The town of Palos, as you can see from your map of Spain, is situated at the mouth of the river Tinto on a little bay in the southwestern part of Spain, not far from the borders of Portugal.  To-day the sea has gone away from it so much that it is nearly high and dry; but four hundred years ago it was quite a seaport, when Spain did not have a great many sea towns on the Atlantic coast.

At the time of Columbus’s voyage the king and queen of Spain were angry with the port of Palos for something its people had done that was wrong—­just what this was we do not know.  But to punish the town, and because Columbus wished to sail from there, the king and queen ordered that Palos should pay them a fine for their wrong-doing.  And this fine was to lend the king and queen of Spain, for one year, without pay, two sailing vessels of the kind called caravel’s, armed and equipped “for the service of the crown”—­that is, for the use of the king and queen of Spain, in the western voyage that Columbus was to make.

When Columbus called together the leading people of Palos to meet him in the church of St. George and hear the royal commands, they came; but at first they did not understand just what they must do.  But when they knew that they must send two of their ships and some of their sailing men on this dreadful voyage far out upon the terrible Sea of Darkness, they were terribly distressed.  Nobody was willing to go.  They would obey the commands of the king and queen and furnish the two ships, but as for sailing off with this crazy sea captain—­that they would not do.

Then the king’s officers went to work.  They seized some sailors (impressed is the word for this), and made them go; they took some from the jails, and gave them their freedom as a reward for going; they begged and threatened and paid in advance, and still it was hard to get enough men for the two ships.  Then Captain Pinzon, who had promised Columbus that he would join him, tried his hand.  He added a third ship to the Admiral’s “fleet.”  He made big promises to the sailors, and worked for weeks, until at last he was able to do what even the royal commands could not do, and a crew of ninety men was got together to man the three vessels.  The names of these three vessels were the Capitana (changed before it sailed to the Santa Maria), the Pinta and the Nina or Baby.  Captain de la Cosa commanded the Santa Maria, Captain Martin Alonso Pinzon the Pinta and his brother, Captain Vincent Pinzon, the Nina.  The Santa Maria was the largest of the three vessels; it was therefore selected as the leader of the fleet—­the flag-ship, as it is called—­and upon it sailed the commander of the expedition, the Admiral Don Christopher Columbus.