#Pinta santa maria mayflower full#

La Santa María ( The Saint Mary), alternatively La Gallega, was the largest of the three Spanish ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, the others being the Niña and the Pinta. Ferdinand Columbus, the explorer’s 14-year-old son, reported on the conditions on Columbus’s fourth voyage to the Americas.Ship model at Fort San Cristóbal, San Juan, Puerto Rico Yet tooth-breaking, dry biscuits were still preferable to those that had been spoiled by exposure to water in their storage barrel. Hardtack biscuits were so rock solid that they could only be eaten if softened with water or dipped in the communal slurry served every meal in a large wooden trough. The word biscuit comes from the Latin bis coctus for “twice-baked.” The hardtack biscuits “enjoyed” by Columbus’s crew would have been prepared by baking a hockey puck of flour and water multiple times, then crushing it into tiny pieces, reconstituting it with water and baking it again. Staples included dried and salted anchovies and cod, pickled or salted beef and pork, dried grains like chickpeas, lentils and beans, and, of course, hardtack biscuits. For food to last at sea, it needed to be dry.

#Pinta santa maria mayflower full#

Columbus stocked a full year’s worth of food for the journey, not knowing how long it would be before they could return to Spain. Hammocks weren’t yet in use on ships in the 15th century, says Nucup.įood Aboard Ships Was Dry and Often Filled With MaggotsĪnd then there was the food. The round-the-clock workload meant that even if you were off-duty, good luck trying to sleep on the deck while the other sailors stomped around you. “Cathedrals, castles and ships-those were the most complicated things that humans had built up until that time,” says Nucup. The 20 sailors on the Niña and the 26 crewing the Pinta would have been constantly engaged with adjusting the rigging, trimming the sails, inspecting for leaks and plugging them with spongy scraps of old rope called oakum. Work was relentless on any 15th-century ship. “You’re trying to stay out of the way of the sailors who are working. “If you’re a sailor on a caravel, you’re living on the deck and sleeping on the deck,” says Marc Nucup, public historian at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Unlike the Santa Maria, which at least had tiny cabins where sailors could sleep between eight-hour shifts, the Niña and Pinta had a single small deck at the rear of the ship with only one cramped cabin reserved for the captain. The versatile caravel could speed south along the coast and easily return to shore against the wind. The lateen-rigged caravels were critical in the Portuguese voyages to sub-Saharan African, where strong coastal winds blow north to south. “You can point the bow of the caravel with an angle of just 20 degrees off the wind and still get enough lift on the outer edge of the sail to propel forward.” “Lateen sails are almost like wings,” says Castro. Luis Filipe Viera de Castro, a nautical archeologist at Texas A&M University, says that the earlier Portuguese caravels, known as the caravela latina, were rigged with lateen (triangular) sails that hung at 45-degree angle to the deck. Though only two of Columbus’s ships ended up being caravels, Isabella’s decree speaks to the popularity of the vessel during the 15th-century “ Age of Discovery.” Starting with Portuguese explorations of the African coast in the mid-1400s, caravels were prized for their sleek, lightweight hull and their uncanny ability to sail into the wind. Caravels Were Cutting Edge in the 15th Century