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 probably a medium
sized nao (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 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,
and not the largest ships in Europe at the time. 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
ship wrecks 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 type 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 even tinier, at only 50 to 75 tons burden and perhaps 15-18
meters (50 to 60 feet) on deck (updated dimensional
estimates are discussed below in the section entitled Replicas).
