Columbus Sails West and Reaches the Bahamas
Sponsored by Spain to find a westward route to Asia, Columbus instead lands on an island whose people already have a name for it
Quick facts
- Sponsor
- Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain
- Ships
- Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria
- Landfall
- San Salvador (Guanahani), 12 October 1492
- Belief
- Thought he had reached Asia
What happened
After years of failing to find a sponsor, the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus won backing from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain and departed in August 1492 with 87 men on three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. He intended to reach Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic. On 12 October, land was sighted; Columbus named the island San Salvador, though the people already living there called it Guanahani. He believed he had reached islands off Asia and proposed that nearby Cuba was part of China. He went on to name another island Hispaniola, and in January 1493 sailed back to Spain to report his findings.
Why it matters
Columbus never reached Asia and never grasped that he had found land unknown to Europeans, but his voyage opened the Caribbean to a wave of further Spanish expeditions and colonization within a decade. His account convinced the Spanish crown that the western Atlantic was worth further investment, and his three later voyages extended Spanish settlement into the region his first voyage had only touched.
How we know
The Mariners' Museum's Ages of Exploration entry on Columbus gives the fleet's size, the October 12 landfall, and the native name Guanahani for the island Columbus called San Salvador, drawn from Columbus's own log and later Spanish accounts.
Sources
- Library of Congress, Exploring the Early Americas. Columbus and the Taino · Primary source (author-declared)loc.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- The Mariners' Museum, Ages of Exploration. Christopher Columbus · Reputable sourceexploration.marinersmuseum.org · The domain "exploration.marinersmuseum.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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