The Preparations At Palos - 2

The Preparations At Palos - 2

There was one more financial question to be settled—a question that remains for us in

considerable obscurity, but was in all probability partly settled by the aid of these

brothers. The total cost of the expedition, consisting of three ships, wages of the crew,

stores and provisions, was 1,167,542 maravedis, about L950(in 1900). After all these

years of pleading at Court, all the disappointments and deferred hopes and sacrifices

made by Columbus, the smallness of this sum cannot but strike us with amazement.

Many a nobleman that Columbus must have rubbed shoulders with in his years at Court

could have furnished the whole sum out of his pocket and never missed it; yet Columbus

had to wait years and years before he could get it from the Crown. Still more amazing,

this sum was not all provided by the Crown; 167,000 maravedis were found by

Columbus, and the Crown only contributed one million maravedis. One can only assume

that Columbus's pertinacity in petitioning the King and Queen to undertake the

expedition, when he could with comparative ease have got the money from some of his

noble acquaintance, was due to three things—his faith and belief in his Idea, his personal

ambition, and his personal greed. He believed in his Idea so thoroughly that he knew he

was going to find something across the Atlantic. Continents and islands cannot for long

remain in the possession of private persons; they are the currency of crowns; and he did

not want to be left in the lurch if the land he hoped to discover should be seized or

captured by Spain or Portugal. The result of his discoveries, he was convinced, was going

to be far too large a thing to be retained and controlled by any machinery less powerful

than that of a kingdom; therefore he was unwilling to accept either preliminary assistance

or subsequent rewards from any but the same powerful hand. Admiralties, moreover, and

Governor-Generalships and Viceroyships cannot be conferred by counts and dukes,

however powerful; the very title Don could only be conferred by one power in Spain; and

all the other titles and dignities that Columbus craved with all his Genoese soul were to

be had from the hands of kings, and not from plutocrats. It was characteristic of him all

his life never to deal with subordinates, but always to go direct to the head man; and

when the whole purpose and ambition of his life was to be put to the test it was only

consistent in him, since he could not be independent, to go forth under the protection of

the united Crown of Aragon and Castile. Where or how he raised his share of the cost is

not known; it is possible that his old friend the Duke of Medina Celi came to his help, or

that the Pinzon family, who believed enough in the expedition to risk their lives in it, lent

some of the necessary money.

Ever since ships were in danger of going to sea short-handed methods of recruiting and

manning them have been very much the same; and there must have been some hot work

about the harbour of Palos in the summer of 1492. The place was in a panic. It is highly

probable that many of the volunteers were a ruffianly riff-raff from the prisons, to whom

personal freedom meant nothing but a chance of plunder; and the recruiting office in

Palos must have seen many a picturesque scoundrel coming and taking the oath and

making his mark. The presence of these adventurers, many of them entirely ignorant of

the sea, would not be exactly an encouragement to the ordinary seaman. It is here very

likely that the influence of the Pinzon family was usefully applied. I call it influence,

since that is a polite term which covers the application of force in varying degrees; and it

was an awkward thing for a Palos sailor to offend the Pinzons, who owned and controlled

so much of the shipping in the port. Little by little the preparations went on. In the

purchasing of provisions and stores the Pinzons were most helpful to Columbus and, it is

not improbable, to themselves also. They also procured the ships; altogether, in the whole

history of the fitting out of expeditions, I know nothing since the voyage of the Ark

which was so well kept within one family. Moreover it is interesting to notice, since we

know the names and places of residence of all the members of the expedition, that the

Pinzons, who personally commanded two of the caravels, had them almost exclusively

manned by sailors from Palos, while the Admiral's ship was manned by a miscellaneous

crew from other places. To be sure they gave the Admiral the biggest ship, but (in his

own words) it proved "a dull sailer and unfit for discovery"; while they commanded the

two caravels, small and open, but much faster and handier. Clearly these Pinzons will

take no harm from a little watching. They may be honest souls enough, but their conduct

is just a little suspicious, and we cannot be too careful.

Three vessels were at last secured. The first, named the Santa Maria, was the largest, and

was chosen to be the flagship of Columbus. She was of about one hundred tons burden,

and would be about ninety feet in length by twenty feet beam. She was decked over, and

had a high poop astern and a high forecastle in the bows. She had three masts, two of

them square-rigged, with a latine sail on the mizzen mast; and she carried a crew of fiftytwo

persons. Where and how they all stowed themselves away is a matter upon which we

can only make wondering guesses; for this ship was about the size of an ordinary small

coasting schooner, such as is worked about the coasts of these islands with a crew of six

or eight men. The next largest ship was the Pinta, which was commanded by Martin

Alonso Pinzon, who took his brother Francisco with him as sailing-master. The Pinta was

of fifty tons burden, decked only at the bow and stern, and the fastest of the three ships;

she also had three masts. The third ship was a caravel of forty tons and called the Nina;

she belonged to Juan Nino of Palos. She was commanded by Vincenti Pinzon, and had a

complement of eighteen men. Among the crew of the flagship, whose names and places

of residence are to be found in the Appendix, were an Englishman and an Irishman. The

Englishman is entered as Tallarte de Lajes (Ingles), who has been ingeniously identified

with a possible Allard or AEthelwald of Winchelsea, there having been several

generations of Allards who were sailors of Winchelsea in the fifteenth century. Sir

Clements Markham thinks that this Allard may have been trading to Coruna and have

married and settled down at Lajes. There is also Guillermo Ires, an Irishman from

Galway.