Santa María (ship)


La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción, or La Santa María, originally La Gallega, was the largest of the three small ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first expedition across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, with the backing of the Spanish monarchs. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa.
In 1492 the ship ran aground on a sand bar near modern day Cap-Haïtien of the island of Hispaniola. The wood of the ship was stripped and used to make a wooden fort at Limonade, and one anchor survives to the present day in a Museum in Haiti. In the 19th and 20th century several replicas have been made of varying nature, as the size and details of the original are unknown.

History

Santa María was built in Pontevedra, Galicia. Santa María was a medium-sized commercial nau or carrack, about long on deck, and according to Juan Escalante de Mendoza in 1575, Santa María was "very little larger than 100 toneladas" burthen, or burden, and was used as the flagship for the expedition. Santa María had a single deck and three small masts.
The other ships of the Columbus expedition were the smaller caravel-type ships Santa Clara; one particular ship sailed for 46 years and was remembered as La Niña, and La Pinta. All these ships were second-hand and were not intended for exploration. Niña, Pinta, and the Santa María were modest-sized merchant vessels comparable in size to a modern cruising yacht. The exact measurements of length and width of the three ships have not survived, but good estimates of their burden capacity can be judged from contemporary anecdotes written down by one or more of Columbus's crew members, and contemporary Spanish and Portuguese shipwrecks from the late 15th and early 16th centuries which are comparable in size to that of Santa María. These include the ballast piles and keel lengths of the Molasses Reef Wreck and Highborn Cay Wreck in the Bahamas. Both were caravel vessels in length overall, keel length and in width, and rated between 100 and 150 tons burden. Santa María, being Columbus' largest ship, was only about this size, and Niña and Pinta were smaller, at only 50 to 75 tons burden and perhaps on deck.

Shipwreck

With three masts, Santa María was the slowest of Columbus' vessels but performed well in the Atlantic Ocean crossing. Then on the return trip, on 24 December, not having slept for two days, Columbus decided at 11:00 p.m. to lie down to sleep. The night being calm, the steersman also decided to sleep, leaving only a cabin boy to steer the ship, a practice which the admiral had always strictly forbidden. With the boy at the helm, the currents carried the ship onto a sandbank, running her aground off the present-day site of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. It sank the next day. Realizing that the ship was beyond repair, Columbus ordered his men to strip the timbers from the ship. The timbers were later used to build a fort which Columbus called La Navidad because the wreck occurred on Christmas Day, north from the modern town of Limonade.
Santa María carried several anchors, possibly six. One of the anchors now rests in the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
On 13 May 2014, underwater archaeological explorer Barry Clifford claimed that his team had found the wreck of Santa María. In the following October, UNESCO's expert team published their final report, concluding that the wreck could not be Columbus's vessel. Fastenings used in the hull and possible copper sheathing dated it to the 17th or 18th century.

Crew

Columbus' crew was not composed of criminals as is widely believed. Many were experienced seamen from the port of Palos in Andalusia and its surrounding countryside, as well as from the region of Galicia in northwest Spain. It is true, however, that the Spanish sovereigns offered an amnesty to convicts who signed up for the voyage; still, 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.
Despite the romantic legend that the Queen of Spain had used a necklace that she had received from her husband the king as collateral for a loan, the voyage was principally financed by a syndicate of seven noble Genovese bankers resident in Seville. 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 disbanded.
The crew of Santa María is well-known, albeit in many cases, there are no surnames and the crewman's place of origin was used to differentiate him from others with the same given name.

