Columbus Departs on Fourth and Final Voyage

Context

By the early sixteenth century, Spanish monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile had already sponsored three voyages by Columbus that established footholds in the Caribbean but yielded disappointing returns and administrative turmoil. Columbus himself had been stripped of his governorship of Hispaniola and briefly imprisoned in 1500 before his release allowed him to petition for another expedition. At the same time, Portuguese success in reaching India via the African route heightened urgency for a competing western passage that might shorten the journey to the spice markets of the East.

What Happened

Columbus received royal authorization in March 1502 and outfitted the Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína, and Santiago de Palos. Departing Cádiz on May 9 with his brother Bartholomew, his son Ferdinand, and a crew of about 140, the fleet made a brief stop at Arzila in Morocco before crossing the Atlantic in record time to Martinique. Forbidden to land at Hispaniola, Columbus nevertheless approached Santo Domingo to seek shelter from an approaching hurricane, was denied entry, and weathered the storm offshore before proceeding westward.

The expedition reached the Bay of Honduras and explored southward along the coasts of present-day Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, trading for gold and making the first documented European contact with Maya traders. Attempts to establish a settlement at the Belén River in early 1503 ended in conflict with local leaders; after abandoning the site and scuttling one vessel, the remaining ships became unseaworthy and were beached at St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, in June 1503. Columbus and his marooned crew spent a year there, during which captains Diego Méndez and Bartolomeo Fieschi paddled canoes to Hispaniola for help, a mutiny led by the Porras brothers was suppressed, and Columbus used knowledge of a lunar eclipse to regain favor with local Taíno caciques for provisions.

Aftermath

A rescue caravel finally arrived in June 1504, and the survivors reached Santo Domingo in August before sailing for Spain in September. They arrived at Sanlúcar de Barrameda on November 7, 1504. Queen Isabella died three weeks later, and Columbus’s subsequent audience with King Ferdinand in Segovia produced no new honors or compensation for the lost ships and men.

Legacy

The voyage added the first detailed European surveys of the Central American mainland and the Caribbean coast from Honduras to Panama, information that guided later Spanish claims and settlements. Although it failed to locate a strait to Asia, the expedition’s surviving accounts by Columbus, his son Ferdinand, Diego Méndez, and others supplied primary evidence of the region’s geography and indigenous societies that shaped sixteenth-century cartography and historical understanding of the Age of Discovery.