Santa Maria 1492

2.375" x 1.25" x 1.25" inch Mini Ship

In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed a small fleet of three small ships west from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean, hoping to find a shorter route to the riches of Asia. Before his voyages, Chinese and Indian luxuries for European markets were transported over the long and hazardous overland route through Arabia.

The three-masted vessel Santa Maria was the largest of Columbus’s expeditionary vessels and his flagship. Measuring around 70 feet in length, it carried a crew of 40 men. The Santa Maria and Columbus’s other fleet members the Niña and the Pinta were older ships used for coastal trading rather than vessels designed for ocean crossings. Nine weeks after the little fleet left Spain, land was sighted in the Caribbean on 12 October 1492, but exactly which island Columbus’s crew first spotted remains disputed.