made at Isabella the colonists began to complain that the amount of gold had been vastly exaggerated. Further the Spanish suffered from the unhealthiness of the climate. Columbus himself suffered considerably from ill-health. Isabella with its fifteen hundred Spanish immigrants was the most populous settlement. And for the protection of the colonists Columbus built in the interior a little fort called Santo Tomas.

At Isabella there was grumbling against the admiral, in which the Benedictine Father Buil (Boil) and the other priests joined. In the interior there was trouble with the natives. The commander at Santo Tomas, Pedro Margarite, was accused of cruelty to the Indians, but Columbus himself in his Memorial of 30 January, 1494, commends the conduct of that officer. He had to send him reinforcements, which were commanded by Alonzo de Ojeda.

Unable to ascertain the true state of affairs in the Indies, the sovereigns decided to send a special commissioner to investigate and report. They chose Juan de Aguado who had gone with Columbus on his first voyage and with whom he had always been on friendly terms. Aguado arrived at Isabella in October, 1495, while Columbus was absent on a journey of exploration across the island.

As supplies brought from Spain dwindled, Columbus decided to return to Spain to ask for more help in establishing the colony. So he fitted out two ships, one for himself and one for Aguado, placing in them two hundred dissatisfied colonists, a captive Indian chief (who died on the voyage), and thirty Indian prisoners, and set sail for Spain on 10 March, 1496, leaving his brother Bartholomew at Isabella as temporary governor. Columbus reached Cadiz 11 June, 1496.

Translated original Log of Voyage 2

Christopher Columbus 1492 till his death

By Dr. Edward M. Sullivan, Ph.D

Editor’s Note: This was an article from our program book for the civic celebration at the national Columbus Memorial on October 13, 2003

This year saw the 510th anniversary of Columbus’s return to Spain after his initial discoveries, and of the beginning of his second voyage. Even more significant, the middle portion of his fourth and last voyage was exactly 500 years ago this year. In last year’s program book the article “1502: With Columbus 500 Years Ago Today” we examined events of that fourth voyage that took place in 1502. The story is continued here through 1503. But it begins with a backward glance at what had gone before–especially events of that second expedition connected with places the fourth voyage would take him to again.

New Year’s Day of 1503 found Christopher Columbus’s fourth and last expedition forced by weather to anchor in an extraordinary place. It was a bay almost precisely at what would a little over four hundred year later become the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal–that twentieth-century passage to the west which would be the man-made realization of what he had most laboriously been searching for in nature for a decade.

He was a little over half a year into his fourth and final voyage, an expedition that in 1503 centered on a place called Veragua that would give his heirs the title they bear to this day, and then ironically would come to an inglorious end at a place he had nine years earlier named Santa Gloria.

The First Expedition: Discovery of the Presumed Far East

The first voyage, a three-ship venture a decade earlier in 1492, had as its precise object the finding of a western route to what we even today call “The Far East.” Columbus discovered instead obstacles on the way to such a route: the Bahamas, Cuba, and Hispaniola. Thinking, however, that he had succeeded and was indeed in “the Far East,” he explored several islands of the Bahamas, and then the eastern part of the northern coast of Cuba and the western part of the northern cost of Hispaniola.

Then about six weeks after his initial landfall an accident intervened: the grounding and loss on Christmas Eve, 1492 of his flagship, Santa Maria, off the northern coast of what is now Haiti in western Hispaniola. He established an outpost there (named La Navidad, because of the date). and, leaving there almost half of the 90 men who had set out with him, returned to Spain after an eventful return trip, arriving in March with triumphant news of his successful explorations. (Go to beginning of article.)

The Second Expedition: Colonization of Hispaniola and Search for the Mainland

Six months later. on September 25, 1493–almost exactly 510 years ago this Columbus Day–he set out on his second voyage as the newly-titled Admiral of the Ocean Sea (i.e., “of the Atlantic Ocean”) and Viceroy and Governor of the lands he had discovered and would discover in “the region of the Indies.” He had to succor the small ad hoc settlement of La Navidad. But beyond that, now with an armada of 17 ships, he was to exploit what he had discovered and colonize the lands he had found.

That second venture focused primarily on Hispaniola, and on arrival the triumphalism quickly gave way to harsh reality. He found La Navidad in ruins, destroyed by Indians (apparently with some justice) and its colonists massacred. He now established a new settlement, Isabela, some miles to the east on that part of the coast that is now the Dominican Republic.

