Queen Isabella, his chief patron, died less than three weeks later. In November 1504, Columbus returned to Spain. Columbus was a castaway on Jamaica for a year before a rescue ship arrived. Columbus and his men were marooned, but two of his captains succeed in canoeing the 450 miles to Hispaniola. Attempting to return to Hispaniola, his ships, in poor condition, had to be beached on Jamaica. After returning to Hispaniola, against his patrons’ wishes, he explored the coast of Central America looking for a strait and for gold. In May 1502, Columbus left Cádiz on his fourth and final voyage to the New World. He was also to continue looking for a passage to India. He was immediately released upon his return, and Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance a fourth voyage, in which he was to search for the earthly paradise and the realms of gold said to lie nearby. In 1500, Spanish chief justice Francisco de Bobadilla arrived at Hispaniola, sent by Isabella and Ferdinand to investigate complaints, and Columbus and his brothers were sent back to Spain in chains.

Columbus’ efforts to restore order were marked by brutality, and his rule came to be deeply resented by both the colonists and the native Taino chiefs. Returning to Hispaniola, he found that conditions on the island had deteriorated under the rule of his brothers, Diego and Bartholomew. Columbus, a deeply religious man, decided after careful thought that Venezuela was the outer regions of the Garden of Eden. He explored the Orinoco River of Venezuela and, given its scope, soon realized he had stumbled upon another continent. He entered the Gulf of Paria in Venezuela and planted the Spanish flag in South America on August 1, 1498. In May 1498, Columbus left Spain with six ships, three filled with colonists and three with provisions for the colony on Hispaniola. Isabella and Ferdinand, still greedy for the riches of the East, agreed to a smaller third voyage and instructed Columbus to find a strait to India. However, Columbus, and most others, underestimated the world’s size, calculating that East Asia must lie approximately where North America sits on the globe (they did not yet know that the Pacific Ocean existed). Contrary to popular legend, educated Europeans of Columbus’ day did believe that the world was round, as argued by St. At the time, Europeans knew no direct sea route to southern Asia, and the route via Egypt and the Red Sea was closed to Europeans by the Ottoman Empire, as were many land routes. He became obsessed with the possibility of pioneering a western sea route to Cathay (China), India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.

Little is known of his early life, but he worked as a seaman and then a sailing entrepreneur. Thinking it an island, he christened it Isla Santa and claimed it for Spain.Ĭolumbus was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1451. Explorer Christopher Columbus sets foot on the American mainland for the first time, at the Paria Peninsula in present-day Venezuela.

Kingdom new lands ship