There was a never-failing fear of fire on these ships, and stringent rules forbade lights after dark, except one for the helmsman and one below deck when carefully protected by a lantern. Columbus’s ship carried a lantern at the stern, mica being used at first and subsequently glass. There was a strong religious atmosphere that must not be lost sight of in considering the ship life as exhibited on board Columbus’s fleet. Dominating the whole expedition was the intention to glorify God, to spread His kingdom on earth. As you read through this log you find the crew mustering to sing the “Salve” before the statue of Our Lady—“Stella Maris.” On her festivals, and on such historic occasions as when he made land, Columbus was wont to dress ship. So, too, before the expedition left the mother-land for the Indies, every man made his will and went to confession and communion, so that he might come on board in a state of grace. And there were stringent rules on board to prevent blasphemy, excessive gambling, or doing anything to the dishonour of the king.
Equally illustrative of the ways and methods of the seamen at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries are Columbus’s letters dealing with his subsequent voyages. One of these letters he concludes thus: “Done on board the caravel off the Canary Islands,” and signs himself “The Admiral.” Some idea of the speed of his ship during his second voyage to the West Indies may be seen from the letter addressed to the Chapter of Seville by Dr. Chanca, physician to the fleet, in which he states that in two days, with fair wind and weather, they made fifty leagues. But the Capitana was such a slow sailer that many times the others had to shorten sail. On the first voyage the Nina similarly had to wait for the Pinta to catch her up, and this lack of homogeneity in the fleet certainly lost them much time.
In order to ensure a careful look-out being kept, a handsome reward had been promised to the first man sighting land. This was claimed “on the first Sunday after All Saints, namely, the third of November, about dawn,” when a pilot of the Capitana cried out: “The reward! I see the land.” Of all the ship’s company, Columbus himself excepted, the pilots were the smartest and most skilful men, who “could navigate to or from Spain” “by their knowledge of the stars.” We see Columbus on his third voyage displaying all those characteristics of the cautious manner which had distinguished him already. There was little enough that he left to chance. When he was entering a strange haven, he used to send a boat out ahead in order to take soundings. (His ship the Santa Maria had a large boat about 30 feet long which was usually towed astern, and a smaller boat about 10 feet long which was hoisted on deck.) “I passed thirty-three days without natural rest,” he writes in connection with his second voyage.
Speaking of his navigation during the third voyage, he tells us that “at the end of these eight days it pleased our Lord to give me a favourable east wind, and I steered to the west, but did not venture to move lower down towards the south, because I discovered a very great change in the sky and stars.... I resolved, therefore, to keep on the direct westward course in a line from Sierra Leone, and not to change it until I reached the point where I had thought I should find land.” On the return journey he writes: “As to the Polar Star, I watched it with great wonder, and devoted many nights to a careful examination of it with the quadrant, and I always found that the lead and line fell to the same point!” And as he sailed he wondered in his mind. Where never a ship, never a man had voyaged before Columbus had gone. What, after all, was the shape of this earth? “I have always read,” he says, “that the world comprising the land and water was spherical, and the recorded experiences of Ptolemy and all others have proved this by the eclipses of the moon, and other observations made from east to west, as well as by the elevation of the pole from north to south. But ... I have come to another conclusion ... namely, that it is not round as they describe, but of the form of a pear.”
Three-Masted Fifteenth-Century Caravel.
Drawn from a woodcut after a delineation by Columbus in the Latin translation of his letter dated March 1, 1493, to Don Raphael de Sanxis (Treasurer of the King of Spain), in the Library at Milano.
Sixteenth-Century Caravel at Sea.
After the woodcut of Hansen Burgmair, in the History of Emperor Maximilian the First, compiled by Marx Freithsauerwein in the year 1514.