The main problems he encountered on this beautiful island were human difficulties–not only with the native inhabitants but perhaps especially among many of the Spanish adventurers, ill-suited to be colonists and resentful of these Columbus brothers (Italians! foreigners!) who led and governed them. Then, too, the organizational structure and functionaries that Spain had imposed on the Admiral/Viceroy on this colonization expedition made a rather more complicated situation than he had to contend with on the first voyage of discovery. These human problems were severely exacerbated by disease and privation due in large part to the poor siting of the new settlement, chosen originally for its proximity to reported gold mines.

The Indians along this coast, noted for their huge dugout canoes (he measured one that was 96 feet long with an eight-foot beam) were more hostile than others he had recently encountered. At Santa Gloria 60 canoes came out and he cowed them with a blank cannon salvo. Sailing westward, he explored about a third of this northern coast (encountering another hostile Indian demonstration, in which his crossbow men killed a few Indians) before heading back north to continue his explorations. He then resumed sailing westward along the southern coast of Cuba to a point only about 50 miles from the western end of Cuba. But the coast turned southward at that point, and Columbus took this to be where the Malay Peninsula reached out from mainland China.2

Had he continued along the coast just a little more, he would have learned that Cuba is in fact an island rather than a peninsula. However, he again turned southward before heading back to Hispaniola, sailing around the western end of Jamaica and then eastward along its southern coast back toward Hispaniola. Reaching that island, he continued eastward along its southern coast for the first time, finally rounding the eastern end of Hispaniola to return to Isabela on the north shore from the opposite direction to that he had set out in five months earlier. He had completed the first circumnavigation by Europeans of larger islands in the New World–Jamaica and Hispaniola.

It was almost exactly a year after he had set out from Spain on this second voyage. He had suffered much illness in the five months’ excursion to Cuba and Jamaica and was now very sick–yet much cheered to find that his favorite brother, Bartholomew, had in the meantime been able to join the colonists in this New World. The sick Admiral appointed Bartholomew his deputy, and gave him a high title and rank (adelantado) that caused much resentment among the Spaniards.

It would still be about another year and a half before Christopher again returned to Spain, but the cumulative effect of his approximately two and a half years in the New World on this second expedition served to demonstrate his inadequacies as an administrator. He finally had to go back to Spain to patch things up at court, as well as deal with slanderous charges carried back by some former colonists. Diego had returned to Spain a year earlier and Bartholomew was left in charge on Hispaniola, with instructions to relocate the badly-sited Isabela settlement from the north to the south shore.

Christopher succeeded in fence-mending: his position was reaffirmed, and approval given for Bartholomew’s position and title and for another expedition. Almost two years after his return to Spain, the Admiral’s third voyage, of six vessels, set out.

The Third Expedition: Development of the Colony and Search for a Southern Continent

This third expedition had two purposes. The first was further development of the Hispaniola colony, now centered on Santo Domingo on the southern coast, the first permanent European settlement in the New World and hence the oldest. The Admiral sent three of his ships directly to Hispaniola for that. The second purpose, of particularly great interest to Columbus, was to search for a continent to the south, of which he had heard reports from the Indians. For this, with his other three vessels he crossed the Atlantic on a much more southerly route than on any of his other three voyages.

But when he finally arrived at Hispaniola he found not only Bartholomew’s new city of Santo Domingo abuilding, but also a rebellion in progress led by the former chief justice of the colony, Francisco Roldán. Christopher adopted a conciliatory attitude toward the rebels only to find that damage to a couple of vessels in a storm prevented fulfillment of his commitments, and negotiations with the rebels dragged on for a year before a final settlement was reached.

Six weeks after arriving in Santo Domingo Christopher had sent a somewhat incoherent letter to the sovereigns reporting on the new continent and setting forth plans for Hispaniola, which lessened their confidence in him. Though he had more than once asked for an administrator of justice to help him govern, they appointed a man (Francisco de Bobadilla) whose personal disposition Columbus saw as the opposite of what was wanted. For Bobadilla apparently saw it as

But things moved slowly in those days: it took over a year before Bobadilla left Spain. In the interim there was yet another rebellion in the colony, led by one of Roldán’s lieutenants, Adrian de Moxica, and the Columbus brothers adopted more of a “get tough” policy, the evidence of which was two men hanging from the gallows when Bobadilla arrived. Like an avenging angel, he confiscated Christopher’s records and possessions and proceeded to sack and pack: sacking the three Columbus brothers and packing them off to Spain. Christopher voluntarily kept his chains on during the voyage until they could be removed by direct order of the sovereigns, and then kept them as a precious possession for the rest of his life.