Crew list

  • Cristoforo Colon, captain-general
  • Juan de la Cosa, owner and master
  • Pedro Alonso Niño, pilot
  • Diego de Arana, master-at-arms
  • Pedro de Gutierrez, royal steward
  • Rodrigo de Escobedo, secretary of the fleet
  • Rodrigo Sanchez, comptroller
  • Luis de Torres, interpreter
  • Bartolome Garcia, boatswain
  • Chachu, boatswain
  • Cristobal Caro, goldsmith
  • Juan Sanchez, physician
  • Antonio de Cuéllar, carpenter
  • Diego Perez, painter
  • Lope, joiner
  • Rodrigo de Triana
  • Maestre Juan
  • Rodrigo de Jerez
  • Alonso Chocero
  • Alonso Clavijo
  • Andres de Yruenes
  • Bartolome Biues
  • Bartolome de Torres
  • Diego Bermudez
  • Domingo de Lequeitio
  • Gonzalo Franco
  • Jacomel Rico
  • Juan
  • Juan de Jerez
  • Juan de la Placa
  • Juan Martines de Acoque
  • Juan de Medina
  • Juan de Moguer
  • Juan Ruiz de la Pena
  • Marin de Urtubia
  • Pedro Yzquierdo
  • Pedro de Lepe
  • Pedro de Salcedo, servant of Columbus and ship's boy
  • Rodrigo de Gallego
  • Pedro de Terreros, cabin boy
  • Diego García

    Replicas

Little is definitively known about the actual dimensions of Santa María, since no documentation or illustration has survived from that era. Since the 19th century, various notable replicas have been publicly commissioned or privately constructed.

Quadricentennial (1892)

Interest in reconstructing Santa María started in Spain at around 1890 for the 400th anniversary of Columbus's voyage. An 1892 reconstruction by the Spanish government depicted the ship as a nau.

West Edmonton Mall (1986)

A replica was built during Expo 1986 and anchored in "Deep Sea Adventure Lake" at West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada. Built at False Creek in Vancouver, British Columbia, the ship was hand-carved and hand-painted, and then transported by flatbed trucks across the Rocky Mountains to Edmonton, Alberta.

Marigalante (1991)

The Marigalante was built in 1991 for the 500th anniversary of Columbus's voyage. It sailed the world for a time before providing sail cruises out of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for many years. It sank on 10 October 2025 in the Bay of Banderas, with no loss of life, when a bilge pump malfunctioned on a routine voyage.

Quincentennial (1991)

A replica, depicted as a carrack, was commissioned by the city of Columbus, Ohio. It was built by the Scarano Brothers Boat Building Company in Albany, New York, who later cut the ship in half and transported it by truck to the Scioto River. The replica cost about $1.2 million. The ship was constructed out of white cedar as opposed to the oak used on the original to give the ship a long life in the Scioto River and to reduce cost. The main mast was carved out of a single douglas fir tree and was equipped with a top sail. The ship was built using power tools, with a hull length of, keel length, beam, depth and load. The foremast is high, the mainmast is and mizzen mast is. The replica was declared by Jose Maria Martinez-Hidalgo, a Spanish marine historian, to be the most authentic replica of the Santa María in the world during the ship's coronation on 12 October 1991. Dana Rinehart, the 50th mayor of Columbus, christened the ship as part of the 500th anniversary of its voyage. The ship was removed from its moorings in 2014, cut into 10 pieces, and stored in a lot south of the city, pending funding to do repairs and restorations. As of early 2016, the plans for restoration have stalled.

Palos (1992)

A full sized replica of Santa Maria, together with replicas of the Pinta and Nina, was built in Spain for the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus’ first voyage to the Americas. They were constructed in the fishing port of Isla Cristina, in western Huelva province, and are exhibited at the Wharf of the Caravels in Palos de la Frontera, Huelva.

Madeira (1998)

A functional replica was built on the Portuguese island of Madeira, between July 1997 and July 1998, by craftsmen from the fishing village of Câmara de Lobos. The ship is long and wide. In 1998 Santa María represented the Madeira Wine Expo 98 in Lisbon, where she was visited by over 97,000 people in 25 days. Since then thousands more have sailed and continue to sail aboard that Santa María replica which is located in Funchal.

Puszczykowo (2008)

A stationary full-size replica can be seen in the Arkady Fiedler Museum in Puszczykowo, Poland. The ship was built there in 2004–2008, within the Garden of Cultures and Tolerance, by Fiedler's sons with a ship modeller, Rajmund Korcz, and two assistants.