t were, as a fine, refused to do what they were bidden. Other orders
from Court were necessary. But it seems to have been the courage and
determination of the Pinzons which carried the preparations through.
After weeks had been lost, Martin Alonso Pinzon and his brothers
said they would go in person on the expedition. They were well-known
merchants and seamen, and were much respected. Sailors were impressed,
by the royal authority, and the needful stores were taken in the same
way. It seems now strange that so much difficulty should have surrounded
an expedition in itself so small. But the plan met then all the
superstition, terror and other prejudice of the time.

All that Columbus asked or needed was three small vessels and their
stores and crews. The largest ships engaged were little larger than the
large yachts, whose races every summer delight the people of America.
The Gallega and the Pinta were the two largest. They were called
caravels, a name then given to the smallest three-masted vessels.
Columbus once uses it for a vessel of forty tons; but it generally
applied in Portuguese or Spanish use to a vessel, ranging one hundred
and twenty to one hundred and forty Spanish "toneles." This word
represents a capacity about one-tenth larger than that expressed by our
English "ton."

The reader should remember that most of the commerce of the time was the
coasting commerce of the Mediterranean, and that it was not well that
the ships should draw much water. The fleet of Columbus, as it sailed,
consisted of the Gallega (the Galician), of which he changed the name to
the Santa Maria, and of the Pinta and the Nina. Of these the first two
were of a tonnage which we should rate as about one hundred and thirty
tons. The Nina was much smaller, not more than fifty tons. One writer
says that they were all without full decks, that is, that such decks as
they had did not extend from stem to stern. But the other authorities
speak as if the Nina only was an open vessel, and the two larger were
decked. Columbus himself took command of the Santa Maria, Martin Alonso
Pinzon of the Pinta, and his brothers, Francis Martin and Vicente Yanez,
of the Nina. The whole company in all three ships numbered one hundred
and twenty men.

Mr. Harrisse shows that the expense to the crown amounted to 1,140,000
maravedis. This, as he counts it, is about sixty-four thousand dollars
of our money. To this Columbus was to add one-eighth of the cost. His