The Ships

Christopher Columbus made four voyages for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. On Columbus' first voyage, he was searching for a new route to Asia. He was also in search of gold and spices to bring back to the King and Queen. On August 3,1492, Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain.

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Columbus sailed with three ships called the Nina, the Pinta,and the Santa Maria. Columbus was the captain of the Santa Maria.

Picture courtesy of Christopher Columbus, Navigator to the New World, by Isaac Asimov

This is a picture of a replica of the Nina. It was the smallest of the three ships, and weighed 50 or 60 tons.The Pinta was smaller than the Santa Maria, and weighed about 70 tons.

The weather was fine during the voyage, which took about ten weeks. Columbus kept two ship's logs, a true log, and a false log. A ship's log is a book where you write down information about your journey. In his own log he would write the exact distances they sailed. But since the sailors were getting upset about how long the trip to the East was taking, Columbus showed them the log that had exaggerated distances. The sailors were also getting worried that they would fall off the end of the earth, because many of them still believed then that the world was flat. Columbus convinced the sailors that the world was round and a couple of days later they saw land.