The Fourth Expedition: Search for Valuable Products of the Earth and for a Western Passage between the Land Masses

Again winning the approval of the rulers, Columbus was authorized to undertake a fourth voyage of discovery. But he was no longer Viceroy or Governor. Aware of the animus against him in Santo Domingo and with a new man, Nicolás de Ovando, now in charge on site, the rulers forbade him to go there. Instead, he was to focus on seeking sources of valuables: precious metals such as gold and silver, pearls, gems, spices, and on conversion of the native population. A number of other exploratory expeditions to the New World had been authorized but had not been all that productive, so what could be lost by letting him have another go at it?

He, in the meantime, had studied reports of those expeditions and noticed that they had been directed either north or south of the islands he had discovered–but no one had sailed farther to the west of them. This gave rise to a third aim that was not explicitly stated but understood by all: discovery of a passage west between the two land masses understood to lie to the south (the new continent) and to the north (the mainland of China, which Cuba was still believed to be a part of). Such a passage would make it possible to circumnavigate the globe.

Columbus set forth on May 9, 1502 with 140 hands, including his 13-year-old son Ferdinand and brother Bartholomew and an unusually high proportion of teenagers and very young men, in four vessels: La Capitana, Vizcaína, Santiago (also called Bermuda), and Gallega.

The fourth voyage can be viewed in three phases, focusing respectively on Hispaniola (lasting about a month in 1502), Central America (lasting about ten months in 1502-3), and Jamaica (lasting about a year in 1503-4).

The Hispaniola phase started when, after arriving in the New World.Columbus ignored the royal prohibition and turned toward Santo Domingo, on the plea that one of his four ships was proving unsuitable for exploration and he wanted to trade it there for another. Before he arrived there, his experienced eye detected signs of a coming hurricane (he had weathered one previously), and he sent a warning to Ovando.

During the storm Columbus had sheltered his four vessels somewhat west of Santo Domingo. They suffered some damage, which he repaired and then headed westward into the second phase of fourth voyage. Sailing south of Jamaica, he retraced in a reverse direction the travel of nine years earlier. The vessels were then carried by currents northward toward Cuba, also not far from where he had been nine years earlier, whence they were finally able to sail southwest to hit Central America off the coast of Honduras.

Central America

There followed a miserable 28 days of extremely slow progress beating eastward against the wind in terrible stormy conditions until finally the coast dropped off to the south and there was better sailing. In about three weeks they arrived at the beautiful Chiriqui lagoon near the Costa Rica – Panama border, and spent ten days there recovering from the hardships and illnesses they had suffered since reaching Central America.

Based on earlier misunderstood reports from Indians, Columbus had his hopes up that they were at the mouth to the long-sought passage to the west. It was almost ten years to the day after his initial discovery of the New World. What he had anticipated finding here was the Strait of Malacca, which in fact lies near Singapore, separating the Malay Peninsula from the Indonesian island of Sumatra. But those hopes were dashed when he learned instead that there is an impenetrable barrier between where he was and the western ocean of which the Indians had spoken.

He now concluded that his focus had to shift to making the voyage otherwise profitable to the sovereigns by finding the valuable commodities specified by his mission. Presumably, once he found an area worth exploiting, a more prolonged presence there would give an opportunity to pursue the other part of his mission–the conversion of the inhabitants.

Again the weather turned against him. When the wind and currents were strong enough and there were no good anchorages or ports to put into, a sailing ship could not resist and could only A”o with the flow,” and his little fleet was forced eastward. About two months were lost due to the weather as his vessels were tossed back and forth along that coast by these uncontrollable forces, before finally getting back to Veragua. Sometimes they were able to shelter, perhaps for several days, in ports they found farther along the coast, only to have the wind turn against them when they ventured forth again. It was thus that Columbus ended up passing Christmas and New Year’s at what would just over 400 years later become the entrance to the Panama Canal that would provide the passage to the west he had sought but did not then exist.

