Martin Alonzo Pinzón
Encyclopedia
Martín Alonso Pinzón, was a Spanish
mariner, shipbuilder, navigator and explorer
, oldest of the Pinzón brothers. He sailed with Christopher Columbus
on his first voyage to the New World
in 1492, as captain of the Pinta. His youngest brother Vicente Yáñez Pinzón
was captain of the Niña
, and the middle brother Francisco Martín Pinzón was maestre (first mate) of the Pinta.
. His father was a sailor named Martín Pinzón; his mother was named Mayor Vicente.
as a grumete (cabin boy). His home, now the Casa Museo de Martín Alonso Pinzón, was on the old royal road to the Monastery of La Rábida. Martín's family contracted a marriage with a resident of the locality named María Álvarez. They had five children: two boys—Arias Pérez and Juan, who participated in several expeditions to the Americas—and three girls—Mayor, Catalina, and Leonor. Leonor, the youngest, suffered frequent attacks of what was then called "gota coral" and would now be called epilepsy
.
A French tradition holds that Alonso Pinzón sailed to the New World with the navigator Jean Cousin
, and that together they discovered the continent in 1488, four years before Colombus. Back in Dieppe
, Pinzón left Cousin in a dispute, and is claimed to have left for Spain from where he advised Columbus on his westward sail. Pinzon is known to have displayed a remarkable confidence in guiding Columbus in his discovery of the New World. No indisputable written records remain however to support this early claim to discovery.
His nautical experience and his leadership remained patent in the 1508–1536 lawsuits known as the pleitos colombinos
("Columbian lawsuits"), where the witnesses indicated him as the leader of the comarca
(a region comparable to a shire
). He was also famous for his battles against the Portuguese
in the War of the Castilian Succession
. It is probable that even while in Portugal before coming to Spain, Columbus was aware of Martín Alonso, because he was known for his participation in the war, as well as for his incursions into the Afro-Atlantic waters in the wake of the Portuguese, traveling to the Canary Islands
and Guinea
, with their rich fisheries and the commercial possibility of trade in gold, spices, and slaves.
Isabella
and Ferdinand
ordered that certain residents deliver two caravels to Columbus and travel with him on his voyage that he was making "by command of Their Highnesses" ("por mandado de Sus Altezas") and that the town should respect the royal decision. The locals did not comply. The sailors of Palos had no confidence in embarking on this adventure with Columbus, who was largely unknown to them. Independent of their greater or lesser credence in his ideas, the men of Palos found it difficult to support the Genovese
sailor if he was not accompanied by a mariner known and respected in the town. The venture—risky and, above all, of uncertain profit—did not present great attractions. Opposition or indifference to Columbus's project was general.
At about this time, Pinzón returned from a routine commercial voyage to Rome
. The Franciscans of the Monastery of La Rábida put Columbus in touch with Pinzón. Pinzón's friend Pero Vázquez de la Frontera, a very respected old mariner in the town, also had an important influence on Pinzón deciding to support the undertaking, not only morally but also economically.
There is no record of any written agreement between Columbus and Pinzón, and the terms of any agreement are lost to history. However, we do have the writings of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
and the testimony of some witnesses. According to Fernández Duro, de las Casas says Columbus offered Pinzón equal honors in the voyage and half the profits, and Diego Pinzón Colmenero testified the same in the pleitos colombinos; Francisco Medel testified that he heard him offer Pinzón "whatever he asked for and desired".
As a strong sign of his commitment to Columbus's plan, Pinzón put up half a million ("medio cuento") maravedís
in coin toward the cost of the voyage, half of the amount that had been put up by the monarchy. Thanks to his prestige as a shipowner and expert sailor and his fame throughout the Tinto-Odiel
region, he was able to enlist an appropriate crew. Signing on, he dismissed the vessels that Columbus had already seized based on the royal order and also dismissed the men he had enrolled, supplying the enterprise with two caravels of his own, the Pinta and the Niña, which he knew from his own experience would be better and more suitable boats. Furthermore, he traveled through Palos, Moguer
and Huelva
, convincing his relatives and friends to enlist, composing of them the best crew possible. According to testimony in the pleitos colombinos, he "brought such diligence to secure and animate the people as if what were discovered were for him and his sons". Among those he recruited were Cristóbal Quintero from Palos and the Niño brothers
from Moguer.
