In actual fact, Columbus did not discover North America. He was the first European to sight the Bahamas archipelago and then the island later named Hispaniola, now split into Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On his subsequent voyages he went farther south, to Central and South America. He never got close to what is now called the United States.
Columbus was born in the Italian seaport of Genoa in , to a family of wool weavers. He went to sea from an early age, and was an experienced sailor by his twenties. In Columbus moved to Lisbon, Portugal, and for many years attempted to gain support for a journey he was planning to find new trade routes to the Far East.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans wanted to find sea routes to the Far East. If he could reach these lands, he would be able to bring back rich cargoes of silks and spices. Columbus knew that the world was round and realised that by sailing west β instead of east around the coast of Africa, as other explorers at the time were doing β he would still reach his destination.
In Columbus set sail from Palos in Spain with three ships. Two, the Nina and the Pinta, were caravels β small ships with triangular sails. The third, the Santa Maria , was a nao β a larger square-rigged ship.
The ships were small, between 15 and 36 metres long. Between them they carried about 90 men. After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean for 10 weeks, land was sighted by a sailor called Rodrigo Bernajo although Columbus himself took the credit for this. He landed on a small island in the Bahamas, which he named San Salvador.
