Columbus returned to Spain from his first voyage
On this day · 15 March 1493
On 15 March 1493, Columbus sailed his battered Nina back into Palos, ending the voyage that linked two hemispheres.
After more than seven months at sea, Christopher Columbus brought his weather-beaten Nina back into the Spanish port of Palos on 15 March 1493, completing the first round-trip transatlantic voyage under European command.
The homeward leg had nearly killed him. Departing the Caribbean in January, his two surviving ships hit a ferocious February storm that scattered them; convinced he might drown before word of his discovery reached anyone, Columbus reportedly sealed an account in a barrel and threw it overboard. The storm forced a stop in the Azores, then drove him into Lisbon, where he anchored under the eye of Portugal’s king before finally limping home.
He carried gold samples, exotic plants, and several captive Indigenous people as proof of his claims, and was soon summoned to Ferdinand and Isabella in Barcelona.
His report opened the door to sustained — and, for the Americas’ peoples, catastrophic — European contact.
Sources & references
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