August 3, 1492

Voyages of Christopher Columbus

Columbus's first expedition departs Palos for Asia by sailing west

The ships remembered as a transatlantic fleet spent their first day heading south for the Canaries — and the journal says they left half an hour before sunrise.

Friday, 3 August 1492: out of Palos

On 3 August 1492, Christopher Columbus departed Palos with three vessels — Niña, Pinta and Santa María — about half an hour before sunrise, according to the surviving journal summary, and steered first toward the Canary Islands.

Martín Alonso Pinzón commanded the Pinta and his brother Vicente Yáñez Pinzón the Niña, while Columbus sailed in the flagship Santa María. The three should not all be called caravels: Santa María was a larger nao.

Sailing for the Indies

Columbus's stated objective was to proceed from the Canaries until he reached the Indies and delivered the Castilian monarchs' embassy to Asian rulers. The Catholic Monarchs had authorized the westward expedition in the Capitulations of Santa Fe, and Palos had been ordered to supply two vessels.

By that evening the three-ship expedition was at sea heading south toward the Canary Islands. The transatlantic leg did not begin at Palos: the ships refitted in the Canaries and left from there in September.

What survives of the record

Columbus's original shipboard journal is lost; the familiar text is chiefly Bartolomé de las Casas's later abstract, which sometimes shifts between summary and apparent quotation. Crew totals differ among reconstructions because no complete, uncontested muster roll survives.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 3 audit passes, 1 issue open

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

Columbus’s original shipboard journal is lost. The familiar text is chiefly Bartolomé de las Casas’s later abstract and transcription, which sometimes shifts between summary and apparent quotation.
Crew totals differ among reconstructions because no complete, uncontested muster roll survives; no crew number is asserted here.