t is, for the use of the king and queen of
Spain, in the western voyage that Columbus was to make.

When Columbus called together the leading people of Palos to meet him in
the church of St. George and hear the royal commands, they came; but at
first they did not understand just what they must do. But when they knew
that they must send two of their ships and some of their sailing men
on this dreadful voyage far out upon the terrible Sea of Darkness, they
were terribly distressed. Nobody was willing to go. They would obey the
commands of the king and queen and furnish the two ships, but as for
sailing off with this crazy sea captain--that they would not do.

Then the king's officers went to work. They seized some sailors
(impressed is the word for this), and made them go; they took some
from the jails, and gave them their freedom as a reward for going; they
begged and threatened and paid in advance, and still it was hard to
get enough men for the two ships. Then Captain Pinzon, who had promised
Columbus that he would join him, tried his hand. He added a third ship
to the Admiral's "fleet." He made big promises to the sailors, and
worked for weeks, until at last he was able to do what even the royal
commands could not do, and a crew of ninety men was got together to man
the three vessels. The names of these three vessels were the Capitana
(changed before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and the Nina
or Baby. Captain de la Cosa commanded the Santa Maria, Captain Martin
Alonso Pinzon the Pinta and his brother, Captain Vincent Pinzon, the
Nina. The Santa Maria was the largest of the three vessels; it was
therefore selected as the leader of the fleet--the flag-ship, as it is
called--and upon it sailed the commander of the expedition, the Admiral
Don Christopher Columbus.

When we think of a voyage across the Atlantic nowadays, we think of
vessels as large as the big three-masted ships or the great ocean
steamers--vessels over six hundred feet long and fifty feet wide. But
these "ships" of Columbus were not really ships. They were hardly larger
than the "fishing smacks" that sail up and down our coast to-day. Some
of them were not so large. The Santa Maria was, as I have told you, the
largest of the three, and she was only sixty-three feet long, twenty
feet wide and ten and a half feet deep. Just measure this out on the
ground and see how small, after all, the Admiral's "flag-ship" really
was. The Pinta was even smal