At dawn on March 4, Columbus recognized the Rock of Sintra offshore Lisbon, Portugal, and sailed the battered Niña to take refuge in Lisbon’s outer harbor. He knew Portugal’s King John II, having spent a few years trying to convince John to sponsor the voyage (in the early 1480s).
Columbus feared John would punish him for sailing for Castile or to John’s African possessions. He also worried Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand would interpret his harboring in Portugal as disloyalty. Reluctantly, he wrote John requesting that the Niña be allowed to harbor in Lisbon proper where it could be repaired, indicating that he had returned from the Indies, not Africa.
The next day, a harbor official named Bartolomeu Dias—although historians disagree, likely none other than the explorer who rounded the Cape of Good Hope five years earlier—came to the Niña to request that Columbus accompany him to register his ship’s presence. Columbus refused to do so on the basis that he was an Admiral of Castile.