At this time, Pinzón and Columbus seemed quite close. In the pleitos colombinos, witness Alonso Gallego from Huelva
remembered hearing Columbus say, "Mister Martín Alonso Pinzón, we are going on this voyage which, if we go on with it and God reveals new lands to us, I promise by the Royal Crown to treat you as a brother."
, Pinta, and Niña
left Palos on their voyage of discovery. Admiral Columbus captained the flagship Santa María, Pinzón was captain of the Pinta; his middle brother Francisco was master. It was from the Pinta that Rodrigo de Triana
would be the first to sight land in the Americas
.
During the voyage, Pinzón demonstrated on several occasions his gifts as an expert mariner and as a leader. When the tiller of the Pinta broke en route to the Canary Islands, Columbus, who could not get close enough to help from the Santa María:
When, between 6 and 7 October 1492 Columbus was unable to reestablish discipline among the tired and discouraged crew of the Santa María, Martín Alonso with his gift of command managed to resolve the situation. As the Hernán Pérez Mateos would testify over forty years later:
At that time, Pinzón suggested to Columbus the change of course on 6 October 1492 This change brought the expedition to landfall on Guanahani
on 12 October 1492.
These and other acts by Pinzón and by his brothers, especially Vicente, have led historians to see the brothers as "co-discoverers of America", in that without their help, support, and courage, Columbus probably could not have achieved his enterprise of discovery, at least not in that time and place. At one point during the pleitos colombinos, a royal prosecutor argued that Pinzón had played a more important role in the discovery of the Indies the Columbus himself.
On 21 November 1492, off the coast of Cuba
, Pinzón failed to follow a direct order of Columbus to change course. He probably sailed off on his own trying to make individual discoveries and to find treasure, although Cesáreo Fernández Duro argues that the initial separation may have been accidental, a matter of missed signals. (Asensio takes Fernández Duro strongly to task for not adequately explaining the length of the separation; Fernández Duro responds that Pinzón simply continued the prior course, and if Columbus wanted, he should have had a pretty fair idea where to find him over the next several days.) During his separate travels he discovered new land; while all of the island geography of the first voyage is open to question, it is believed that the land was Haiti
.
19th century historian José María Asensio, at least, blamed Pinzón's absence for the fact that on 25 December, the Santa María was wrecked on a shoal; Pinzón's brother Vicente in command of the Niña played a key part in rescuing the sailors and Columbus himself. Columbus, giving up on Pinzón, began sailing homeward 4 January, leaving behind 39 men, all of whom died before Columbus's return nine months later. The Niña and Pinta sighted and rejoined one another 6 January 1493, and, after a furious argument in which according to at least one witness, Pinzón objected to the 39 men being "left so far from Spain, being so few, because they could not be provided for and would be lost", and Columbus threatened to hang Pinzón, the two ships headed together back toward Spain on January 8
Columbus's published diary of the voyage was heavily edited by Bartolomé de las Casas, so it is impossible to know what was actually written at the time and what added later, but the diary launches a series of accusations against Pinzón beginning with his separation on November 21:
Nonetheless, much of the testimony in the pleitos colombinos, as well as part of the specialized historiography and investigators, does not agree that these things happened in this manner, nor is there any accusation against Pinzón in Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage
, which Columbus wrote during his return.
. Pinzón arrived in Baiona
in Galicia, near Vigo
, 1 March 1493; Columbus reached Lisbon
on March 4; he later faced problems with the Court for having touched down in Portugal out of necessity in bad weather. Pinzón, despite the bad weather and strong southerly winds, had managed to touch down on Spanish territory, not Portuguese. Believing Columbus to be lost, he sent a letter to the King and Queen; some have argued that he claimed the glory of the great discoveries for himself, while others defend him from the charge; the letter itself is lost. It is not clear whether his letter or Columbus's from Lisbon reached court first, nor is it clear whether the failure to invite Pinzón to court resulted from Columbus's primacy of position, possible accusations by Columbus against Pinzón, or simply reports of Pinzón's illness and death.