Aside from discovering Central America (and of course claiming it for Spain) followed by exploring along the coast, the expedition had in fact accomplished very little in 1502 for all the hardships (and they were great) suffered from the weather–September through December, with October excepted. Perhaps the most significant result was a negative: the hugely disappointing conclusion that a westward passage through the land mass to the western waters could not be found.

The New Year: 1503

But in the dawning days of the new year more favorable weather now made it possible for him to make it quickly back to Veragua. On January 6 he christened one of the two rivers in that area Rio Belén, for “Bethlehem,” in honor of the Feast of the Epiphany. (The first Mass known to have been offered in the New World had been celebrated exactly ten years before on this day at La Navidad.) Though in much more recent years the passage over the bar is much shallower, at that time, with six or seven feet of water over the bar, Columbus could get his three caravels across into a small basin, and use that as a base for exploring Veragua at the end of the rainy season. But now, after all the buffeting by the weather in the last two months, it rained for a month without letup. Two and a half miles west of the River Belén lies the River Veragua, which was even shallower at its entrance and unsuitable for his vessels, but up that river, in a mine worked by the Indians, there was gold:

And there may still be today, despite numerous attempts at exploitation after Columbus, all of them failures as well. But the habitat is wild and inhospitable, consisting of high mountains covered entirely with an impenetrable tropical forest. In the valleys that lead to the deposits–the Veragua and Belén river valleys–the climate is unbearable. A good deal of the soil is alluvial and pounded by frequent and heavy rain which the terrain is unable to absorb. Thus the rivers often swell and overflow, inundating everything. To create conditions stable enough to permit the proper functioning of a mining industry would require large investments, perhaps so large as to render inadequate the value of the exploitable gold.3

Columbus first sent his boats up the river for trading, but the Indians here and up the Veragua were disinclined to trade. However, an Indian who had probably dealt with the Spaniards earlier at the lagoon gave them a favorable report on the Spaniards, and on January 12 Bartholomew then took the boats up the River Veragua.where they met a cacique named El Quibián, who gave permission for them to explore further, and visited and exchanged gifts with the Admiral on the Capitana the following day.

Suddenly on January 24 the rains in the mountains produced a flood, with consequent damage to Gallega, and the flooding, heavy rains, and rough seas breaking over the bar enforced a two-week hiatus in exploration, during which energies were turned to repair and maintenance on the ships.

By February 6 the sea was such that the ships’ boats could cross the bar again and Bartholomew took them to and up the River Veragua, where they spent the night with the Quibián and continued upriver the next day to the Indians’ gold mines, which indeed proved to be a good source of gold. Pleased with the report of the expedition, Columbus decided to make a settlement at the mouth of the River Belén with Bartholomew in charge, returning himself to Spain for men and supplies.

Then on February Bartholomew and 54 men rowed about another 20 miles west of the River Veragua, met a friendly reception from one cacique, then met another cacique, sent samples of gold disks they had bartered for back to the ships, and went on foot to another couple of villages where they collected a large number of such disks (which the Indians wore around their necks).

On their return, work began on the outpost, named Santa Maria de Belén. Gallega was to remain there, and contained the supplies from Spain. But the rain stopped when about a dozen structures had been built, the water level over the bar dropped to only two feet, and the ships were temporarily trapped in the estuary. Further, seeing that the Spaniards intended a permanent settlement, the Indians changed their hospitable attitude. Morison quotes Columbus: ” ‘They were very simple and our people very importunate,” and suggests that some of the Spaniards probably had been clandestinely extorting gold from neighboring Indians by force, as in fact had taken place several months earlier when the ships had sheltered for about a week and a half from the adverse weather to the east in a small harbor Columbus had named Retrete (“closet”).4

Decked out as for combat, some Indians appeared in the area, pretending they were joining a war party against Indians more to the west. Rightly suspicious, one of Columbus most faithful lieutenants, Diego Mendéz, (of whom more shortly) rowed toward Veragua and found an encampment of a thousand warriors. Columbus still wanted more confirmation of a threat to the settlement and so Mendéz (who had apparently been studying the language) with a single companion walked to the mouth of the Veragua and there encountered a couple of Indians and learned from them that an attack was planned for a couple of days later. The encampment had been moved to the Quibian’s village upriver, and Mendéz induced the pair to take him there. He gained access to the area of the cacique’s hut on the pretext that he had come to treat an arrow wound the cacique had sustained. Ignoring rude treatment and knowing of the Indians’ attraction to novelty, he there produced a barber’s kit (scissors, comb, and mirror) and in front of the Indians coolly received a haircut from his companion. Bemused, the Quibián then willingly had a trim, received the kit as a gift, and hosted a friendly meal.

