Spain Banknotes 1 Peseta banknote 1940 Columbus ship Santa Maria
Bank of Spain - Banco de España
Obverse: Columbus ship Santa Maria at center and Coat of arms of Spain at right.
Printer: Rieusset, S.A., de Barcelona.
Size: 99 x 49 mm. Circulation: 95,000,000 notes. In circulation from 18 April 1941.
Spain Banknotes - Spain Paper Money
1940 Second Issue
Columbus ship Santa Maria
La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción (Spanish for The Holy Mary of the Immaculate Conception), or La Santa María, was the largest of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa.
The Santa María was built in Pontevedra, Galicia, in Spain's north-west region. The Santa María was probably a medium-sized nau (carrack), about 58 ft (17.7 m) long on deck, and according to Juan Escalante de Mendoza in 1575, the Santa Maria was "very little larger than 100 toneladas" (about 100 tons, or tuns) burthen, or burden, and was used as the flagship for the expedition. The Santa María had a single deck and three masts.
The other ships of the Columbus expedition were the smaller caravel-type ships Santa Clara, remembered as La Niña ("The Girl"), and La Pinta ("The Painted"). All these ships were second-hand (if not third- or more) and were not intended for exploration. The Niña, Pinta, and the Santa María were modest-sized merchant vessels comparable in size to a modern cruising yacht. The exact measurements of length and width of the three ships have not survived, but good estimates of their burden capacity can be judged from contemporary anecdotes written down by one or more of Columbus' crew members, and contemporary Spanish and Portuguese shipwrecks from the late 15th and early 16th centuries which are comparable in size to that of the Santa Maria. These include the ballast piles and keel lengths of the Molasses Reef Wreck and Highborn Cay Wreck in the Bahamas. Both were caravel vessels 19 m (62 ft) in length overall, 12.6 m (41 ft) keel length and 5 to 5.7 m (16 to 19 ft) in width, and rated between 100 and 150 tons burden. The Santa María, being Columbus' largest ship, was only about this size, and the Niña and Pinta were smaller, at only 50 to 75 tons burden and perhaps 15 to 18 meters (50 to 60 feet) on deck (updated dimensional estimates are discussed below in the section entitled Replicas).
A Spanish vessel in those days was given an official religious name, but was generally known by a nickname, oftentimes a feminine form of either her master's patronymic, or of her home port. Bartolomé de Las Casas, a priest and historian who extensively chronicled Columbus' expeditions, never used the name Santa María in his writings, and instead called the ship La Capitana ("flagship") or La Nao. Indeed, Columbus himself, in his detailed logs, only called it La Capitana. Some claim that the ship was known to her sailors as Marigalante ("Gallant Maria"), but that nickname was in fact given to the Santa María 's namesake replacement, used on Columbus's second voyage.
Shipwreck
Santa María's anchor on display at Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien
With three masts, she was the slowest of Columbus' vessels but performed well in the Atlantic crossing. Then on the return trip, on 24 December (1492), not having slept for two days, Columbus decided at 11:00 p.m. to lie down to sleep. The night being calm, the steersman also decided to sleep, leaving only a cabin boy to steer the ship, a practice which the admiral had always strictly forbidden. With the boy at the helm, the currents carried the ship onto a sandbank, running her aground off the present-day site of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti. It sank the next day. Realizing that the ship was beyond repair, Columbus ordered his men to strip the timbers from the ship. The timbers were later used to build a fort which Columbus called La Navidad (Christmas) because the wreck occurred on Christmas Day, north from the modern town of Limonade.
The anchor of the Santa María now rests in the Musée du Panthéon National Haïtien (MUPANAH), in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
On 13 May 2014, underwater archaeological explorer Barry Clifford announced that his team may have found the wreck of the Santa María. In the following October UNESCO's expert team published their final report, concluding that the wreck could not be Columbus's vessel. Fastenings used in the hull, and possible copper sheathing dated it to the 17th or even 18th century.