Columbus used a lunar eclipse to get food in Jamaica in 1504

On the evening of February 29, 1504, stranded in Jamaica on his fourth voyage, Christopher Columbus used a predicted total lunar eclipse to frighten the island’s Indigenous Taíno people (called Arawaks in older accounts) into resupplying his hungry crew. His last two ships had been beached on the north coast since June 1503, and after months of friction, including crewmen robbing islanders, the food had stopped.

Columbus carried an almanac by the German astronomer Regiomontanus whose tables showed an eclipse beginning around moonrise. Three days ahead, he warned a local leader that his god would make the moon appear “inflamed with wrath.” When the Moon rose already partly eclipsed and then turned a dim red, the islanders gave in:

“With great howling and lamentation came running from every direction to the ships laden with provisions and beseeching the admiral to intercede with his god on their behalf.” — Ferdinand Columbus, the admiral’s son

The bluff bought time rather than rescue. Supplied by the islanders, the castaways waited until a relief ship from Hispaniola arrived on June 29, 1504.

Did it happen on leap day or March 1?

Both dates are right. NASA’s eclipse catalog gives greatest eclipse as 00:44:47 on March 1, 1504 in Terrestrial Dynamical Time; subtracting the catalog’s 191-second clock correction puts it at about 00:41 Universal Time, which was still the evening of February 29 in the Caribbean.

The catalog also shows the total phase lasted about 48 minutes, which fits the story that Columbus shut himself in his cabin for about 50 minutes, then announced that his god had relented just before the Moon began to reappear.

Has the 1504 eclipse ever repeated?

Not exactly, but the sky has since staged a near-rerun. Eclipses one Hypersaros (about 521 years) apart have similar depth, sky position and time of year, and Rice University astronomer Patrick Hartigan showed that the total lunar eclipse of March 14, 2025, visible across North America, was the 1504 eclipse’s counterpart.

The next in the sequence falls on March 18, 2546.