Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus to Discover America

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. He is remembered as the principal European discoverer of the Americas and he helped to bring the Americas to the forefront of the Western consciousness. Welcome to our animated show of history, How Christopher Columbus Discovered America. Columbus was a believer in the spherical nature of the world. As an ambitious man, he hoped to find a Western trade route to the lucrative spice markets in Asia. Rather than sailing east, he thought sailing west would lead to countries like Japan and China. Christopher went to sea at the age of 10. At the age of 22, he participated in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean seas. His first voyage into the Atlantic Ocean in 1476 nearly cost him his life as the commercial fleet he was sailing with was attacked by French privateers off the coast of Portugal. His ship was burned and Columbus had to swim to the Portuguese shore. He made his way to Lisbon, Portugal, where he eventually settled and married Felipa Perestreo. The couple had one son, Diego, around 1480. His wife died soon after, and Columbus moved to Spain. He had a second son, Fernando, who was born out of wedlock in 1488 with Beatriz Henríquez de Arana. Columbus' first voyage was in 1492. Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships. Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands, which belonged to Castile, then departed from San Sebastián de la Gomera in a five-week voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The ships made landfall, not in Asia, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands in October. Columbus explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he had landed on October 28. At first he thought it was already the Asian continent, but seeing that there were no major cities or civilizations but small villages of primitive natives, they decided to continue sailing in search of the continent. Three months later, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the New World, in the Bay of Rincón in northwest Hispaniola. The problem was the almost 100 crew members could not fit into the two small caravels to return to Castile. Columbus decided to leave 40 men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola and return to Spain. Columbus and his remaining crew came home to a hero's welcome when they returned to Spain. He showed off what he had brought back from his voyage to the monarchs. The monarchs quickly put the legal machinery in place to legitimize these discoveries and ordered Columbus to begin the preparations of the second journey all ready to colonize these territories. On September 24, 1493, he set sail from Cadiz, Spain for the second voyage with two naos and 15 caravels. About two months later, Christopher Columbus landed on a rugged shore on an island that he named Dominica. About two weeks passed when Columbus returned to Hispaniola. He established a new settlement at La Isabela on the north coast of Hispaniola, where gold had first been found. He spent some time exploring the interior of the island for gold. He left Hispaniola on April 24, 1494 and arrived at the island of Juana, Cuba, and Discovery Bay, Jamaica, weeks later. He explored the island, which he believed to be a peninsula of China. After staying for a time on the western end of present-day Haiti, he finally returned to Spain. On May 30, 1498, Columbus left the port of Sanlúcar, Spain with a fleet of six ships. After a very hard journey with epidemics among the sailors, he reached Trinidad Island on July 31, discovered the mouth of Orinoco River, and touched for the first time continental land in the northern part of present-day Venezuela. He then touched the mainland of South America at the Paria Peninsula. He also speculated that the new continent might be the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. He then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita. He sighted Tobago and Granada. He described the new lands as belonging to a previously unknown new continent, but he pictured it hanging from China, bulging out to make the earth pear-shaped. In poor health, Columbus returned to Hispaniola on the 19th of August, only to find that many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were in rebellion against his rule, claiming that Columbus had misled them about the supposedly bountiful riches of the new world. Columbus was eventually forced to make peace with the rebellious colonists on humiliating terms. On March 14, 1502, Columbus made a fourth voyage with strict orders from the King and Queen, which instructed him not to stop at Hispaniola, but only to search for a westward passage to the Indian Ocean mainland. A month later, they landed at Carbe on the island of Martinique, where a storm wrecked one of his ships, stranding the captain and his sailors on the island of Cuba. During this time, local islanders, tired of the Spaniards' poor treatment and obsession with gold, refused to give them food. In a spark of inspiration, Columbus consulted an almanac and devised a plan to punish the islanders by taking away the moon. On February 29, 1504, a lunar eclipse alarmed the natives enough to re-establish trade with the Spaniards. A rescue party finally arrived, sent by the royal governor of Hispaniola in July, and Columbus and his men were taken back to Spain in November 1504. Christopher Columbus died in 1506 in Valladolid, Spain, without overcoming the obstacle of the American continent and fulfilling his dream of reaching the Indies. However, Columbus' expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries, helping create the modern western world. He was widely venerated in the centuries after his death. Thanks for watching, and please check out our other animations on history. 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