Pinzón returned home to Palos, where arrived 15 March 1493, precisely the same day the Niña arrived from Lisbon. Fatigued and ill to the point of exhaustion, suffering from a recurrent fever, he was taken from his ship in a stretcher. As Columbus arrived, his friends took him to a farm that was on the boundary between Palos and Moguer. It is possible that Martín's son, Arias Pérez Pinzón, did not bring him directly to his house in Palos in order to protect him, given that Columbus had threatened him earlier. Another possibility is that this was because Martín did not get along well with Catalina Alonso, the woman who had been living with his father since he became a widower, and with whom the father would have two illegitimate children: Francisco and Inés Pinzón. According to the testimony of Francisco Medel and Hernán Pérez Mateos, he was brought to the La Rábida Monastery, where he died; he was entombed there, as was his wish.
It has been claimed that Pinzón's recurring fever was syphilis
. The theory that syphilis is of New World
origin and that it was first brought back to Europe by Columbus's crew has been longstanding, and long controversial. Some recent genetic
evidence restores credence to the theory. Even so, even if Pinzón contracted it on the voyage, it is extremely unlikely that it was the cause of his death. Tertiary syphilis does not normally show up for three to 15 years, according to Medline Plus. There is also a possibility that some historians have confused Martín Alonso Pinzón with his brother Francisco, who is more plausibly (but still controversially) believed to have had this particular disease. Conversely, there is the possibility that the first outbreak of syphilis among Europeans with no immunity
was much more virulent than subsequently.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), after he and Columbus met up again in early January 1493, he was forced to return four men and two girls to Hispaniola
by Columbus. He deserted Columbus against orders more than once, including the enslavement expedition. He was refused an audience by the King. "Anger and jealousy, added to the privations of the voyage, undermined his health, and led to his death a few months later," according to the same source. Fernández Duro presents an entirely different version of Pinzón, defending him of against the charge of willful disobedience and questioning whether he was at all systematically "refused" a royal audience. He further writes that Pinzón's "unpardonable crime" was that he had the luck or skill to obtain more gold than Columbus.
in the 1992
film 1492: Conquest of Paradise
.
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
mariner, shipbuilder, navigator and explorer
Exploration
Exploration is the act of searching or traveling around a terrain for the purpose of discovery of resources or information. Exploration occurs in all non-sessile animal species, including humans...
, oldest of the Pinzón brothers. He sailed with Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
on his first voyage to the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
in 1492, as captain of the Pinta. His youngest brother Vicente Yáñez Pinzón
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was a Spanish navigator, explorer, and conquistador, the youngest of the Pinzón brothers...
was captain of the Niña
Niña
La Niña was one of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage towards the Indies in 1492. The real name of the Niña was Santa Clara. The name Niña was probably a pun on the name of her owner, Juan Niño of Moguer...
, and the middle brother Francisco Martín Pinzón was maestre (first mate) of the Pinta.
The Pinzón family of Palos
The Pinzón family was among the leading families of Palos de la Frontera in the late 15th century. There are several conflicting theories about the origin of the family and of their name (see Pinzón brothers#The Pinzón family of Palos). His grandfather was as sailor and diver known as Martín; it is not clear whether that was a first or last name, and whether in his generation Pinzón was a surname or an epithetEpithet
An epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...
. His father was a sailor named Martín Pinzón; his mother was named Mayor Vicente.
Life
Born in Palos around 1441, it appears that at quite a young age Pinzón shipped out on a locally based caravelCaravel
A caravel is a small, highly maneuverable sailing ship developed in the 15th century by the Portuguese to explore along the West African coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. The lateen sails gave her speed and the capacity for sailing to windward...
as a grumete (cabin boy). His home, now the Casa Museo de Martín Alonso Pinzón, was on the old royal road to the Monastery of La Rábida. Martín's family contracted a marriage with a resident of the locality named María Álvarez. They had five children: two boys—Arias Pérez and Juan, who participated in several expeditions to the Americas—and three girls—Mayor, Catalina, and Leonor. Leonor, the youngest, suffered frequent attacks of what was then called "gota coral" and would now be called epilepsy
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...
