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On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew set sail from the port of Palos in southern Spain on three vessels: la Santa Clara (Niña), la Pinta and la Santa Gallega (Santa Maria). Two of the ships, the Niña and Pinta, were tiny by today's standards-only 50 to 70 feet from bow to stern-but prized for their speed and maneuverability. The Santa Maria, Columbus's flagship, was a larger, heavier cargo ship.

For 35 days, Columbus and his crew of 86 Spanish sailors sailed westward searching for a passage to China and India. With the men close to mutiny against their "foreign" captain, Columbus was about to turn back when the cry went out at 2 a.m. on October 12 that land had been sighted.

Columbus hadn't found a western route to India, of course, but his success in crossing the Atlantic was due in large part to the ships he chose for the perilous voyage, particularly the diminutive Niña and Pinta, which were a speedy type of ship called a caravel.

When the royal decree went out in 1492 from Queen Isabella of Spain to fund Columbus's first voyage, it read, "By these presents, we dispatch the noble man Christoforus Colón with three equipped caravels over the Ocean Seas toward the regions of India for certain reasons and purposes."

Caravels Were Cutting Edge in the 15th Century

Though only two of Columbus's ships ended up being caravels, Isabella's decree speaks to the popularity of the vessel during the 15th-century " Age of Discovery." Starting with Portuguese explorations of the African coast in the mid-1400s, caravels were prized for their sleek, lightweight hull and their uncanny ability to sail into the wind.

Luis Filipe Viera de Castro, a nautical archeologist at Texas A&M University, says that the earlier Portuguese caravels, known as the caravela latina, were rigged with lateen (triangular) sails that hung at 45-degree angle to the deck.

"Lateen sails are [...] almost like wings," says Castro. "You can point the bow of the caravel with an angle of just 20 degrees off the wind and still get enough lift on the outer edge of the sail to propel forward."

The lateen-rigged caravels were critical in the Portuguese voyages to sub-Saharan African, where strong coastal winds blow north to south. The versatile caravel could speed south along the coast and easily return to shore against the wind.

For Columbus's maiden journey, he used a Spanish update to the caravel known as the caravela redonda, a three-masted ship where the first two masts were rigged with conventional square sails for open-ocean speed, and a third was rigged with a lateen sail for coastal maneuverability. That rigging combination made ships like the Niña and the Pinta some of the best sailing vessels of their time.

In addition to their versatile rigging options, 15th-century caravels moved the rudder to the rear center of the ship. In the 14th-century caravels popular in the Mediterranean, the rudder was still on the side, says Castro, like Viking ships. The new position allowed for far greater control.

Small Ships Offered Advantages-But Also Discomforts

Small caravels like the Niña and Pinta could only carry between 40 and 50 tons and were crewed by fewer than 30 sailors each. Their lightweight design and rounded bottom meant that they rode high in the water. This proved critical when Columbus needed to navigate the shallow island coastlines near modern-day Cuba.

The bulkier Santa Maria, which was a 110-ton cargo ship called a nau, ran aground on Christmas Day 1492 and had to be abandoned.

Yet the main advantage of the Spanish caravel, namely its compact size, was also its greatest disadvantage. Life aboard a short ship like the Niña or Pinta would have been absurdly crowded and uncomfortable.

Unlike the Santa Maria, which at least had tiny cabins where sailors could sleep between eight-hour shifts, the Niña and Pinta had a single small deck at the rear of the ship with only one cramped cabin reserved for the captain.

"If you're a sailor on a caravel, you're living on the deck and sleeping on the deck," says Marc Nucup, public historian at The Mariners' Museum in Newport News, Virginia. "You're trying to stay out of the way of the sailors who are working. There's almost no private space."

Work was relentless on any 15th-century ship. The 20 sailors on the Niña and the 26 crewing the Pinta would have been constantly engaged with adjusting the rigging, trimming the sails, inspecting for leaks and plugging them with spongy scraps of old rope called oakum.

"Cathedrals, castles and ships-those were the most complicated things that humans had built up until that time," says Nucup. "There was always something to do."

