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100-519: The island was originally under Spanish control following Christopher Columbus 's purported discovery of the New World , but the Spanish government showed little interest in developing the island (and The Bahamas as a whole). Nassau, the island's largest city, was formerly known as Charles-town, but it was burned to the ground by the Spanish in 1684. It was laid out and renamed Nassau in 1695 by Nicholas Trott ,

200-516: A Genoese dialect ( Ligurian ) as his first language, though Columbus probably never wrote in it. His name in 15th-century Genoese was Cristoffa Corombo , in Italian, Cristoforo Colombo , and in Spanish Cristóbal Colón . In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at 14. In 1470, the family moved to Savona , where Domenico took over a tavern. Some modern authors have argued that he

300-538: A 16-gun British ship and recaptured five other vessels which had been brought in by the British. On 30 January, the prizes were manned and sailed away, except two that were burned, and Providence put into New Bedford with her armed prize. During the early part of April 1779, Providence was ordered to make a short cruise in Massachusetts Bay and along the coast of Maine. She later sailed south of Cape Cod and captured

400-400: A committee of three to obtain the vessels. That day, the committee chartered the sloop Katy from John Brown of Providence and the sloop Washington at the same time. The General Assembly appointed Abraham Whipple as commander of Katy , the larger ship, and made him commodore of the tiny fleet. Whipple had won fame in burning the British armed schooner Gaspee in 1772, and he captured

500-589: A deepened harbour for short-visit cruise ship visitors and hotels offering gambling. Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus ( / k ə ˈ l ʌ m b ə s / ; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs , opening

600-554: A degree of longitude along the equator) spanned 56.67 Arabic miles (equivalent to 66.2 nautical miles, 122.6 kilometers or 76.2 mi), but he did not realize that this was expressed in the Arabic mile (about 1,830 meters or 1.14 mi) rather than the shorter Roman mile (about 1,480 m) with which he was familiar. Columbus therefore estimated the size of the Earth to be about 75% of Eratosthenes's calculation. Third, most scholars of

700-532: A five-week voyage across the ocean. On 7 October, the crew spotted "[i]mmense flocks of birds". On 11 October, Columbus changed the fleet's course to due west, and sailed through the night, believing land was soon to be found. At around 02:00 the following morning, a lookout on the Pinta , Rodrigo de Triana , spotted land. The captain of the Pinta , Martín Alonso Pinzón , verified the sight of land and alerted Columbus. Columbus later maintained that he had already seen

800-636: A fleet organized the previous autumn by Governor Dunmore of Virginia . These English and Tory ships had ravaged the shores of the bay and the rivers which empty into it. Once Whipple's ships had completed this task, they were to move south and clear the Carolina coast of enemy shipping, then sail North to Rhode Island to perform a similar service. Providence and her consorts departed Philadelphia early in January but were delayed by ice and did not get to sea until 17 February. Hopkins deemed it unwise to cruise along

900-676: A larger ship, and Captain John Hazard was placed in command of Providence , formalized by a commission from the Continental Congress dated 9 January 1776. The ships joined a squadron being formed by Congress under the command of Esek Hopkins , who was Commander in Chief of the Fleet of the United Colonies; they ordered him to sail for Chesapeake Bay on 5 January 1776 and to clear waters there of

1000-841: A light on the land a few hours earlier, thereby claiming for himself the lifetime pension promised by Ferdinand and Isabella to the first person to sight land. Columbus called this island (in what is now the Bahamas) San Salvador (meaning "Holy Savior"); the natives called it Guanahani . Christopher Columbus's journal entry of 12 October 1492 states: I saw some who had marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them asking what they were; and they showed me how people from other islands nearby came there and tried to take them, and how they defended themselves; and I believed and believe that they come here from tierra firme to take them captive. They should be good and intelligent servants, for I see that they say very quickly everything that

1100-507: A mistress in 1487, a 20-year-old orphan named Beatriz Enríquez de Arana . It is likely that Beatriz met Columbus when he was in Córdoba , a gathering place for Genoese merchants and where the court of the Catholic Monarchs was located at intervals. Beatriz, unmarried at the time, gave birth to Columbus's second son, Fernando Columbus , in July 1488, named for the monarch of Aragon. Columbus recognized

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1200-473: A nearby smaller island, which he named Mariagalante , now a part of Guadeloupe and called Marie-Galante . Other islands named by Columbus on this voyage were Montserrat , Antigua , Saint Martin , the Virgin Islands , as well as many others. On 17 November, Columbus first sighted the eastern coast of the island of Puerto Rico , known to its native Taino people as Borikén . His fleet sailed along