.
A French tradition holds that Alonso Pinzón sailed to the New World with the navigator Jean Cousin
Jean Cousin (navigator)
Jean Cousin, also Jehan Cousin, was a 15th century French Normand navigator who was said to have discovered the New World in 1488, four years before Christopher Columbus, when he landed in Brazil around the mouth of the Amazon...
, and that together they discovered the continent in 1488, four years before Colombus. Back in Dieppe
Dieppe, Seine-Maritime
Dieppe is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in France. In 1999, the population of the whole Dieppe urban area was 81,419.A port on the English Channel, famous for its scallops, and with a regular ferry service from the Gare Maritime to Newhaven in England, Dieppe also has a popular pebbled...
, Pinzón left Cousin in a dispute, and is claimed to have left for Spain from where he advised Columbus on his westward sail. Pinzon is known to have displayed a remarkable confidence in guiding Columbus in his discovery of the New World. No indisputable written records remain however to support this early claim to discovery.
His nautical experience and his leadership remained patent in the 1508–1536 lawsuits known as the pleitos colombinos
Pleitos colombinos
The Pleitos colombinos were a long series of lawsuits that the heirs of Christopher Columbus brought against the Crown of Castile and León in defense of the privileges obtained by Columbus for his discoveries in the New World...
("Columbian lawsuits"), where the witnesses indicated him as the leader of the comarca
Comarca
A comarca is a traditional region or local administrative division found in parts of Spain, Portugal, Panama, Nicaragua, and Brazil. The term is derived from the term marca, meaning a "march, mark", plus the prefix co- meaning "together, jointly".The comarca is known in Aragonese as redolada and...
(a region comparable to a shire
Shire
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and in Australia. In parts of Australia, a shire is an administrative unit, but it is not synonymous with "county" there, which is a land registration unit. Individually, or as a suffix in Scotland and in the far...
). He was also famous for his battles against the Portuguese
Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...
in the War of the Castilian Succession
War of the Castilian Succession
The War of the Castilian Succession was the military conflict contested from 1475 to 1479 for the succession of the Crown of Castile fought between the supporters of Juana la Beltraneja, daughter of the late monarch Henry IV of Castile, and those of Henry's half sister, Isabella, who was ultimately...
. It is probable that even while in Portugal before coming to Spain, Columbus was aware of Martín Alonso, because he was known for his participation in the war, as well as for his incursions into the Afro-Atlantic waters in the wake of the Portuguese, traveling to the Canary Islands
Canary Islands
The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...
and Guinea
Guinea (region)
Guinea is a traditional name for the region of Africa that lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It stretches north through the forested tropical regions and ends at the Sahel.-History:...
, with their rich fisheries and the commercial possibility of trade in gold, spices, and slaves.
Preparations for the voyage of discovery
On 23 May 1492 a royal provision was read out to the residents of Palos, by which the Catholic MonarchsCatholic Monarchs
The Catholic Monarchs is the collective title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile; they were given a papal dispensation to deal with...
Isabella
Isabella I of Castile
Isabella I was Queen of Castile and León. She and her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon brought stability to both kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. Later the two laid the foundations for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor...
and Ferdinand
Ferdinand II of Aragon
Ferdinand the Catholic was King of Aragon , Sicily , Naples , Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of...
ordered that certain residents deliver two caravels to Columbus and travel with him on his voyage that he was making "by command of Their Highnesses" ("por mandado de Sus Altezas") and that the town should respect the royal decision. The locals did not comply. The sailors of Palos had no confidence in embarking on this adventure with Columbus, who was largely unknown to them. Independent of their greater or lesser credence in his ideas, the men of Palos found it difficult to support the Genovese
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
sailor if he was not accompanied by a mariner known and respected in the town. The venture—risky and, above all, of uncertain profit—did not present great attractions. Opposition or indifference to Columbus's project was general.
