Why the 1493 second voyage moved from Palos to Cádiz
The Catholic Monarchs shifted Columbus's second expedition from the Tinto-Odiel estuary at Palos to the Bay of Cádiz because a 17-ship colonisation armada could not be assembled and loaded in shallow river channels.[1][3] After Alfonso X reconquered Cádiz in 1262, revived urban life and maritime trade had already turned the city into one of the principal ports of the Iberian Peninsula by the time the Americas were reached.[9]
To organise the fleet, the Crown appointed Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, Archdeacon of Seville and a firm defender of royal authority who went on to direct New World affairs until the early reign of Charles I.[10] Working across Andalusia's two main Atlantic ports, Seville and Cádiz, Fonseca assembled and equipped the entire armada in four months.[1][11]
The Royal Treasury also used the Cádiz departure to tighten fiscal oversight. Organisers placed a lieutenant of the Contadores Mayores aboard the fleet and drew up plans to establish royal customs houses (aduanas) strictly in Cádiz and in the newly discovered territories.[12] Even after Seville gained the Casa de la Contratación in 1503, the draught (calado) of larger vessels often kept them from ascending the Guadalquivir fully laden, forcing the Crown to authorise cargo operations in Cádiz and set up a Juzgado de Indias there in 1535, an early step toward the later monopoly told in Cádiz and the Atlantic trade.[13]
What sailed out of Cádiz on 25 September 1493
When Columbus weighed anchor at Cádiz on 25 September 1493, he commanded 17 vessels (14 caravels and 3 naos) carrying between 1,200 and 1,500 men, with Pero Alonso Niño serving as chief pilot (piloto mayor).[1][5][14] Royal organisers had initially capped the muster at 1,000 men, including 800 soldiers, but applications overflowed the quota before the ships cleared the bay.[14] For the first leg into the Atlantic, Spanish naval warships escorted the convoy to deter a Portuguese attack.[11]
Unlike the three exploratory vessels of 1492, the 1493 Cádiz fleet carried the materials to transplant Castilian agriculture and town life across the ocean:
- 25 Sep 1493
Second voyage leaves Cádiz
Columbus sails from Cádiz with 14 caravels, 3 naos and over 1,200 men.[14]
- 6 Jan 1494
Foundation of La Isabela
The Cádiz expedition establishes the first Spanish settlement in the Americas.[17]
- 11 Jun 1496
- 30 May 1498
Third voyage from Sanlúcar
Six ships sail from neighbouring Sanlúcar de Barrameda after two supply vessels leave in February.[19]
- 9–11 May 1502
- Livestock unknown in the Americas: cattle, horses and pigs loaded onto the ships at Cádiz.[5]
- Crops and orchard stock: wheat and barley seeds alongside fruit trees and farming tools.[5][15]
- Settlers and clerics: fortune-seeking hidalgos, farmers, artisans with their trade instruments and a group of religious friars led by a Benedictine from Montserrat.[15]
- Early sugar production: among those who sailed on the second voyage was the Catalan Miguel Ballester, later alcaide of Concepción de la Vega, whom the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo recorded as the first person to make sugar in the Americas.[16]
Steering a more southerly course than on his first crossing, Columbus coasted the Windward Islands, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, southern Cuba and Jamaica.[6] On 6 January 1494, the expedition founded La Isabela in the north of the present-day Dominican Republic, the first permanent Spanish settlement in the New World.[17]
The 1496 return to Cádiz aboard La India and in Franciscan cloth
Columbus returned to the port of Cádiz on 11 June 1496 at the end of a troubled three-year expedition.[6][18] Inevitable clashes in Hispaniola with the royal investigator Juan de Aguado had forced the Admiral to leave the island for Castile on 10 March 1496 to defend his administration before the court.[18]
That June 1496 arrival in Cádiz brought an American maritime first into the bay. Sailing in Columbus's returning squadron was La India, the first European vessel ever constructed in the new Castilian territories across the Atlantic.[4] While his third expedition two years later departed from neighbouring Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 30 May 1498 after two supply ships sailed in February, the anchorage off El Pópulo remained the port where his second crossing both began and ended.[6][19][20]
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Iglesia de Santa Cruz (Catedral Vieja)
Cádiz's Catedral Vieja, founded by Alfonso X around 1262 and rebuilt after the 1596 sack, has been closed since January 2026. Check status…
To counter complaints reaching the court from returning colonists, the Admiral turned his journey from Cádiz to meet the Catholic Monarchs in Burgos into a carefully staged spectacle.[21] He appeared dressed in the habit of a Franciscan friar, surrounded by Antillean Indigenous captives and bright tropical birds.[21]
May 1502: the fourth and final voyage from the Bay of Cádiz
Columbus's last departure from Cádiz took place between 9 and 11 May 1502, when he was in failing health, nearly blind, stripped of the governorship of the Indies and forbidden by the Crown to set foot on Hispaniola.[2][7] Even so, he received royal permission for a fourth crossing aimed at finding a western maritime strait that would allow ships to sail around the world.[7]
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The flotilla was modest compared with the 1493 armada. Four caravels (La Capitana, Santiago de Palos, Gallego and Vizcaíno) left the port of Seville on 3 April 1502 and descended the Guadalquivir to Puebla Vieja.[2][22] From there, the Admiral's brother Bartolomé Colón (the Adelantado, who had also been removed from office in Hispaniola) brought the hulls into the Bay of Cádiz to finish preparing them, while Columbus stayed briefly in Seville to handle crew recruitment and munitions before joining the ships in Cádiz to complete their armament.[8][22]
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In total, 144 people embarked on the four caravels at Cádiz.[8] Alongside Bartolomé Colón and the official scribe Diego Méndez de Segura sailed Columbus's 13-year-old son Hernando (Fernando), who took charge of writing down his father's notes as the Admiral's eyesight gave out.[2][8] State archival summaries record the departure from Cádiz on 9 May 1502 and other accounts place the final sailing on 11 May; the ships sighted the Central American mainland on 27 July 1502, ended up stranded on Jamaica, and finally returned to Spain at Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 7 November 1504.[2][7][22]
Where to walk the medieval Cádiz that Columbus knew
Visitors looking for the late-15th-century town that watched the 1493 and 1502 fleets load should head straight into the medieval walled core of El Pópulo.[20][23] Although the 1596 sack later burned much of the city's housing and forced 17th-century rebuilds, the medieval street plan, two of the original gates and the foundational parish church of the walled villa still frame the quarter:
- Puerta del Mar / Arco del Pópulo (Calle Pelota side): With foundations dating back to the 12th century, this archway was the main sea gate leading directly out to the old port of Cádiz where fleets embarked; a 17th-century chapel to Nuestra Señora del Pópulo built above the arch gave it its present covered-passageway form.[20]
- Puerta de Poniente / Arco de la Rosa (beside Cádiz Cathedral): Built in the 15th century with a brick entrance arch and a surviving upper machicolation (matacán), this western gate opened toward the fishermen's quarter of Santiago and was restored in 1973.[23]
- Iglesia de Santa Cruz / Catedral Vieja (Plaza de Fray Félix): Standing on the medieval cathedral site originally founded under Alfonso X that anchored the walled town in Columbus's day, the church was rebuilt after the 1596 fire; above its reconstructed portal, the architrave carries three carved stone shields bearing the emblems of the cathedral, Bishop García de Haro and the Catholic Monarchs who commissioned Columbus's Cádiz voyages.[24]