Columbus Departs for Final Voyage to the Americas

Columbus was 51 years old, arthritic, partially blind, and politically disgraced when he sailed from Cadiz on May 9, 1502, with four small caravels and 150 men on his fourth and final voyage to the Americas. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea, who had once negotiated titles and percentages with the Spanish crown as an equal, departed under strict orders not to stop at Hispaniola, the colony he had founded and where his successor had barred him from landing. The first three voyages had made Columbus the most famous navigator in Europe and then destroyed his reputation. He had discovered the Caribbean and Central American coast for Spain but proved a disastrous administrator. His governance of Hispaniola was marked by forced labor, brutality toward Indigenous peoples, and infighting among the colonists. Francisco de Bobadilla, sent to investigate, had shipped Columbus back to Spain in chains in 1500. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella restored his freedom but stripped him of his governorship. The fourth voyage was Columbus's attempt at redemption. He believed a passage to Asia lay somewhere along the Central American coast, and he spent months exploring the coasts of present-day Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, enduring storms so violent that one tempest lasted 28 days without respite. The crews were terrified. Columbus, navigating from memory and astronomical observation, pressed on. He found no strait to Asia. He did find gold deposits along the Veragua coast of Panama, but hostile Indigenous resistance and conflicts among his own men prevented establishing a permanent settlement. Two of his four ships were abandoned as unseaworthy, eaten through by shipworms. Columbus and his remaining crew were marooned on Jamaica for a year before rescue arrived from Hispaniola. Columbus returned to Spain in November 1504, broken in health and fortune. Queen Isabella, his most powerful patron, died three weeks later. He spent his final eighteen months petitioning King Ferdinand for the restoration of his titles and revenues, dying in Valladolid on May 20, 1506, still believing he had reached the outskirts of Asia. He never knew he had found two continents.