1300-653: A prize crew. On 1 September, daring seamanship enabled Jones to escape from the British frigate Solebay . Two days later, Providence captured the Bermudan brigantine Sea Nymph carrying sugar, rum, ginger, and oil and sent her to Philadelphia. On the 6th, Providence caught the brigantine Favourite carrying sugar from Antigua to Liverpool, but HMS  Galatea recaptured the prize before she could reach an American port. Turning north, Jones headed for Nova Scotia and escaped another frigate on 20 September before his raid on Canso two days later. There he recruited men to fill

1400-700: A squadron of over seven ships to raid the British-held island in order to secure supplies and munitions. In an event known as the Battle of Nassau, on March 3 and 4, Hopkins landed the first-ever amphibious assault by American military forces consisting of 250 Marines and sailors . Under the covering fire of the Providence and Wasp , the attackers overwhelmed Fort Montague. The British retreated to Fort Nassau, but then surrendered to Continental forces. The Americans managed to secure 88 cannon and 15 mortars , but most of

1500-659: A tender to HMS Rose before sunset that same day. Katy then cruised in Narragansett Bay through the summer protecting coastal shipping. Gunpowder was an essential commodity, scarce in the Continental Army throughout the Revolutionary War and desperately low during the first year of the struggle for independence. Late in the summer of 1775, the shortage in Washington 's army besieging Boston became so severe that he

1600-648: A transport brig loaded with stores and carrying two officers and 25 men of the British Army, besides her crew. She made two cruises on the coast under command of Captain John Peck Rathbun , and sailed from Georgetown, N.C. about mid-January 1778, again bound for New Providence in the Bahamas but this time alone. On 27 January, she spiked the guns of the fort at Nassau, taking military stores including 1,600 pounds of powder and releasing 30 American prisoners. She also captured

1700-507: A variety of ways. Columbus often wrote about seeking gold in the log books of his voyages and writes about acquiring it "in such quantity that the sovereigns... will undertake and prepare to go conquer the Holy Sepulcher " in a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy . Columbus often wrote about converting all races to Christianity. Abbas Hamandi argues that Columbus was motivated by the hope of "[delivering] Jerusalem from Muslim hands" by "using

1800-507: A wool weaver who worked in Genoa and Savona , and owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa . He had three brothers— Bartholomew , Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo (also called Diego) —as well as a sister, Bianchinetta. Bartholomew ran a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood. His native language is presumed to have been

1900-603: Is known that in the autumn of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartholomew, and they continued trading for the Centurione family. Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485. In 1478, the Centuriones sent Columbus on a sugar-buying trip to Madeira. He married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz , daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello , a Portuguese nobleman of Lombard origin, who had been

2000-477: Is now Ghana . He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo , who bore a son, Diego , and was based in Lisbon for several years. He later took a Castilian mistress, Beatriz Enríquez de Arana , who bore a son, Ferdinand . Largely self-educated, Columbus was knowledgeable in geography, astronomy, and history. He developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies , hoping to profit from

2100-536: Is said to them; and I believe they would become Christians very easily, for it seemed to me that they had no religion. Our Lord pleasing, at the time of my departure I will take six of them from here to Your Highnesses in order that they may learn to speak. Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands that he visited Los Indios (Spanish for "Indians"). He initially encountered the Lucayan , Taíno , and Arawak peoples. Noting their gold ear ornaments, Columbus took some of

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2200-720: The Reconquista , an expensive war against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula , were eager to obtain a competitive edge over other European countries in the quest for trade with the Indies. Columbus's project, though far-fetched, held the promise of such an advantage. Though Columbus was wrong about the number of degrees of longitude that separated Europe from the Far East and about the distance that each degree represented, he did take advantage of

2300-691: The American Civil War of 1861–65, when it was a highly popular port for blockade-runners serving the Confederate States of America ; and during Prohibition , when it was a smuggling centre for distilled spirits. By the late 19th century, New Providence had begun billing itself as the " sanitarium of the western hemisphere". Testimonials by residents and visitors emphasized its extremely mild climate with minimal daily temperature fluctuations (often as little as 3 °C (5 °F) in any given 12-hour period) and warm winters (a typical winter morning in

2400-895: The Americas , each voyage being sponsored by the Crown of Castile . On his first voyage he reached the Americas, initiating the European exploration and colonization of the continent , as well as the Columbian exchange . His role in history is thus important to the Age of Discovery , Western history , and human history writ large. In Columbus's letter on the first voyage , published following his first return to Spain, he claimed that he had reached Asia, as previously described by Marco Polo and other Europeans. Over his subsequent voyages, Columbus refused to acknowledge that

