In Columbus’ Wake: His Ships, The Cantabrian Connection and Juan de la Cosa
In Columbus’ Wake: His Ships, The Cantabrian Connection and Juan de la Cosa
— by David Eugene Perry
This summer has taken us across Spain in the wake of Christopher Columbus. From Andalusia to Extremadura to Cantabria, we’ve been tracing the sites from which his epoch-changing voyages departed. Today, as we arrive in Palos de la Frontera near Huelva, the story comes full circle.
The Fleet of 1492
From Palos, Columbus set sail on August 3, 1492, with three small ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. These were not mighty galleons but modest vessels—two caravels and a larger nao—crewed by locals from Palos and neighboring Moguer.
The Niña and Pinta were privately owned caravels, pressed into royal service through a system called requisición real. The Crown had the authority to commandeer ships from private owners for expeditions of importance, compensating them (sometimes grudgingly) for the risk. The Niña belonged to the Niño brothers of Moguer, seasoned sailors who also served on the voyage. The Pinta was owned by Cristóbal Quintero, though the ship was leased under contract to Martín Alonso Pinzón, a respected local captain who commanded her at sea.
The Santa María, Columbus’s flagship, was not his either. It was a larger merchant vessel—a nao—built for cargo, and owned by Juan de la Cosa, a Cantabrian cartographer from near Alfredo’s hometown of Santander.
De la Cosa not only supplied the ship but sailed aboard her as master, lending both material and navigational expertise to the enterprise. That the flagship was wrecked on Christmas Day 1492 underscores how precarious the venture was, and how deeply personal the losses could be for the shipowners involved.
This mixture of Crown authority and private ownership was common practice in the 15th century. Monarchs had no standing navy of exploration, so they relied on networks of shipowners, merchants, and coastal families. Expeditions were essentially joint ventures: royal financing, noble patronage, local expertise, and privately owned ships combined to form fleets that could open new worlds.
Juan de la Cosa: The Man Behind the Maps
De la Cosa not only sailed with Columbus on the first voyage, he went again on the second, and later with other expeditions. In 1500, he produced the first known world map to include the Americas, a remarkable testament to how swiftly news of the “New World” reshaped European geography. He died in 1510 on the Colombian coast, far from home, but his legacy still anchors him to Cantabria, where statues and plaques honor him as one of Spain’s great mariners.
Granada: The Royal Commission
Earlier this summer, we also visited Granada, where Columbus’s story truly began. At the Alhambra, Queen Isabel gave Columbus his commission following the fall of the last Muslim kingdom in Iberia. Just steps away, in the Royal Chapel of Granada, we stood before the tombs of Isabel and Ferdinand, the monarchs whose reign reshaped Spain and launched the voyages that would link two worlds.
The Queen’s Final Days
Our journey also took us to the town and Palace of Medina del Campo, where Isabel spent her final days. Here she dictated her will—outlining her hopes for the new territories, for her heirs, and for the preservation of her united kingdoms. It’s a poignant reminder that the age of exploration was born not just on the seas, but also in royal chambers where decisions of world-shaping consequence were made.
A Summer of Voyages
For us, visiting Palos is the third point in a triangle. From Santander, where Juan de la Cosa first learned the sea; to Guadalupe, where Columbus later gave thanks at the great monastery; to Granada and Medina del Campo, where Isabel’s vision shaped and ended; and now to Palos, where sails were raised and history changed forever.
It’s hard not to feel the enormity of it: how these three modest ships—privately owned, locally built, pressed into royal service—carried Europe into a new age. And how a Cantabrian navigator, a Genoese dreamer, and Andalusian seamen together forged one of history’s greatest—and most complicated—legacies.
Research for a New Story
All of this is more than travel. It’s also research for my new novel, Thorns of the 15 Roses, the sequel to Upon This Rock. The book explores the intertwining worlds of Columbus, Queen Isabel, and Juan Ponce de León—figures whose lives shifted the course of history. Walking these places, you feel the weight of their decisions not as distant past, but as living landscape—still thorny, still blooming, still shaping who we are today.