Focusing largely on his arrival in the Americas as opposed to the colonization of the area, Irving and others enshrined Columbus as a hero. Later, when Americans looked for founder-heroes in the early years of the republic, authors like Washington Irving ( The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828) documented Columbus’s story. He died impoverished in Spain in 1506 with his public reputation in tatters. By the time that he sent his “Letter to Ferdinand and Isabella Regarding the Fourth Voyage” (1503), he had been undone by political charges against him, several mutinies, and the realities of his colonizing mission. His third and fourth voyages set sail in 14.Ĭolumbus's early descriptions of the Americas, as in his “Letter to Luis de Santangel Regarding the First Voyage” (1493), liken the land to an earthly paradise brimming with potential for European colonists. On November 3, 1493, this fleet of 17 ships anchored near present day Puerto Rico. After receiving a title of nobility, Christopher Columbus immediately launched a larger expedition. The members of the expedition returned to Spain triumphantly on March 15, 1493. Believing he had reached the West Indies, Columbus called the natives “los Indios,” or Indians. Columbus claimed the land for the King of Spain and renamed the island San Salvador. The ships landed on Guanahani, an island in the Bahamas. On August 3, 1492, the three modest ships that comprised Columbus’s party, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, set sail. In April 1492, King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to sponsor Columbus’s proposed voyage. In the 1480s, he presented this proposal to the monarchs of Portugal and Spain. Instead of heading south and circumnavigating Africa, Columbus proposed to sail west. Columbus swam to shore and settled in Lisbon, where his brother Bartholomew worked as a cartographer.īased on speculative maps, Columbus concluded that there was a quicker route to the markets of Asia than was yet known. Legend has it that pirates sank Columbus’s ship near the coast of Portugal. Upon his return in 1476, he traveled in a convoy destined for England. In 1473, Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) embarked on his first maritime voyage from his home near Genoa, Italy, headed for the island of Khios in the Aegean Sea. This text is part of Parks’ Historical Signs Project and can be found postedwithin the park.
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