2500-571: The Cape Route around Africa to Asia. Columbus had to wait until 1492 for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain to support his voyage across the Atlantic to find gold, spices, a safer route to the East, and converts to Christianity. Carol Delaney and other commentators have argued that Columbus was a Christian millennialist and apocalypticist and that these beliefs motivated his quest for Asia in

2600-628: The Cape of Good Hope ). Columbus sought an audience with the monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile , who had united several kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula by marrying and now ruled together. On 1 May 1486, permission having been granted, Columbus presented his plans to Queen Isabella, who, in turn, referred it to a committee. The learned men of Spain, like their counterparts in Portugal, replied that Columbus had grossly underestimated

2700-503: The Ciguayos , the only natives who offered violent resistance during this voyage. The Ciguayos refused to trade the amount of bows and arrows that Columbus desired; in the ensuing clash one Ciguayo was stabbed in the buttocks and another wounded with an arrow in his chest. Because of these events, Columbus called the inlet the Golfo de Las Flechas ( Bay of Arrows ). Columbus headed for Spain on

2800-572: The Niña , but a storm separated him from the Pinta, and forced the Niña to stop at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. Half of his crew went ashore to say prayers of thanksgiving in a chapel for having survived the storm. But while praying, they were imprisoned by the governor of the island, ostensibly on suspicion of being pirates. After a two-day standoff, the prisoners were released, and Columbus again set sail for Spain. Another storm forced Columbus into

2900-553: The Rhode Island General Assembly as Katy . The ship took part in a number of campaigns during the first half of the American Revolutionary War before being destroyed by her own crew in 1779 to prevent her falling into the hands of the British after the failed Penobscot Expedition . From early 1775, Royal Navy warships, in particular the post ship Rose , carried out anti- smuggling operations off

3000-570: The donatary captain of Porto Santo . In 1479 or 1480, Columbus's son Diego was born. Between 1482 and 1485, Columbus traded along the coasts of West Africa , reaching the Portuguese trading post of Elmina at the Guinea coast in present-day Ghana . Before 1484, Columbus returned to Porto Santo to find that his wife had died. He returned to Portugal to settle her estate and take Diego with him. He left Portugal for Castile in 1485, where he took

3100-623: The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, the Silk Road was closed to Christian traders. In 1474, the Florentine astronomer Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli suggested to King Afonso V of Portugal that sailing west across the Atlantic would be a quicker way to reach the Maluku (Spice) Islands, China , Japan and India than the route around Africa, but Afonso rejected his proposal. In

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3200-496: The trade winds , which would prove to be the key to his successful navigation of the Atlantic Ocean. He planned to first sail to the Canary Islands before continuing west with the northeast trade wind. Part of the return to Spain would require traveling against the wind using an arduous sailing technique called beating , during which progress is made very slowly. To effectively make the return voyage, Columbus would need to follow

3300-401: The 1480s, Columbus and his brother proposed a plan to reach the East Indies by sailing west. Columbus supposedly wrote to Toscanelli in 1481 and received encouragement, along with a copy of a map the astronomer had sent Afonso implying that a westward route to Asia was possible. Columbus's plans were complicated by Bartolomeu Dias 's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, which suggested

3400-456: The 400–500 law-abiding inhabitants; pirate Thomas Barrow even declared himself "Governor of New Providence". In 1718, Governor Woodes Rogers (sent by King George I of Great Britain ) came in and offered a pardon for any pirate willing to give up their ways. Using his intelligence and threatening to execute them if they did not take the pardon, Rogers was eventually able to rid Nassau of pirates. In February 1776, American Esek Hopkins led

3500-420: The Americas. He sailed with nearly 1,500 men, including sailors, soldiers, priests, carpenters, stonemasons, metalworkers, and farmers. Among the expedition members were Alvarez Chanca , a physician who wrote a detailed account of the second voyage; Juan Ponce de León, the first governor of Puerto Rico and Florida; the father of Bartolomé de las Casas; Juan de la Cosa , a cartographer who is credited with making

3600-528: The April 1492 " Capitulations of Santa Fe ", King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella promised Columbus that if he succeeded he would be given the rank of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and appointed Viceroy and Governor of all the new lands he might claim for Spain. He had the right to nominate three persons, from whom the sovereigns would choose one, for any office in the new lands. He would be entitled to 10% ( diezmo ) of all