But Mendéz returned to Columbus convinced that the Indians planned to wipe out the Spaniards. Columbus was convinced by him that the only solution was to capture the cacique. So with about 80 men, Bartholomew and Mendéz rowed up the River Veragua and hid most of the force in the vicinity of the Quibian’s village. With three men the two leaders went up and demanded to meet with the Quibián, who came out to find Mendéz showing concern for his wound, grasping him by the arm. A shot fired by one of the Spaniards at this point signaled the ambush party to rush out and capture the cacique and about 30 of his household, women and children among them, along with some gold booty. But that night as they were descending the river, the Quibián managed to escape, and rallied the Indians against the Spaniards.

Meanwhile, rain having raised the water level over the bar, three of the ships were towed out of the estuary, the intention being that Gallega would remain behind for Bartholomew, Mendéz, and the 70 men who were to stay at the settlement with them. On April 6, as they were saying their goodbyes, 400 Indians attacked the settlement with spears, slingshots, and bows and arrows, killing one Spaniard and wounding several, including Bartholomew, before being driven off after a three-hour battle, with the aid of the Spaniards’ Irish wolfhound, much feared by the Indians.

Offshore the Capitana’s captain with a boat party had put into the mouth of the Belén to go upriver and load up fresh water before leaving. They watched the battle and then continued on their mission, the captain confident they could take care of themselves when warned that the Indians might get them. A mile or so upstream they were ambushed from foliage-covered banks, the captain being killed by a spear through his eye and only one man escaping alive by swimming away underwater.

The boat, too, was destroyed, and there was only one left. and it was outside of the estuary with the three ships, Much as they might otherwise have decided to abandon the settlement at this point, they couldn’t get Gallega over the bar and Columbus could not risk sending his one remaining boat due to the shallowness of the water there, and of course there was still danger from the Indians.

It was during this fight that Columbus, sick and alone on Capitana, had a strange experience that may have been due to illness-induced delirium but which in his own view may have had a less mundane explanation.

After three days the Indians withdrew, but for another five days no boat could cross the bar. In the meantime, some of the captured Indians escaped from Santiago, where they had been imprisoned, and those who could not managed to hang themselves in the hold.

One man volunteered to swim in to learn the status of the settlement. He found the men at odds among themselves, vulnerable to another attack, and eager to abandon the outpost. When the Admiral approved, Mendéz made a raft of two dugouts and timbers and in seven trips over two days was able to carry all of the men and their supplies and gear over the bar, leaving behind the worm-eaten Gallega. The grateful Admiral appointed Mendéz to succeed the captain of Capitana who had been lost in the fresh water expedition. (Go to beginning of article.)

On Easter night, April 16, 1503 the three ships left Veragua. Columbus planned to head for Santo Domingo for repairs and then sail for Spain. While his pilots all thought Hispaniola was north of them, his calculations correctly indicated it to be northeast, from which came the prevailing wind. Ships at that time could not sail against the wind (that is, tack, or beat) closer than 56 degrees5, so the Admiral decided to sail eastward before heading in a more northerly direction, which would give his three worm-eaten ships a better chance of making Hispaniola. But the decision was opposed by the pilots and caused much grumbling out of suspicion that he was planning to sail directly back to Spain with inadequate vessels and stores.

Leaving the Central and South American mainland for the last time they thus they moved from the second to the third phase of this fourth expedition. With his ships leaking due to the worm damage and requiring constant pumping, they sailed 700 miles north (and were also blown 90 miles west by the continuing wind), passing the Cayman Islands on May 10 and reaching Cuba two days later–making landfall in a large group of islands off the southern coast that, almost exactly nine years before on his second voyage, Columbus had named The Queen’s Garden. They lie just west of the point (Cabo de Cruz) Columbus used as the point of departure and return for his week-and-a-half excursion of discovery to Jamaica that earlier year.