At about this time, Pinzón returned from a routine commercial voyage to Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. The Franciscans of the Monastery of La Rábida put Columbus in touch with Pinzón. Pinzón's friend Pero Vázquez de la Frontera, a very respected old mariner in the town, also had an important influence on Pinzón deciding to support the undertaking, not only morally but also economically.
There is no record of any written agreement between Columbus and Pinzón, and the terms of any agreement are lost to history. However, we do have the writings of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
Bartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de las Casas O.P. was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians"...
and the testimony of some witnesses. According to Fernández Duro, de las Casas says Columbus offered Pinzón equal honors in the voyage and half the profits, and Diego Pinzón Colmenero testified the same in the pleitos colombinos; Francisco Medel testified that he heard him offer Pinzón "whatever he asked for and desired".
As a strong sign of his commitment to Columbus's plan, Pinzón put up half a million ("medio cuento") maravedís
Spanish maravedí
The maravedí was the name of various Iberian coins of gold and then silver between the 11th and 14th centuries and the name of different Iberian accounting units between the 11th and 19th centuries.-Etymology:...
in coin toward the cost of the voyage, half of the amount that had been put up by the monarchy. Thanks to his prestige as a shipowner and expert sailor and his fame throughout the Tinto-Odiel
Odiel
The Odiel River, River Odiel, or simply Odiel is a river in the Atlantic basin in southern Spain, more precisely in the province of Huelva, Andalusia, Spain. It originates at Marimateos in the Sierra de Aracena at an altitude of above sea level. At the Punta del Sebo, it joins the Rio Tinto to...
region, he was able to enlist an appropriate crew. Signing on, he dismissed the vessels that Columbus had already seized based on the royal order and also dismissed the men he had enrolled, supplying the enterprise with two caravels of his own, the Pinta and the Niña, which he knew from his own experience would be better and more suitable boats. Furthermore, he traveled through Palos, Moguer
Moguer
Moguer is a municipality and small city located in the province of Huelva, Andalusia, Spain. According to the 2007 census, it has a population of 18,381. Its surface area is , and its population density is ....
and Huelva
Huelva
Huelva is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous region of Andalusia. It is located along the Gulf of Cadiz coast, at the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto rivers. According to the 2010 census, the city has a population of 149,410 inhabitants. The...
, convincing his relatives and friends to enlist, composing of them the best crew possible. According to testimony in the pleitos colombinos, he "brought such diligence to secure and animate the people as if what were discovered were for him and his sons". Among those he recruited were Cristóbal Quintero from Palos and the Niño brothers
Niño brothers
The Niño Brothers were a family of sailors from the town of Moguer , who participated actively in Christopher Columbus's first voyage—generally considered to constitute the discovery of the Americas by Europeans—and other subsequent voyages to the New World.- The Niño Brothers and Columbus's first...
from Moguer.
At this time, Pinzón and Columbus seemed quite close. In the pleitos colombinos, witness Alonso Gallego from Huelva
Huelva
Huelva is a city in southwestern Spain, the capital of the province of Huelva in the autonomous region of Andalusia. It is located along the Gulf of Cadiz coast, at the confluence of the Odiel and Tinto rivers. According to the 2010 census, the city has a population of 149,410 inhabitants. The...
remembered hearing Columbus say, "Mister Martín Alonso Pinzón, we are going on this voyage which, if we go on with it and God reveals new lands to us, I promise by the Royal Crown to treat you as a brother."
Voyage with Columbus
The voyage out
On 3 August 1492, the Santa MaríaSanta María (ship)
La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción , was the largest of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa.-History:...
, Pinta, and Niña
Niña
La Niña was one of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage towards the Indies in 1492. The real name of the Niña was Santa Clara. The name Niña was probably a pun on the name of her owner, Juan Niño of Moguer...
left Palos on their voyage of discovery. Admiral Columbus captained the flagship Santa María, Pinzón was captain of the Pinta; his middle brother Francisco was master. It was from the Pinta that Rodrigo de Triana
Rodrigo de Triana
Rodrigo de Triana was a sailor and the first European since the Vikings known to have seen America. Born as Juan Rodrigo Bermejo, Triana was the son of Morisco hidalgo and potter Vicente Bermejo and Sereni Betancour....
would be the first to sight land in the Americas
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
.