3700-523: The Arawaks prisoner and insisted that they guide him to the source of the gold. Columbus did not believe he needed to create a fortified outpost, writing, "the people here are simple in war-like matters ... I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased." The Taínos told Columbus that another indigenous tribe, the Caribs , were fierce warriors and cannibals , who made frequent raids on

3800-457: The Canary Islands west to Japan; the actual distance is 10,600 nmi (19,600 km; 12,200 mi). No ship in the 15th century could have carried enough food and fresh water for such a long voyage, and the dangers involved in navigating through the uncharted ocean would have been formidable. Most European navigators reasonably concluded that a westward voyage from Europe to Asia was unfeasible. The Catholic Monarchs, however, having completed

3900-618: The Castilian crown, known as the pleitos colombinos , alleging that the Crown had illegally reneged on its contractual obligations to Columbus and his heirs. The Columbus family had some success in their first litigation, as a judgment of 1511 confirmed Diego's position as viceroy but reduced his powers. Diego resumed litigation in 1512, which lasted until 1536, and further disputes initiated by heirs continued until 1790. Between 1492 and 1504, Columbus completed four round-trip voyages between Spain and

4000-704: The Catholic Monarchs of Spain. They were replaced by the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. The two earliest published copies of Columbus's letter on the first voyage aboard the Niña were donated in 2017 by the Jay I. Kislak Foundation to the University of Miami library in Coral Gables, Florida , where they are housed. On 24 September 1493, Columbus sailed from Cádiz with 17 ships, and supplies to establish permanent colonies in

4100-401: The Earth; and the number of miles or leagues in a degree of longitude , which was possible to deduce from the theory of the relationship between the size of the surfaces of water and the land as held by the followers of Aristotle in medieval times. From Pierre d'Ailly 's Imago Mundi (1410), Columbus learned of Alfraganus 's estimate that a degree of latitude (equal to approximately

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4200-452: The Far East. As a colonial governor, Columbus was accused by some of his contemporaries of significant brutality and removed from the post. Columbus's strained relationship with the Crown of Castile and its colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500, and later to protracted litigation over the privileges he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by

4300-441: The Indies implausible. Columbus had left for France when Ferdinand intervened, first sending Talavera and Bishop Diego Deza to appeal to the queen. Isabella was finally convinced by the king's clerk Luis de Santángel , who argued that Columbus would take his ideas elsewhere, and offered to help arrange the funding. Isabella then sent a royal guard to fetch Columbus, who had traveled 2 leagues (over 10 km) toward Córdoba. In

4400-600: The New England coast. They frequently searched Rhode Island merchant shipping, annoying the colony's merchants. On 13 June, Deputy Governor Nicholas Cooke wrote the frigate's Captain James Wallace demanding restoration of several ships which Rose had detained. Two days later, the Rhode Island General Assembly ordered the committee of safety to fit out two ships to defend the colony's shipping, and appointed

4500-603: The Penobscot River on 14 August 1779 to prevent her from falling into the hands of the British towards the end of the failed Penobscot Expedition . In the early 1970s a reproduction of the Providence was constructed with a fiberglass hull and was used for youth sail training. The ship was maintained by the Providence Maritime Heritage Foundation. The ship was commissioned by John Fitzhugh Millar who

4600-452: The Spanish crown sent him 20,000 maravedis to buy new clothes and instructions to return to the Spanish court for renewed discussions. Columbus waited at King Ferdinand's camp until Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada , the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, in January 1492. A council led by Isabella's confessor, Hernando de Talavera , found Columbus's proposal to reach

4700-504: The Taínos, often capturing their women, although this may have been a belief perpetuated by the Spaniards to justify enslaving them. Columbus also explored the northeast coast of Cuba, where he landed on 28 October. On the night of 26 November, Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an unauthorized expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque", which the natives had told him

4800-728: The Western Hemisphere bear his name , including the South American country of Colombia , the Canadian province of British Columbia , the American city Columbus, Ohio , and the United States capital, the District of Columbia . Columbus's early life is obscure, but scholars believe he was born in the Republic of Genoa between 25 August and 31 October 1451. His father was Domenico Colombo ,

4900-572: The boy as his offspring. Columbus entrusted his older, legitimate son Diego to take care of Beatriz and pay the pension set aside for her following his death, but Diego was negligent in his duties. Columbus learned Latin , Portuguese, and Castilian. He read widely about astronomy, geography, and history, including the works of Ptolemy , Pierre d'Ailly 's Imago Mundi , the travels of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville , Pliny 's Natural History , and Pope Pius II 's Historia rerum ubique gestarum . According to historian Edmund Morgan , Columbus

