Purpose Of Columbus's Fourth Voyage example essay topic

592 words
Christopher Columbus was born in 1451 at Genoa, Italy. He was the oldest of the five children in the family. His father was a wool merchant and a weaver. Christopher's education ended at the age of 14, which then turned into an explorer. He tried for eight years to change the minds of kings and queens to give him money for food and ships so he could find a new route to Chine.

Columbus persuaded King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to give him money. In return he promised to give them new lands, spices, money, and new people to become Christian. Columbus explored the west four times. He thought he reached India, but it was really the West Indies in Portugal.

On Columbus's first voyage there were 90 crew members and 3 ships. They set sail on August 3rd 1492. The three ships were the Pinta, Santa Clara (nicknamed Nina), and the Santa Maria. The Santa Maria was wrecked on Christmas Eve near Haiti.

On October 11, 1492, him and his crew spotted the Caribbean islands off southeastern North America. They landed on an island they called Guanahani, but later Columbus renamed it San Salvador. They ran into the local Taino Indians, many of them were captured by Columbus's men and later sold into slavery. On a second, larger voyage on September 25, 1493 he sailed with 17 ships and 1,200 to 1,500 men to find gold and capture Indians as slaves in the Indies. Also return to La Navidad in Hispaniola to relieve the men left behind from the first voyage, settle more colonists on the islands, and explore and claim other islands. Columbus established a base in Hispaniola and sailed around Hispaniola and along the length of southern Cuba.

He spotted and named the island Dominica on November 3, 1493. On the third expedition on May 30, 1498, Columbus left Sevilla with six ships. Columbus sailed farther south, to Trinidad and Venezuela, including the mouth of the Orinoco River. Columbus was the first European since the Viking Leif Ericsson to set foot on the mainland of America. Separating the expedition, Columbus sent one part to aid the settlement at Hispaniola, while he took the other part and sailed farther south than ever before. Departing from the Cape Verde Islands, he crossed the ocean in hope of finding new islands in the southwest, toward the equator.

On the fourth expedition Christopher Columbus's on went with him. The king and queen made it clean that the purpose of Columbus's fourth voyage was to search for gold, silver, precious stones, spices, and other riches. But above all, for fear of troubling the situation in the colony, they told Columbus not to return to Hispaniola unless really needed for his return to Spain. Columbus's people of four ships and 150 men set sail from Cadiz on May 9, 1502. On the final voyage, Columbus, now 50 years old, could not manage his crew because of the ill health and poor eyesight, but the throng of people that was loyal to him were honored to serve the admiral once again. Even though he failed to find a new route to Asia, Columbus made the lands and peoples of the Western Hemisphere known to Europeans, settling in motion of events that moved human history on a global scale.

Columbus then died in 1506.