CHARACTER OF VESSELS AND CREWS.

The vessels were all of small size, probably of not more than one hundred
tons' burden each, and, therefore, not larger than the American yachts,
whose ocean race from New York to Cowes was regarded as an example of
immense hardihood, even in the year 1867. But Columbus considered them
very suitable for the undertaking. The Santa Maria, which Columbus himself
commanded, was the only one of the three that was decked throughout. The
official persons and the crew on board her were sixteen in number. The two
other vessels were of the class called caravels, and were decked fore and
aft, but not amidships, the stem and the stern being built so as to rise
high out of the water. One of them, the "Pinta," was manned by a crew of
thirty, commanded by Martin Alonzo Pinzon. The other, the "Nina," had
Vincent Yanez Pinzon for captain, and a crew of twenty-four men. The
whole number of adventurers amounted to a hundred and twenty persons, men
of various nationalities, including, by the way, among them, two natives
of the British Isles.



CHAPTER III. First Voyage.

At length all the preparations were complete, and on a Friday (not
inauspicious in this case), the 3rd of August, 1492, after they had all
confessed and received the sacrament, they set sail from the Bar of
Saltes, making for the Canary Islands. One can fancy how the men and the
women of Palos watched the specks of white sails vanishing in the west,
and how, as each frail bark in turn disappeared in the great ocean,
mothers and sisters turned weepingly away as if from a last farewell at
the grave of their sailor kinsmen.