5000-462: The brig Bolton at dawn the next day. That evening, the Americans added a brigantine and a sloop to their list of prizes, both from New York. About 1 a.m. on 6 April, USS  Andrew Doria sighted HMS  Glasgow , a 20-gun sloop carrying dispatches from Newport to Charleston, South Carolina . The American fleet engaged the enemy ship for 1.5 hours before she turned and fled back toward Newport. After daylight, Hopkins ordered his ships to give up

5100-436: The brig HMS  Diligent , 12 guns off Sandy Hook on 7 May. She fired two broadsides and a volley of muskets during the engagement and Diligent was forced to surrender, with mast rigging and hull cut to pieces. Providence was then assigned to Commodore Saltonstall's squadron which departed Boston on 19 July 1779 and entered Penobscot Bay 25 July. Providence was destroyed by her crew, along with other American vessels in

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5200-453: The chase and headed with his fleet and prizes for New London, Connecticut , where they arrived on the 8th. Lieutenant John Paul Jones took command of Providence on 10 May and made a voyage to New York, returning about 100 soldiers to the Continental Army whom Washington had lent to Hopkins to help man the American fleet, and Jones then hove down the ship to clean her bottom. She sailed again on 13 June, escorting Fly to Fishers Island at

5300-405: The commander of Alfred , a larger ship and the Commander in Chief's flagship on the expedition to the Bahamas, and Captain Hoysted Hacker took command of Providence . The two ships got under way 11 November. They took the brigantine Active after ten days and the armed transport Mellish the next day, carrying winter uniforms and military supplies for the British Army. On the 16th, they captured

5400-446: The crown. Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration, conquest, and colonization that lasted for centuries, thus bringing the Americas into the European sphere of influence. The transfer of plants, animals, precious metals, culture, human populations, technology, diseases, and ideas between the Old World and New World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian exchange , named after him. These events and

5500-446: The curving trade winds northeastward to the middle latitudes of the North Atlantic, where he would be able to catch the " westerlies " that blow eastward to the coast of Western Europe. The navigational technique for travel in the Atlantic appears to have been exploited first by the Portuguese, who referred to it as the volta do mar ('turn of the sea'). Through his marriage to his first wife, Felipa Perestrello, Columbus had access to

5600-408: The distance to Asia. They pronounced the idea impractical and advised the Catholic Monarchs to pass on the proposed venture. To keep Columbus from taking his ideas elsewhere, and perhaps to keep their options open, the sovereigns gave him an allowance, totaling about 14,000 maravedis for the year, or about the annual salary of a sailor. In May 1489, the queen sent him another 10,000 maravedis , and

5700-410: The early 19th century The Bahamas had become a nearly vacant archipelago . Salt raking continued here and there, wreck gleaning was profitable in Grand Bahama , but New Providence was the only island with any prosperity because of the large British military establishment. The fortresses began to crumble and were abandoned by 1850. New Providence afterwards had two periods of high economic success: during

5800-401: The east than Japan, including the mythical Antillia , which he thought might lie not much farther to the west than the Azores , and the distance westward from the Canary Islands to the Indies as only 68 degrees, equivalent to 3,080 nmi (5,700 km; 3,540 mi) (a 58% error). Based on his sources, Columbus estimated a distance of 2,400 nmi (4,400 km; 2,800 mi) from

5900-462: The effects which persist to the present are often cited as the beginning of the modern era . Columbus was widely celebrated in the centuries after his death, but public perception fractured in the 21st century due to greater attention to the harms committed under his governance, particularly the beginning of the depopulation of Hispaniola's indigenous Taíno people, caused by Old World diseases and mistreatment, including slavery . Many places in

6000-470: The entrance to Long Island Sound. He rescued a brigantine en route from the British frigate Cerberus , bringing munitions from Hispaniola . Providence next escorted a convoy of colliers to Philadelphia, arriving 1 August, and Jones received his permanent commission as captain a week later. Providence departed the Delaware Capes on the 21st to begin an independent cruise; she took the brigantine Britannia soon after and sent her into Philadelphia under

6100-436: The first world map depicting the New World ; and Columbus's youngest brother Diego. The fleet stopped at the Canary Islands to take on more supplies, and set sail again on 7 October, deliberately taking a more southerly course than on the first voyage. On 3 November, they arrived in the Windward Islands ; the first island they encountered was named Dominica by Columbus, but not finding a good harbor there, they anchored off

