Santa Gallega or La Gallega was the name of the Santa Maria before Columbus’s voyage. So what were the Santa Clara and the Santa Gallega? Ship NamesĪs we all know, the ships were the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. There were 20 men on the Nina and 26 on the Pinta. Part of the reason was, of course, that they were so light on crew as well. A lateen sail is basically a triangular sail set at a 45 degree angle to the deck.īoth of the caravels were lightweight and rode high in the water. They made use of lateen sails which greatly helped their performance. Sleek and fast, they were skilling at sailing upwind. The smaller caravels were very popular in Columbus’ day, the sports cars of the sea. Each was likely a second hand merchant ship, the best that could be obtained at the time to be fast enough and reliable enough to do the job. None of the three ships were ever explicitly intended for exploration. Sleeping quarters were not included, the crew would have slept on the deck. Each ship carried supplies for their crews. The Nina and the Pinta were known as caravel vessels. The flagship Santa Maria was a carrack that displaced about 100 tons. The Santa Maria’s deck was around 58 feet and was the largest of the three, meant for carrying cargo. The Nina clocked in at about 50 feet of deck length. The Pinta had a deck length of only 56 feet. The Nina and the Pinta were both very small. These were not the mighty seafaring vessels some might have expected them to be. They were la Santa Clara (Niña), la Pinta and la Santa Gallega (Santa Maria). The Story of Christopher Columbus’ ShipsĬolumbus set sail with three vessels. They found a new land that no one had expected to be there. He realized right away that they hadn’t found the Orient. The problem was he thought it was a lot smaller than it truly is and that it would be a shortcut to China and India. The reason Columbus headed West was because everyone knew the world was round. Keep in mind, the popular story many people hear was that either Columbus thought the world was flat or that he thought he found China. The voyage was funded by the crown but it still must have seemed daunting at best to a crew who had never heard of anyone doing what they were about to do. He took three ships and a crew of 86 sailors. It was August of 1492 when Columbus set sail. Just how did Columbus make the journey that only a handful of Vikings had ever made before? When Columbus Sailed for the Americas But there’s one part of the story that not enough people pay attention to and that’s the ships themselves. Gone are they days when people thought Columbus thought the world was flat. The story has evolved over time to take a more realistic and practical view of the trip. Juan Diego himself called Our Lady, before he knew who it was that had appeared to him, “la mia Nina.Most schoolchildren learn the tale of Christopher Columbus and his historic voyage across the ocean. Īnd, add the two to the Santa Maria and you have, Our Lady, the Virgin Little Girl of the Painting. It is also a Christian name in itself, simply as Nina. Nina, in Spanish, means “little girl.” It is also an abbreviation for names like Christina, Katarina, Angelina, etc. Does this relate to Our Lady of Guadalupe? Yes, it does. As we all know there were three ships on that voyage: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. That is almost eight hundred years of Islamic occupation.ġ492, Columbus set sail to find a westward route to the Indies. Moslems had always been intent on conquering Spain, which they did acheive in the eighth century, until they were completely defeated at the Battle of Granada, under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, in 1491. The shrine that was built in 1349 to honor the discovery of this statue of Our Lady and its attendant miracles, was also, as in 711, related to a victory of Spanish forces over the Moslem Moors in the Battle of Salgado. It goes back to the fourteenth century to the miraculous discovery of a statue of the Madonna buried near the Guadalupe River in Spain in 711. Devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, under that title, went back many centuries before the sacred image was painted by Mary on the tilma of Saint Juan Diego. In the great victory of Lepanto (October 7, 1571), in which the Holy League defeated the Moslems who were invading Christendom, the head of the Christian fleet, Don Juan of Austria, flew an exact replica of the Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico from the mast of his ship. But I can put it in my own words while adding a fact or two. I read a short article recently about the relation of Columbus to Our Lady of Guadalupe.
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