The round-the-clock workload meant that even if you were off-duty, good luck trying to sleep on the deck while the other sailors stomped around you. Hammocks weren't yet in use on ships in the 15th century, says Nucup.

Food Aboard Ships Was Dry and Often Filled With Maggots

And then there was the food. Columbus stocked a full year's worth of food for the journey, not knowing how long it would be before they could return to Spain. For food to last at sea, it needed to be dry. Staples included dried and salted anchovies and cod, pickled or salted beef and pork, dried grains like chickpeas, lentils and beans, and, of course, hardtack biscuits.

The word biscuit comes from the Latin bis coctus for "twice-baked." The hardtack biscuits "enjoyed" by Columbus's crew would have been prepared by baking a hockey puck of flour and water multiple times, then crushing it into tiny pieces, reconstituting it with water and baking it again. Hardtack biscuits were so rock solid that they could only be eaten if softened with water or dipped in the communal slurry served every meal in a large wooden trough.

Yet tooth-breaking, dry biscuits were still preferable to those that had been spoiled by exposure to water in their storage barrel. Ferdinand Columbus, the explorer's 14-year-old son, reported on the conditions on Columbus's fourth voyage to the Americas.

"What with the heat and dampness, our ship biscuit had become so wormy that, God help me, I saw many who waited for darkness to eat porridge made of it, that they might not see the maggots," wrote young Ferdinand, "and others were so used to eating them that they didn't even trouble to pick them out because they might lose their supper had they been so fastidious."

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The Age of Exploration: Life on the Open Seas. Find out how sailors were recruited, what was their average diet, and what ailments they had to face while sailing the open seas!

A Hard Day's Work
Life was pretty difficult for a sailor in the age of exploration. Journeys could take years. Ships only covered about 100 miles a day. The pay was poor. Seamen on Columbus' journeys made less than $10 a month in today's money. Crews worked around the clock in shifts minding the ship. Disobedience led to harsh punishments. Beatings and floggings were common, and mutineers were put to death. 16 was the minimum age for sailors, but some boys started working on ships as young as 7 or 8. Some men didn't join willingly. They were "impressed," or forced into service.

Scurvy, Seasickness and Slime
Sailors consumed about 3,000 calories a day, which they got from: 1 lb. Salted beef or pork; flour mixed with fat was served when meat rations ran low. 1 lb. Biscuit or hardtack; hardtack was infested with weevils and bugs, which sailors ate as additional food. 1 gallon Ale, wine or hard liquor; a salty diet combined with a lack of fresh water led to dehydration. Dried beans, peas or rice. There were no fresh fruits or vegetables. Vitamin deficiencies gave men scurvy-and rotted teeth and gums, open sores and even mental breakdowns. It was common to lose 50 percent of a crew to scurvy, known as the "scourge of the seas." Explorer James Cook was a pioneer in scurvy prevention. He fed his men sauerkraut and dried vegetable soup. If the diet didn't kill you, there were plenty of other things that could. Sailors had just one set of clothes that were rarely washed. They thought dirt and grease provided protection from wind and rain. Lice, rodents and foul drinking water spread typhoid fever. Ships could be dangerously cold-fires were only allowed in calmer weather. The lack of fresh air below deck caused carbon monoxide poisoning. Men slept on deck in hammocks-an invention they borrowed from Mesoamerican cultures.

Ignominious Ends
Captains didn't have it much better than their crews. Magellan didn't make it around the world with his ships. He was killed in the Philippines. Ponce de Leon failed to find the Fountain of Youth, but a poison arrow found him in Florida. Balboa was beheaded after feuding with his bosses. Verrazzano was killed and eaten by cannibals in the Caribbean. A fight over stolen boats ended Cook's life in Hawaii. Hudson's crew set him adrift in what is now Hudson's Bay. He was never heard from again.

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The Age of Exploration: Life on the Open Seas. Find out how sailors were recruited, what was their average diet, and what ailments they had to face while sailing the open seas! A Hard Day's Work Life was pretty difficult for a sailor in the age of exploration. Journeys could take years.

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