Exhausted from constantly manning the pumps and hungry from the shortage of food, they anchored and then had to ride out a great storm that night which smashed one ship against the other, with considerable damage to both. Bad weather continued for about six days, and then in desperate straits they headed eastward along the Cuban coast. The situation on the vessels was getting worse daily. “Of all melancholy work on shipboard, pumping a hopelessly leaky vessel is the worst; the labor is back-breaking, there is no respite, and you know it can never improve,”6 observes Morison.

Finally the situation on Santiago got so bad that Columbus realized that in the condition they were in his ships could never make it directly to Hispaniola (the nearest port of which was about 200 miles East Southeast) against wind and current. It was almost a month after they had reached Cuba. He was now sufficiently far east to head down-wind to Jamaica, aiming to hit that island as far eastward as he could, as a possible jumping-off point for Hispaniola. He reached it on the night of June 22-23, and on the 25th was able to take advantage of a land breeze to go about a dozen miles east to the reef-enclosed harbor that nine years earlier he had named Puerto Santa Gloria. (Years later it would become St. Ann’s Bay.)

According to Columbus’ 14-year-old son and shipmate, Ferdinand (who left us the most complete account available of the fourth expedition), the ships could no longer be kept afloat, so were here run as far onto the beach as possible, butted against each other, and shored up on the sides so that they wouldn’t budge. With his previous experience of hostility from the Indians here, Columbus had thatched-roof cabins built at the bow and stern of each boat so the men could live there in safety:

The two caravels thus planted ‘board on board’ as Ferdinand says, made a dry home, and no mean fortress. There were two good streams of fresh water near by, and a large Indian village, Miama, lay about half a mile away, convenient as a source of supply. No more suitable place for the purpose could be found on the north shore of Jamaica.

Thus wrote Morison, after visiting the site in January, 1940.7

The main security problem was that the Indians might try to set the ships afire at night, but the most immediate problem was 116 hungry mouths, since stores were depleted or spoiled. They had already lost 24 of the original complement of 140: 6 prior to Veragua from death or desertions, 12 felled by the Indians at Belén, and another 6 claimed by death since then. Knowing the unruliness of his men and fearing it would raise the hostility of the Indians, as had happened at Retrete and then apparently again at Belén, Columbus restricted them to the two ships as though anchored offshore, and sent Mendéz and three others off to negotiate for food.

The redoubtable Mendéz was eminently successful, making arrangements for food in exchange for trading items (which the Spaniards still had) with a couple of villages and then with a great cacique. At the eastern of the island he even entered into a close friendship with another cacique, from whom he bought a dugout canoe, in which, with six Indian paddlers, he returned triumphantly to Santa Gloria loaded with provisions. Noting that those on the beached ships were then completely out of food and starving. Morison wonderingly comments, “I cannot understand why they were unable to catch fish, or to buy maize and cassava from the nearby village of Maima. However, Indians from near and far now came daily with food supplies, and for several months the question ‘when do we eat?’ did not arise.”8

But how to get home? Captains of that time, unlike later ones, didn’t carry the tools needed for felling trees and shipbuilding, and the expedition’s two caulkers had fallen at Belén. The sole remaining boat had been lost in the storm in the Queen’s Garden, no ship had visited Jamaica in the last nine years, and none could be expected. Columbus would have to send a dugout to Hispaniola to seek help–105 miles across open water from the east end of Jamaica to that island in the face of contrary winds and current, and then another 350 miles to Santo Domingo. When it was put to all of the officers, Diego Mendéz was the only one to volunteer. Columbus knew matters couldn’t wait, for the Indians might at any time turn against him, or he might lose control over his men in this unhappy situation. They do not seem to have been the most reliable lot.

Mendéz added a mast and sail and other modifications to the canoe he had bought, selected another man and six Indian paddlers, and set out around July 7, carrying a letter of that date from Columbus to the sovereigns, known today as the Lettera Rarissima. Near what he believed to be the eastern end of the island, when he walked alone into a forest he found himself suddenly surrounded by a party of Indians. While they were gambling to see who would kill him, he was able to escape, return to the canoe, and head back to Santa Gloria.

At Columbus’s request, Mendéz agreed to try again, if accompanied by an armed escort to the jumping-off point on the east end of the island. This time there would also be a second canoe, commanded by the Genoese former captain of the abandoned Vizcaína, Bartholomew Fieschi. Each would take six Spaniards and ten Indians, and the two canoes would be accompanied to land’s end by Bartholomew and a sizable force in a number of dugouts. All this seems to have been arranged with considerable and surprising dispatch, for they set out only about ten days after Mendéz had set out on the ill-fated first attempt.

