June 1507

I made a fourth voyage nominally in search of the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean. Accompanied by my brother Bartolomeo and my 13-year-old son Fernando(my little man),I left Cádiz, Spain, on May 11, 1502, with the ships Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína and Santiago de Palos. I sailed to Arzila on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers whom I had heard were under siege by the Moors. On June 15, we landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique (Martinica). A hurricane was brewing, so I continued on, hoping to find shelter on Hispaniola. I arrived at Santo Domingo on June 29, but was denied port, and the new governor refused to listen to my storm prediction (dumb dumb). Instead, while my ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio Jaina, the first Spanish treasure fleet sailed into the hurricane(tould ya so). My ships survived with only minor damage, while twenty-nine of the thirty ships in the governor's fleet were lost to the July 1 storm. In addition to the ships, 500 lives (including that of the governor, Francisco de Bobadilla) and an immense cargo of gold were surrendered to the sea.

After a brief stop at Jamaica, I sailed to Central America, arriving at Guanaja (Isla de Pinos) in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras on July 30. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants and a large canoe, which was described as "long as a galley" and was filled with cargo. On August 14,we landed on the American mainland at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama on October 16.

On December 5, 1502, me and my crew found themselves in a storm unlike any they had ever experienced. In my journal I wrote,

For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of life. Eyes never beheld the sea so angry, so high, so covered with foam. The wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke with such violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I do not say it rained, for it was like another deluge. The men were so worn out that they longed for death to end their dreadful suffering.

In Panama, I learned from the natives of gold and a strait to another ocean. After much exploration, in January 1503 he established a garrison at the mouth of the Rio Belen. On April 6 one of the ships became stranded in the river. At the same time, the garrison was attacked, and the other ships were damaged (Shipworms also damaged the ships in tropical waters. I left for Hispaniola on April 16, heading north. On May 10 I sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them "Las Tortugas" after the numerous sea turtles there. My ships next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba. Unable to travel farther, on June 25, 1503, they were beached in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica.


I intimidated natives by predicting lunar eclipse. For a year me and my men remained stranded on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a canoe to get help from Hispaniola. That island's governor, Nicolás de Ovando y Cáceres, detested me and obstructed all efforts to rescue me and my men. In the meantime I, in a desperate effort to induce the natives to continue provisioning me and my hungry men, successfully intimidated the natives by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for February 29, 1504, using the Ephemeris of the German astronomer Regiomontanus. Help finally arrived, no thanks to the governor, on June 29, 1504, and me and my men arrived in Sanlúcar, Spain, on November 7.