![]() The word biscuit comes from the Latin bis coctus for “twice-baked.” The hardtack biscuits “enjoyed” by Columbus’s crew would have been prepared by baking a hockey puck of flour and water multiple times, then crushing it into tiny pieces, reconstituting it with water and baking it again. Staples included dried and salted anchovies and cod, pickled or salted beef and pork, dried grains like chickpeas, lentils and beans, and, of course, hardtack biscuits. For food to last at sea, it needed to be dry. Columbus stocked a full year’s worth of food for the journey, not knowing how long it would be before they could return to Spain. Food Aboard Ships Was Dry and Often Filled With MaggotsĪnd then there was the food. Hammocks weren’t yet in use on ships in the 15th century, says Nucup.Ĭhristopher Columbus and his crew. The round-the-clock workload meant that even if you were off-duty, good luck trying to sleep on the deck while the other sailors stomped around you. “Cathedrals, castles and ships-those were the most complicated things that humans had built up until that time,” says Nucup. ![]() The 20 sailors on the Niña and the 26 crewing the Pinta would have been constantly engaged with adjusting the rigging, trimming the sails, inspecting for leaks and plugging them with spongy scraps of old rope called oakum. Work was relentless on any 15th-century ship. “You’re trying to stay out of the way of the sailors who are working. “If you’re a sailor on a caravel, you’re living on the deck and sleeping on the deck,” says Marc Nucup, public historian at The Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. Unlike the Santa Maria, which at least had tiny cabins where sailors could sleep between eight-hour shifts, the Niña and Pinta had a single small deck at the rear of the ship with only one cramped cabin reserved for the captain. Life aboard a short ship like the Niña or Pinta would have been absurdly crowded and uncomfortable. Yet the main advantage of the Spanish caravel, namely its compact size, was also its greatest disadvantage. The bulkier Santa Maria, which was a 110-ton cargo ship called a nau, ran aground on Christmas Day 1492 and had to be abandoned. This proved critical when Columbus needed to navigate the shallow island coastlines near modern-day Cuba. Their lightweight design and rounded bottom meant that they rode high in the water. Small caravels like the Niña and Pinta could only carry between 40 and 50 tons and were crewed by fewer than 30 sailors each. Small Ships Offered Advantages-But Also Discomforts The new position allowed for far greater control. In the 14th-century caravels popular in the Mediterranean, the rudder was still on the side, says Castro, like Viking ships. In addition to their versatile rigging options, 15th-century caravels moved the rudder to the rear center of the ship. That rigging combination made ships like the Niña and the Pinta some of the best sailing vessels of their time. ![]() The versatile caravel could speed south along the coast and easily return to shore against the wind.įor Columbus’s maiden journey, he used a Spanish update to the caravel known as the caravela redonda, a three-masted ship where the first two masts were rigged with conventional square sails for open-ocean speed, and a third was rigged with a lateen sail for coastal maneuverability. The lateen-rigged caravels were critical in the Portuguese voyages to sub-Saharan African, where strong coastal winds blow north to south. “You can point the bow of the caravel with an angle of just 20 degrees off the wind and still get enough lift on the outer edge of the sail to propel forward.” “Lateen sails are almost like wings,” says Castro. Luis Filipe Viera de Castro, a nautical archeologist at Texas A&M University, says that the earlier Portuguese caravels, known as the caravela latina, were rigged with lateen (triangular) sails that hung at 45-degree angle to the deck. Though only two of Columbus’s ships ended up being caravels, Isabella’s decree speaks to the popularity of the vessel during the 15th-century “ Age of Discovery.” Starting with Portuguese explorations of the African coast in the mid-1400s, caravels were prized for their sleek, lightweight hull and their uncanny ability to sail into the wind. Caravels Were Cutting Edge in the 15th Century The caravels of Christopher Columbus, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria.
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