March 15, 1493

Christopher Columbus's first voyage

Niña and Pinta return separately to Palos

The two surviving ships came home to the same port on the same day — hours apart, by different routes, under commanders whose relations had deteriorated.

Noon on the rising tide

Columbus's journal says the Niña reached the approaches to Saltés at sunrise on 15 March 1493 and entered the harbour it had departed from at about noon, on the rising tide. That entry closes the surviving journal of the first voyage.

Martín Alonso Pinzón arrived independently in the Pinta later the same day. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's account places Columbus's arrival first and the Pinta's in the afternoon.

Neither ship's first European landfall

Atlantic storms had separated the vessels. The Pinta had already reached Bayona in Galicia and the Niña had entered Lisbon on 4 March, so Palos was a homecoming rather than a first return to the peninsula.

The Santa María did not come back at all, having been wrecked off Hispaniola. Columbus sailed home aboard the Niña, whose captain was Vicente Yáñez Pinzón.

A disputed date and a death

The near-contemporary chronicler Andrés Bernáldez gives 23 March for Columbus's return instead. Most modern accounts prefer 15 March because the surviving journal explicitly dates and describes that entry, but the conflict is real.

Martín Alonso Pinzón came home gravely ill. Testimony preserved from the Columbian lawsuits says his relatives took him to La Rábida, where he died near the end of March.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes Traditional date

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 →

Traditional date. This date is the conventional one, not one fixed by a contemporary record.

What the sources leave uncertain

March 15 is supported by Columbus's journal and by accounts and testimony used for Pinzón's arrival; it is the standard date.
The near-contemporary chronicler Andrés Bernáldez instead wrote March 23 for Columbus's return. Because the surviving journal explicitly dates and describes the March 15 entry, most modern accounts prefer March 15, but the conflict should be disclosed.
The exact hour differs slightly between sources: Columbus's journal says about noon, while Oviedo summarized his arrival as morning and the Pinta's as afternoon.