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Updated: June 25, 2025
Moreover, the machinery that had been so hard to move before, turned swiftly now. Diego Prieto, one of the magistrates of Palos, was sent to Columbus at La Rabida, bearing 20,000 maravedis with which he was to buy a mule and decent clothing for himself, and repair immediately to the Court at Santa Fe. Old Perez was in high feather, and busy with his pen.
They stopped at Palos by the sea, and from there set out on foot. The way was long, and Diego could not go far without getting very thirsty; and his father stopping at a great, dark, stone convent, called Maria de la Rabida, to get him a drink, the prior asked them in to rest a bit. As they talked, Columbus soon told of his great project, to sail to the Indies by way of the western sea.
The morning after his arrival, Columbus, accompanied by the Prior, proceeded to the church of Saint George in Palos, where the authorities and principal inhabitants had been ordered to attend. Here the royal order was read by a notary public, commanding them to have two caravels ready for sea in ten days, they and their crews to be placed at the disposal of Columbus.
Columbus sailed from Palos on the third of August 1492, and reached the island of Gomera, one of the Canary islands, on the ninth of August, or in six days.
As soon as the legal documents had been signed Columbus returned there and, taking up his quarters at La Rabida, set about fitting out his expedition. The reason Palos was chosen was an economical one.
Three frail vessels, little larger than fishing boats, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, set sail from Palos, August 3, 1492, for an unknown land, upon untried seas; the sailors would not volunteer, but were forced to go by the king. Friends ridiculed them for following a crazy man to certain destruction, for they believed the sea beyond the Canaries was boiling hot.
A Pinzon could have navigated the fleet from Palos to Guanahani; but only a Columbus, only a man burning with belief is himself and in his quest, could have kept that superstitious crowd of loafers and malefactors and gaol-birds to their duties, and bent them to his will.
This voyage proved to be very stormy, and at one time it seemed certain that the ships would go down; but after a time the sea grew quiet, and on the 15th of March they sailed again into the little harbor of Palos. You can imagine the excitement. "What! has Columbus returned?" asked the people. "Has he really found the East by sailing westward?" "Yes, he has," was the answer. "He has found India."
The next best ship was the Santiago de Palos under the command of Francisco Porras; Porras and his brother Diego having been more or less foisted on to Columbus by Morales, the Royal Treasurer, who wished to find berths for these two brothers-in-law of his. We shall hear more of the Porras brothers.
Being sufficiently furnished for his enterprize, Columbus set out from the town of Palos on the third of August 1492, having with him, as captains and pilots, Martin Alionzo Pinzon, Francis Martinez Pinzori, Vincent Yannes Pinzon, and Bartholomew Columbus his brother with an hundred and twenty other persons in the three ships.
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