Caravel

St. Mary Caravel, Palos de la Frontera, Huelva, Spain, Europe

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• published: 25 Jan 2013
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La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción, or La Santa María, was the largest of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa. The Santa María was built in Pontevedra, Galicia, in Spain's north-west region. The Santa María was probably a medium-sized nau (carrack), about 58 ft (17.7 m) long on deck, and according to Juan Escalante de Mendoza in 1575, the Santa Maria was "very little larger than 100 toneladas" (about 100 tons, or tuns) burthen, or burden, and was used as the flagship for the expedition. The Santa María had a single deck and three masts. The other ships of the Columbus expedition were the smaller caravel-type ships Santa Clara, remembered as La Niña ("The Girl"), and La Pinta ("The Painted"). All these ships were second-hand (if not third- or more) and were not intended for exploration. The Niña, Pinta, and the Santa María were modest-sized merchant vessels comparable in size to a modern cruising yacht. The exact measurements of length and width of the three ships have not survived, but good estimates of their burden capacity can be judged from contemporary anecdotes written down by one or more of Columbus' crew members, and contemporary Spanish and Portuguese shipwrecks from the late 15th and early 16th centuries which are comparable in size to that of the Santa Maria. These include the ballast piles and keel lengths of the Molasses Reef Wreck and Highborn Cay Wreck in the Bahamas. Both were caravel vessels 19 m (62 ft) in length overall, 12.6 m (41 ft) keel length and 5 to 5.7 m (16 to 19 ft) in width, and rated between 100 and 150 tons burden. The Santa María, being Columbus' largest ship, was only about this size, and the Niña and Pinta were smaller, at only 50 to 75 tons burden and perhaps 15 to 18 meters (50 to 60 feet) on deck (updated dimensional estimates are discussed below in the section entitled Replicas). A Spanish vessel in those days was given an official religious name, but was generally known by a nickname, oftentimes a feminine form of either her master's patronymic, or of her home port. Bartolomé de Las Casas, a priest and historian who extensively chronicled Columbus' expeditions, never used the name Santa María in his writings, and instead called the ship La Capitana ("flagship") or La Nao. Indeed, Columbus himself, in his detailed logs, only called it La Capitana. Some claim that the ship was known to her sailors as Marigalante ("Gallant Maria"), but that nickname was in fact given to the Santa María‍ '​s namesake replacement, used on Columbus's second voyage. With three masts, she was the slowest of Columbus' vessels but performed well in the Atlantic crossing. Then on the return trip, on 24 December (1492), not having slept for two days, Columbus decided at 11:00 p.m. to lie down to sleep. The night being calm, the steersman also decided to sleep, leaving only a cabin boy to steer the ship, a practice which the admiral had always strictly forbidden. With the boy at the helm, the currents carried the ship onto a sandbank, running her aground off the present-day site of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. It sank the next day. Realizing that the ship was beyond repair, Columbus ordered his men to strip the timbers from the ship. The timbers were later used to build a fort which Columbus called La Navidad (Christmas) because the wreck occurred on Christmas Day, north from the modern town of Limonade (see map, and the photograph). The anchor of the Santa María now rests in the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien (MUPANAH), in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. On 13 May 2014, underwater archaeological explorer Barry Clifford announced that his team may have found the wreck of the Santa María. In the following October UNESCO's expert team published their final report, concluding that the wreck could not be Columbus's vessel. Fastenings used in the hull, and possible copper sheathing dated it to the 17th or even 18th century. Columbus' crew was not composed of criminals as is widely believed. Many were experienced seamen from the port of Palos in Andalusia and its surrounding countryside, as well as from the region of Galicia in northwest Spain. It is true, however, that the Spanish sovereigns offered an amnesty to convicts who signed up for the voyage; still, only four men took up the offer: one who had killed a man in a fight, and three friends of his who had then helped him escape from jail. Despite the romantic legend that the Queen of Spain had used a necklace that she had received from her husband the King as collateral for a loan, the voyage was principally financed by a syndicate of seven noble Genovese bankers resident in Seville (the group was linked to Amerigo Vespucci and funds belonging to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici).