The fourth voyage of Columbus was a Spanish maritime expedition of discovery in 1502 to 1504 to the western Caribbean coast of Central America, led by Christopher Columbus and commissioned by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. The voyage, Columbus's last, was meant to find a western maritime route to the Far East. The journey failed to locate such passage, returned relatively little profit, and further resulted in the deaths of about a fifth of the fleet's company, loss of all four of its ships, and a year-long marooning in Jamaica from mid-1503. It is considered the non-Amerindian discovery of mainland Middle America, and one of the first non-Amerindian, non-Norse discoveries of continental North America, after its original peopling and later Norse settlement.
Columbus reached mainland in mid-1502, and spent the next ten months coasting southwards in the Bay of Honduras and Mosquito Gulf, along what is now Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. This leg notably involved first contact with various Amerindian peoples, possibly including the Maya civilisation, and ended when open hostilities broke out with Quibían, a cacique whose cacicazgo lay near the Belen River of modern Panama. The closing leg, a stranding in Jamaica, was prolonged by political tensions between the admiral and the governor of La Española, Nicolás de Ovando. It notably involved a widespread mutiny that required armed conflict to suppress, and a lunar eclipse that was used by Columbus to gain Taino aid.
Background
Christopher Columbus returned to Nueva Isabela, on Rio Ozama in La Española, upon completing his third voyage in 1500. The admiral and governor, whose relationship with local vecinos had been long strained by then, soon found himself on remand in Cádiz, awaiting an audience before the Catholic Monarchs to answer for alleged offences against the Spanish crown. His defence proved good enough to earn him his freedom, but not a reinstatement as governor of La Española, in which office he had first been replaced by juez pesquisidor ('inquisitor') Francisco de Bobadilla, and who would soon be succeeded by Nicolás de Ovando in 1502.
Upon his release from jail on 17 December 1500, Columbus set about planning what he proposed would be "his most significant, most profitable expedition yet". The recent Portuguese discovery of an eastern sea lane to "the opulent East", by Vasco da Gama in 1497 to 1499, had steeled the admiral's resolve to find a shorter, more direct western route to the same (to Cathay, Cipangu and La Especiería in the Far East, and to the neighbouring East Indies). Consequently, on 26 February 1502, Columbus petitioned the crown for a capitulación to embark on a fourth voyage to the western half of the North Sea. Passage to the east, he figured, might lie farther west than anyone had prior sailed. The project being deemed feasible and desirable, the Catholic Monarchs granted his petition on 14 March. The royal licence approved the disbursement of some 10,000 gold pesos for fitting out a fleet, appointed Francisco de Porras as comptroller of spoils, and Diego de Porras as auditor and crown representative, and forbade the enslavement of Amerindians, among further terms and conditions. Columbus enlisted Diego Tristán to captain his flagship La Capitana, Francisco de Porras for El Santiago de Palos, Pedro de Terreros for El Gallego, and Bartolomeo Fieschi for El Vizcaíno.
Some 140 men and ship's boys were recruited to crew Columbus's fleet of four ships. By 28 April, upon finalising all preparations for his trip, the admiral reported an outlay of 2,259,239 maravedis, primarily on wages, rent, equipment and provisions.
Voyage
The Columbian fleet set sail from Cádiz on 9 May 1502. After a brief detour to Arzila, on the Barbary Coast, which Ferdinand II had requested, the fleet called at El Hierro, in the Canary Islands, to revictual. They next stopped in Martinique, after a transatlantic crossing of 21 days, the fastest one of Columbus's career.
Once his crew were rested and his ships repaired, the admiral departed from the Lesser Antilles, setting course due west. Though his capitulación barred Columbus from landing in La Española during the opening leg of his voyage, towards the end of June, the explorer nonetheless dropped anchor just off the mouth of Río Ozama, intending to request an emergency exemption to the said stipulation, so as to shelter his fleet in the port of Nueva Isabela, fearing that a hurricane was brewing and would soon strike the Greater Antilles. Not convinced by said plea, governor de Ovando denied the admiral's request and required the ships to clear the harbour. Columbus's fears soon proved well-founded though, as a "massive hurricane" next landed on the Spanish settlement and island in early July, one which the Columbian fleet weathered reasonably well, having secured shelter in some nearby anchorage, possibly off Río Jaina, just a few miles west of Ozama.
On 15 July, once the storm had passed and any damage been repaired, Columbus set off downwind from La Española. The fleet stopped briefly in Isla de Pinos, just off Isla Juana, then picked up some stiff northeasterlies and sailed due southwest.
Mainland
The Columbian fleet sighted land on 30 July 1502, in what would later become the Bay of Honduras, and came upon an island which Columbus dubbed Isla de Pinos, later rechristened by the Spanish as Guanaxa. Shortly upon stopping here, an Amerindian canoe, richly laden in merchandise, approached their anchorage. Noting that the laden goods were "all of a quality superior to what they had seen before" in the New World, the Spaniards forced a trade, bartering the local merchant's ceramics, dyed cotton textiles, flint-edged swords and copper hatchets for "the usual baubles" from the Old World. This merchant canoe is thought to have hailed from some nearby port in the Maya Lowlands, leading some later historians and Mayanist scholars to identify the same as a Maya vessel, thereby making this chance encounter the first contact between the Maya civilisation and a non-Amerindian people.
After impressing the canoe's elderly skipper, Columbus weighed anchor and carried on southwards, reaching a small peninsula (named Punta Caxinas by the admiral) which abutted the bay of what would later be Truxillo. The ships were anchored in the lee of said cape, whereupon the Spanish explorers "made the first landing on the mainland of North America", this being the earliest instance any non-Amerindian people coming onto continental Middle America, and the first in the continent since Norse arrival. The Columbian expedition carried on to the east, and next reached the nearby Río Romano, where "Columbus took formal possession" of the newly discovered (to them) lands on 17 August. The weather, which now beset them with strong headwinds and fierce rain, prolonged the fleet's southeasterly leg to Cabo Gracias a Dios (lit. 'Cape Thank God'), so christened because when they rounded it on 14 September, and thus entered what would later be the Mosquito Gulf, the weather suddenly improved as if by divine providence.
On 16 September, two days after rounding Gracias a Dios, the fleet anchored just off a large estuary to the south, "probably the Rio Grande", with surf so strong it swamped one of the vessels, causing two crewmates to drown and die. On 25 September, they moored in a natural harbour in what is now Limón, Costa Rica, and again sought to barter with the locals, who were probably Talamancans, further impressing two of them to help with Amerindian language translations. On 5 October, they entered Bahía del Almirante, to the lee side of what are now the Bocas del Toro islands, where Columbus "found the first sign of fine gold, which an Indian wore like a large medal on his breast". The Spanish men next anchored in the neighbouring Laguna de Chiriquí, which their pressed Talamancan interpreters informed them was a nine days' march (across the isthmus) from Ciguare, a rich land which lay on another ocean (the South Sea). Columbus mistook the Talamancans to mean Ciamba, in the Far East, but the renewed hope of a passage to the east apparently did nothing for the admiral, who by this point in his expedition had seemingly given up on the search, having had no luck so far, and chosen instead to focus on trading for gold, which the lagoon's locals seemed to have in fine specimens.
The Spanish ships put out on 17 October, heading east of Chiriquí, and next sighted the local Amerindian settlement of Veragua, which their local guides identified as a renowned source of gold. At this point though, a storm blew the fleet eastwards to Porto Bello, and then farther east to Nombre de Dios, where the crew now dropped anchor to repair the damage. To their misfortune, the weather only worsened, as tempest-force winds and currents now battered the ships back and forth between Porto Bello and Río Chagres. Conditions finally improved on 3 January 1503, allowing the Spanish to sail back west for Río Belén, where they anchored some days later. From said Belén anchorage, Columbus now led an exploratory party up said river, while his brother Bartholomew led another detachment to Río Veragua.
In February, "the Spanish put up ten or twelve houses on the west bank of the river" of Belén, thereby founding Santa María de Belén. This soon proved an unwelcome development amongst the locals though, with whom relations quickly soured to the point of open hostilities. Seeking to stave off an armed assault, Columbus authorised the abduction of cacique Quibían, and his family and principal subordinates. The pre-emptive strike, led by Bartholomew and eighty men, proved both successful and profitable, netting the expeditionaries "a good deal of gold". The cacique soon managed to escape however, and responded with a force of some four hundred infantry from his cacicazgo. Though the Columbian crew managed to repel the attack, they suffered twelve fatal and several non-fatal casualties. Growing convinced of Santa María's untenable situation, Columbus now deemed it prudent to abandon his colonial project. Consequently, on 16 April, all ships but the now-decommissioned Gallego set off due east, with Diego Méndez succeeding the recently killed in action Diego Tristán as captain of the flagship Capitana. After scuttling the now-unseaworthy Vizcaíno at Porto Bello, the now-halved fleet reached a headland, probably Punta Mosquito in the Gulf of Darien, and set off northwards on 1 May.
Antilles
The Columbian fleet, reduced now to the Capitana and Santiago, both already in a sorry state, dropped anchor in Jardines de la Reina, just off Isla Juana, on 12 May 1503. That week proved especially disastrous for the leaky caravels, and taxing for the crew. With "ships pierced by borers worse than a honeycomb, the people spiritless and desperate", they carried on southeastwards to Jamaica, reaching Saint Ann's Bay, just off the modern town of the same name, on 25 June. Being now indisputably beyond repair, Columbus condemned both caravels and had them beached for break up, thus marooning himself and the remaining company of 116 men for what would prove to be a year-long odyssey.
Columbus set about securing a vessel to send to Nueva Isabela for their rescue. That July 1503, he enlisted his captains Méndez and Fieschi, twelve crewmates, and twenty Taino rowers to attempt the daring crossing of the Jamaica Channel aboard dugout canoes in two flotillas. In three days' time, both parties reached Navassa Island, where several rowers died or fell very ill of dehydration. Despite these odds, the survivors made the rest of the crossing to La Española in one day's time. Upon reaching Jaragua though, the captains were promptly apprehended and detained by governor de Ovando, and so did not reach the port capital until March 1504. Their luck there did not improve though, as de Ovando now denied them the use of a small caravel for the needed rescue to the west, further prolonging the Columbian crew's marooning.