September 6, 1492

First voyage of Christopher Columbus

Columbus's fleet departs La Gomera for the Atlantic crossing

A rumour that three Portuguese caravels were cruising nearby to seize him followed Columbus out of port. Then the wind died and the fleet went almost nowhere for two days.

Thursday, 6 September 1492

Columbus sailed from the port of La Gomera on the morning of Thursday, 6 September 1492 with all three vessels, after taking on water, firewood, meat and other provisions.

A vessel arriving from El Hierro reported that three Portuguese caravels were allegedly cruising nearby to seize him. The journal presents Portuguese jealousy as Columbus's interpretation rather than as independently established fact.

Two days going nowhere

The fleet made almost no immediate progress. Calm left it between La Gomera and Tenerife the following morning, and it remained nearly stationary until a northeast wind arose late on 8 September.

Once that wind arrived the ships took a westward course. La Gomera had been their final provisioning stop before the ocean passage.

What the record actually is

The voyage itself had begun at Palos on 3 August; the Canaries stop was for repairs and supplies, and the Pinta had returned to La Gomera on 2 September.

Columbus's original log is lost. The surviving Diario is Bartolomé de las Casas's later abridgement, which sometimes summarises Columbus in the third person and sometimes preserves apparent first-person passages.

The 6 September date is explicit in it. The journal says only "the port of La Gomera"; identifying that with present-day San Sebastián is conventional.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources 2 audit passes

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 log is lost. The surviving Diario is Bartolomé de las Casas's later abridgement, which sometimes summarizes Columbus in the third person and sometimes preserves apparent first-person passages.
The September 6 date is nevertheless explicit and widely accepted. The journal says only “the port of La Gomera”; identification with present-day San Sebastián is conventional.