Functional sailing replica, Funchal, Madeira Islands, Portugal |
|
| Career (Spain) | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción |
| Owner: | Juan de la Cosa |
| Launched: | ~1480 |
| Decommissioned: | decommissioning date unknown |
| Struck: | December 25, 1492 |
| Nickname: | Santa María |
| Fate: | ran aground |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Nao |
| Tons burthen: | 223 tons (246 short tons) |
| Length: | 22.6 m (74 ft) |
| Beam: | 7.6 m (25 ft) |
| Draught: | 2.1 m (7 ft) |
| Propulsion: | sail |
| Complement: | 40 |
| Armament: | 4 x 90 mm Bombards, 50 mm culebrinas |
La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción (Spanish for The Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception), was the largest of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa.
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The Santa María was probably a small carrack, about 70 feet long,[1][2] used as the flagship for the expedition. 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 One"). All these ships were second-hand (if not third or more) and were never meant for exploration. The Niña, Pinta, and the Santa María were not the largest ships in Europe at the time. They were smaller trade ships surpassed in size by ships like the Great Michael, built in Scotland in 1511 with a length of 73.2 m (240 ft), and a crew of 300 sailors, 120 gunners, and up to 1,000 soldiers. The Peter von Danzig of the Hanseatic League was built in 1462 and was 51 m (167.3 ft) long. Another large ship, the English carrack Grace Dieu, was built during the period 1420–1439, was 66.4 m (218 ft) long, and weighed between 1,400 tons and 2,750 tons. The reason size is mentioned is that Columbus' three ships were built to sail the Mediterranean sea, not the open ocean. This says a great deal about the courage of Columbus and his crew.
The Santa María was originally named La Gallega ("The Galician"), because she was built in Pontevedra, Galicia, in Spain's north-west. It seems the ship was known to her sailors as Marigalante, Spanish for "Gallant Maria". Bartolomé de Las Casas never used La Gallega, Marigalante or Santa María in his writings, preferring to use la Capitana or La Nao.
The Santa María had a single deck and three masts. She was the slowest of Columbus's vessels but performed well in the Atlantic crossing. She ran aground off the present-day site of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti on December 25, 1492, and was lost.[3] Realizing that the ship was beyond repair, Columbus ordered his men to strip the timbers from the ship. The timbers from the ship were later used to build Môle Saint-Nicolas, which was originally called La Navidad (Christmas) because the wreck occurred on Christmas Day.
The anchor of the Santa María now resides in the Musée du Panthéon National Haitien (MUPANAH), in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.[4]
Columbus's crew on the first voyage was not composed of criminals as is widely believed. Many were experienced seamen from the port town of Palos and the surrounding countryside and coastal area of Galicia. It is true, however, that the Spanish sovereigns offered amnesty to convicts who signed up for the voyage, but 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.[5]
There were some crew members from Andalusia, as the voyage was 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). Hence all the accounting and recording of the voyage was kept in Seville. This also applies to the second voyage, even though the syndicate had by then been disbanded. This fact partly debunks the romantic story that the Queen of Spain had used a necklace that she had received from her husband the King, as collateral for a loan.
Of Columbus's four voyages, only the crew of the first voyage is completely known. In many cases, there are no surnames; the men's places of origin are indicated to differentiate crewmen with the same given names.
Interest in reconstructing the Santa María started in the 1890s for the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage. The 1892 reconstruction depicted the ship as a nao. A subsequent replica built in 1929 (pictured above) depicts the Santa María as a caravel. The caravel did not have the high forward structure of the nao. Apparently Columbus himself referred to the Santa María as both a nao and a caravel in his own journal. The 1992 reconstruction of the Santa María is also as a nao, which is the most commonly accepted type of ship.[6] Anchored in Deep Sea Adventure Lake, West Edmonton Mall's Santa María ship is also a replica of the Santa María. Built at False Creek in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, the ship was hand-carved, hand-painted and transported in flatbed trucks across the Rocky Mountains to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.[7]