If both got through, Fieschi was to return to let Columbus know help would be on its way, while Mendéz was to continue on to Santo Domingo and contract for a rescue vessel. But Columbus and his men marooned at Santa Gloria heard nothing. Weeks passed, and then months, and no Fieschi. There was considerable discontent. particularly with the enforced restriction on “liberty” or “shore leave” from the beached ships, and two political appointees, the Porras brothers, hatched rebellion.

Francisco Porras, though captain of the Santiago, knew little of seamanship, and Bartholomew Columbus filled that role on a de facto basis, while Diego Porras, comptroller and crown representative, was an idler whose only work on the voyage had been to keep track of the relatively little gold brought aboard. Taking advantage of the growing discontent, they convinced about half of the men to join in their plot.

The date set for action was January 2, 1504, when, as it happened, the Admiral was laid low with arthritis.

Thus ended the dismal, disappointing year 1503. The new year, 1504, was to come. And so, obviously, were more trials for Columbus.

We leave the final word on Veragua to Morison and Obregón 9:

In subsequent years Felipe Gutierrez and other conquistadors attempted in vain to subdue the natives of Veragua from the Pacific side. The crown in 1537 granted Veragua, between the Rio Belén and Puerto Limón, to Don Luis Colón, the Admiral’s worthless grandson, together with the title Duque de Veragua. In 1546, when Don Luis sent an expedition under Cristobál de Peña to secure his duchy, the Quibián’s successor repelled it with heavy loss, and among those killed was Francisco Colón, another grandson of the Discoverer. Eleven years later, Don Luis leased his duchy to Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, who succeeded in establishing a settlement called Trinidad up the Rio Belén, and another, La Concepción, at the mouth of one of the many rivers between the Veragua and the Chiriqui. Vasquez brought a coffle [a train of men chained together] of slaves to extract the gold, and employed enough force to keep the natives at bay; but after his death in 1560 both settlements were abandoned. Every later attempt to exploit the gold deposits has failed; surviving Veragua Indians have retired to the high mountains, and only miserable villages of Negroes at the river mouths mark the scenes of these high hopes and tragic events.

1  Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea, vol. 2 (New York: Time, 1962), p. 439

3  Gianni Granzotto, Christopher Columbus (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), p. 258

4  Morison, vol. 1, p. 61

5  Morison, vol. 1, p. 12

6  Morison, vol. 2, p. 622

7  Morison, vol. 2, p. 624

8  Morison, vol. 2, p. 627

9  Morison and Obregón, pp. 204-205

The photographs were originally published in Samuel Eliot Morison and Mauricio Obregón, The Caribbean as Columbus Saw It, Little Brown and Company, Boston, 1964. Morison and Obregón took an aerial photographic tour of the sites visited by Columbus on his four expeditions.

The Second Voyage of Columbus

On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus commanded a sizable fleet of 17 ships. The expedition's primary objective was to explore and settle the new lands Columbus had discovered. Another significant goal was to Christianize any natives they encountered. On November 3rd, 1493, the expedition made its first landfall on an island that Columbus named "Dominica". However, chroniclers of the voyage suggested that the islands might not have been the paradise Columbus had described. Dr. Chanca penned a detailed letter to the municipal council of Seville about the voyage. In it, he described the Caribs, whom he referred to as "bestial". Chanca detailed that "these people raid other islands and abduct women, especially the young and beautiful ones, to keep as servants and concubines. So many were taken that in fifty houses no males were found, and among the captives, more than twenty were women."

During this voyage, Columbus explored Guadeloupe, Antigua, and Saint Croix, and also landed on Puerto Rico. Upon his return to Hispaniola, he found that all the Europeans he had left behind during his previous voyage had either died or been killed. Establishing a new settlement, Columbus scoured Hispaniola for gold and enslaved natives. He then requested additional supplies from Spain, which were sent to him. His governance of the new colony and his treatment of the natives drew widespread criticism. A royal commission was subsequently appointed to investigate the allegations against Columbus. After appointing his brother Bartolome as the governor, Columbus returned to Spain, arriving on June 11, 1496