During the voyage, Pinzón demonstrated on several occasions his gifts as an expert mariner and as a leader. When the tiller of the Pinta broke en route to the Canary Islands, Columbus, who could not get close enough to help from the Santa María:
When, between 6 and 7 October 1492 Columbus was unable to reestablish discipline among the tired and discouraged crew of the Santa María, Martín Alonso with his gift of command managed to resolve the situation. As the Hernán Pérez Mateos would testify over forty years later:
At that time, Pinzón suggested to Columbus the change of course on 6 October 1492 This change brought the expedition to landfall on Guanahani
Guanahani
Guanahani was the name the natives gave to the island that Christopher Columbus called San Salvador when he arrived at the Americas. Columbus reached the island on 12 October 1492, the first island he sighted and visited in the Americas...
on 12 October 1492.
These and other acts by Pinzón and by his brothers, especially Vicente, have led historians to see the brothers as "co-discoverers of America", in that without their help, support, and courage, Columbus probably could not have achieved his enterprise of discovery, at least not in that time and place. At one point during the pleitos colombinos, a royal prosecutor argued that Pinzón had played a more important role in the discovery of the Indies the Columbus himself.
Separation in the Caribbean
All evidence—the remarks in Columbus's diary, the testimony in the pleitos colombinos—is that on the outward voyage, relations between Columbus and Pinzón remained positive. Once among the Caribbean islands, that began to change.On 21 November 1492, off the coast of Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, Pinzón failed to follow a direct order of Columbus to change course. He probably sailed off on his own trying to make individual discoveries and to find treasure, although Cesáreo Fernández Duro argues that the initial separation may have been accidental, a matter of missed signals. (Asensio takes Fernández Duro strongly to task for not adequately explaining the length of the separation; Fernández Duro responds that Pinzón simply continued the prior course, and if Columbus wanted, he should have had a pretty fair idea where to find him over the next several days.) During his separate travels he discovered new land; while all of the island geography of the first voyage is open to question, it is believed that the land was Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
.
19th century historian José María Asensio, at least, blamed Pinzón's absence for the fact that on 25 December, the Santa María was wrecked on a shoal; Pinzón's brother Vicente in command of the Niña played a key part in rescuing the sailors and Columbus himself. Columbus, giving up on Pinzón, began sailing homeward 4 January, leaving behind 39 men, all of whom died before Columbus's return nine months later. The Niña and Pinta sighted and rejoined one another 6 January 1493, and, after a furious argument in which according to at least one witness, Pinzón objected to the 39 men being "left so far from Spain, being so few, because they could not be provided for and would be lost", and Columbus threatened to hang Pinzón, the two ships headed together back toward Spain on January 8
Columbus's published diary of the voyage was heavily edited by Bartolomé de las Casas, so it is impossible to know what was actually written at the time and what added later, but the diary launches a series of accusations against Pinzón beginning with his separation on November 21:
- * An effort to make sense of a rather obscure phrase, "y aunque tenía dice que consigo muchos hombres de bien"; possibly alternatively "and though he had to say that they had many good men with them".
Nonetheless, much of the testimony in the pleitos colombinos, as well as part of the specialized historiography and investigators, does not agree that these things happened in this manner, nor is there any accusation against Pinzón in Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage
Columbus's Letter on the First Voyage
Columbus' Letter on the First Voyage to the New World was written by Christopher Columbus on February 15, 1493, on board the caravel Niña at sea with a postscript written on March 14 when he arrived back into port at Lisbon, Portugal...
, which Columbus wrote during his return.
