ABSTRACT
Cristoforo Colombo (1451-1506) was born in Genoa and had extensive experience at sea before he learnt, probably in Portugal, of the important geographical discoveries that were being made in the Indies and conceived the idea of sailing west instead of east. In 1492, in command of three ships, Pinta, Niña and his flagship, Santa María, funded by the Queen of Castile, he sailed from Palos in Spain and revictualled in the Canaries before making landfall, on 12 October 1492, at Watling Island (San Salvador) in the Bahamas. Turning southward, he sighted Cuba and made landfall on Hispaniola, where the Santa María was wrecked. Leaving men behind to found a settlement, he took command of the Niña and set sail for Spain. His arrival early in 1493, coming so soon after the fall of Granada, caused a sensation and, in accordance with his agreement with the Queen, he was made Admiral of the Ocean Sea, confirmed as governor of the new territories and given command of a fleet of 17 ships to establish a permanent settlement in the Indies (as they were to be erroneously known). However, though his second voyage in October 1493 located the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico, the settlement he had founded had been destroyed, the new settlement he established in its place was badly planned and by 1496 he had to return to Spain to defend himself. A third voyage, in 1498, ended badly when a new governor arrived from Spain and sent him back in chains, and by the time of his fourth and final voyage his stubborn insistence that he had discovered the way to the Indies had already been disproved by other navigators. A disastrous legacy of his rule was his mistreatment of the native Americans, who were forced into slavery with the result that many of the islands were almost depopulated.
