The four voyages of Christopher Columbus

Hi, I'm Guillermina, a product specialist at Datawrapper. In Argentina, we'll soon celebrate the Día de la Raza on October 12, which commemorates Christopher Columbus's arrival in America. So this week, I'm traveling a little further back in history than usual, about 530 years back, to be precise.

Here is a map of what the world looked like to Europeans in 1492. The Americas are missing because none of them knew they existed yet.

Imagine it's the late 1400s. You're a navigator from Genoa, sailing under the commission of the Spanish Crown. There are no accurate maps of the Atlantic Ocean, because no European has ever crossed it, let alone mapped it. Navigation means reading the stars and the sun, trusting your instruments, and hoping your calculations are right. The ships are small, the crews are restless, and the destination is, by definition, unknown.

Christopher Columbus did this not once, but four times.

Between 1492 and 1504, Columbus led four expeditions across the Atlantic. Each voyage was different in purpose and outcome. And as the map shows, together they trace a remarkable set of routes across the ocean and around the Caribbean.

First voyage (1492–1493)

Columbus left Spain with three ships and a theory: that you could reach Asia by sailing west. After more than two months at sea, he reached the Bahamas. Then he explored Cuba and Hispaniola before heading home. He didn’t find Asia, but he crossed the Atlantic!

Second voyage (1493–1496)

He came back just months later, this time with 17 ships and around 1,200 people: settlers, missionaries, and soldiers. The goal was to build a permanent colony. Once he did that, he explored more of the Caribbean — Puerto Rico and Jamaica — before returning to Spain in 1496.

Third voyage (1498–1500)

The third time, Columbus sailed further south and became the first European to reach the South American mainland, landing on the coast of what we currently know as Venezuela. But back on Hispaniola, things had gone wrong. The colony he'd left behind was in chaos, and Columbus was arrested for mismanaging the colonies and sent home to Spain in chains. He was eventually pardoned, but never fully restored to his former status.

Fourth voyage (1502–1504)

On his last voyage, Columbus was ill and forbidden to stop at Hispaniola. He spent two years exploring the coast of Central America, looking for a passage to Asia that didn't exist. He lost all four of his ships and was stranded in Jamaica for a year. He made it back to Spain in 1504 on a rescue ship, and died two years later. He was still convinced he had found a western route to Asia.

The 15th century was a violent world, on every continent. But what made Columbus stand out wasn't his era, it was his courage and curiosity. He had no satellite navigation, no weather forecasts, no radio, and no map of where he was going. The Atlantic had never been crossed, at least not by anyone who came back to tell about it. Each departure from Spain was, in a very real sense, a leap into the unknown. And he did it four times.

That's all for this week! Come back next week for another Weekly Chart by Michelle.