For readers of Columbus and Caonabó (coming this November 9!), I now begin posting photos, historic sketches, or other images relating to key events depicted in the book.
On September 25, 1493, 528 years ago today, Columbus’s second fleet of seventeen ships departed Cádiz, Spain, with about twelve hundred European sailors and settlers, seven Taínos he’d brought to Spain on the first voyage, and livestock—including horses, cows, sheep, and chickens. Of the seven Taínos, six were enslaved to assist as interpreters as Columbus subjugated “Española” and the seventh was a representative whom the Taíno chieftain Guacanagarí had dispatched to meet Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand.
The first image below is a sixteenth century sketch of Cádiz (Georg Braun and Frans Hogenburg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, 1572–1617), with its port lying north of the peninsula on which the town is built, and the second is a photo of the central part of the port today. The third is a photo of Cádiz’s Santa Cruz Church, where in 1493 the leading Genoese merchant families maintained a chapel, Columbus worshipped, and the seven Taínos likely received Christian instruction.
The fleet’s composition was designed for conquest, settlement, and exploration. Columbus’s flagship was a square-rigged nao nearly twice the capacity of the lost Santa María of the first voyage, with large quarters for himself and his administrative staff. There were four other naos, responsible for bearing substantial provisions, and twelve smaller, more nimble caravels, mostly square-rigged, a few lateen. One of the larger caravels was the Niña, refit and repaired from the storms of the first voyage, which Columbus intended to use to discover and possess new territories and ascertain whether Cuba was the Indies mainland. The last photo is a reconstruction of the Niña, which lies berthed in the Wharf of the Caravels Museum in Palos, Spain.