Return voyage and death
During the voyage back to Spain, Pinzón's ship was separated from Columbus in stormy conditions, southwest of the AzoresAzores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
. Pinzón arrived in Baiona
Baiona, Pontevedra
Baiona is a municipality in Galicia, Spain, in the province of Pontevedra.Baiona is a tourist town with a medieval historical center situated by the outlet of the Vigo Bay. Its population of just over 11,000 rises to around 45,000 in the summer, if one includes tourists...
in Galicia, near Vigo
Vigo
Vigo is a city and municipality in north-west Spain, in Galicia, situated on the ria of the same name on the Atlantic Ocean.-Population:...
, 1 March 1493; Columbus reached Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
on March 4; he later faced problems with the Court for having touched down in Portugal out of necessity in bad weather. Pinzón, despite the bad weather and strong southerly winds, had managed to touch down on Spanish territory, not Portuguese. Believing Columbus to be lost, he sent a letter to the King and Queen; some have argued that he claimed the glory of the great discoveries for himself, while others defend him from the charge; the letter itself is lost. It is not clear whether his letter or Columbus's from Lisbon reached court first, nor is it clear whether the failure to invite Pinzón to court resulted from Columbus's primacy of position, possible accusations by Columbus against Pinzón, or simply reports of Pinzón's illness and death.
Pinzón returned home to Palos, where arrived 15 March 1493, precisely the same day the Niña arrived from Lisbon. Fatigued and ill to the point of exhaustion, suffering from a recurrent fever, he was taken from his ship in a stretcher. As Columbus arrived, his friends took him to a farm that was on the boundary between Palos and Moguer. It is possible that Martín's son, Arias Pérez Pinzón, did not bring him directly to his house in Palos in order to protect him, given that Columbus had threatened him earlier. Another possibility is that this was because Martín did not get along well with Catalina Alonso, the woman who had been living with his father since he became a widower, and with whom the father would have two illegitimate children: Francisco and Inés Pinzón. According to the testimony of Francisco Medel and Hernán Pérez Mateos, he was brought to the La Rábida Monastery, where he died; he was entombed there, as was his wish.
It has been claimed that Pinzón's recurring fever was syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
. The theory that syphilis is of New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
origin and that it was first brought back to Europe by Columbus's crew has been longstanding, and long controversial. Some recent genetic
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
evidence restores credence to the theory. Even so, even if Pinzón contracted it on the voyage, it is extremely unlikely that it was the cause of his death. Tertiary syphilis does not normally show up for three to 15 years, according to Medline Plus. There is also a possibility that some historians have confused Martín Alonso Pinzón with his brother Francisco, who is more plausibly (but still controversially) believed to have had this particular disease. Conversely, there is the possibility that the first outbreak of syphilis among Europeans with no immunity
Immunity (medical)
Immunity is a biological term that describes a state of having sufficient biological defenses to avoid infection, disease, or other unwanted biological invasion. Immunity involves both specific and non-specific components. The non-specific components act either as barriers or as eliminators of wide...
was much more virulent than subsequently.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), after he and Columbus met up again in early January 1493, he was forced to return four men and two girls to Hispaniola
Hispaniola
Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...
by Columbus. He deserted Columbus against orders more than once, including the enslavement expedition. He was refused an audience by the King. "Anger and jealousy, added to the privations of the voyage, undermined his health, and led to his death a few months later," according to the same source. Fernández Duro presents an entirely different version of Pinzón, defending him of against the charge of willful disobedience and questioning whether he was at all systematically "refused" a royal audience. He further writes that Pinzón's "unpardonable crime" was that he had the luck or skill to obtain more gold than Columbus.
In popular culture
Martín Alonso Pínzon was portrayed by Tchéky KaryoTchéky Karyo
-Early life:Karyo was born in Istanbul to a Greek mother and Sephardic-Jewish father and raised in Paris, France. He studied drama at the Cyrano Theatre and later became a member of the Daniel Sorano Company, playing many classical roles.-Career:...
in the 1992
1992 in film
The year 1992 in film involved many significant films. -Top grossing films:-Awards:Academy AwardsGolden Globe AwardsNational Film Awards...
film 1492: Conquest of Paradise
1492: Conquest of Paradise
1492: Conquest of Paradise is an epic 1992 European adventure/drama film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Roselyne Bosch, which tells the story of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus and the effect this had on the indigenous people...
.