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6200-478: The first voyage , probably dispatched to the Spanish court upon arrival in Lisbon, was instrumental in spreading the news throughout Europe about his voyage. Almost immediately after his arrival in Spain, printed versions began to appear, and word of his voyage spread rapidly. Most people initially believed that he had reached Asia. The Bulls of Donation , three papal bulls of Pope Alexander VI delivered in 1493, purported to grant overseas territories to Portugal and

6300-437: The first voyage. Columbus found the fort in ruins. He learned from Guacanagaríx , the local tribe leader, that his men had quarreled over gold and taken women from the tribe, and that after some left for the territory of Caonabo , Caonabo came and burned the fort and killed the rest of the men there. USS Providence (1775) USS Providence was a sloop-of-war in the Continental Navy , originally chartered by

6400-608: The four million-plus tourists who visit The Bahamas annually. New Providence is the only part of The Bahamas that lacks local government . Local affairs are handled by the national government, but the island is divided into 24 supervisory districts . Other settlements on New Providence include Grants Town, Bain Town, Fox Hill, Adelaide, Yamacraw, South Beach, Coral Harbour, Lyford Cay , Paradise Island , Sea Breeze, Centreville, The Grove (South) and The Grove (West Bay), Cable Beach , Delaporte, Gambier, Old Fort Bay , Carmichael Road, and Love Beach. The Indigenous Lucayan people called

6500-477: The governor of Jamaica, but they ignored this order. In 1695, Governor Nicolas Trott rebuilt the town and added a fort, both were called Nassau. However, the fort was heavily damaged in a Spanish attack in 1700 and the colonists eventually abandoned the fort in 1703 after a French and Spanish attack. Due to the lack of cannon and soldiers in the fort, New Providence soon became a home base for pirates . By 1713, there were over 1000 pirates in Nassau and they outnumbered

6600-405: The grounds that Columbus's estimate for a voyage of 2,400 nmi was only a quarter of what it should have been. In 1488, Columbus again appealed to the court of Portugal, and John II again granted him an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near

6700-458: The interpreter Luis de Torres , and founded the settlement of La Navidad , in present-day Haiti . Columbus took more natives prisoner and continued his exploration. He kept sailing along the northern coast of Hispaniola with a single ship until he encountered Pinzón and the Pinta on 6 January. On 13 January 1493, Columbus made his last stop of this voyage in the Americas, in the Bay of Rincón in northeast Hispaniola. There he encountered

6800-442: The invaders' progress. The defenders spiked their guns and retreated to Fort Nassau . The next day, Nassau surrendered and gave the Americans the keys to the Fort. Hopkins then brought his ships into the harbor and spent two weeks loading captured munitions before heading home on 17 March. Hopkins’ ships captured the schooner Hawk off Block Island on 4 April, belonging to the British fleet at Newport, Rhode Island , and they took

6900-427: The island Nema , meaning "middle-water". The name New Providence Island is derived from a 16th‐century governor who gave thanks to Divine Providence for his survival after a shipwreck . The "New" was added later to distinguish it from Providencia in Western Caribbean (now Colombia ) used by pirates . After 1670, Bermudian salt rakers gathering sea salt in Grand Turk and Inagua became regular visitors to

7000-484: The island's southern coast for a whole day, before making landfall on its northwestern coast at the Bay of Añasco , early on 19 November. Upon landing, Columbus christened the island San Juan Bautista after John the Baptist , and remained anchored there for two days from 20 to 21 November, filling the water casks of the ships in his fleet. On 22 November, Columbus returned to Hispaniola to visit La Navidad in modern-day Haiti , where 39 Spaniards had been left during

7100-475: The island. The first lasting European settlement was on Eleuthera in 1648, and then New Providence in 1666. By 1670, there were over 900 people on the settlement of Charles-Town. Due to ineffective governors, Charles-Town was attacked by the French and Spanish navies, became a home base for pirates, and was eventually destroyed by a Spanish attack in 1684. However, two years later in 1686, new English colonists from Jamaica came and settled. They were called back by

7200-480: The lands he visited and claimed for Spain were not part of Asia, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. This might explain, in part, why the American continent was named after the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci —who received credit for recognizing it as a " New World "—and not after Columbus. On the evening of 3 August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la Frontera with three ships. The largest

7300-532: The lucrative spice trade . After the Granada War , and Columbus's persistent lobbying in multiple kingdoms, the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II , agreed to sponsor a journey west. Columbus left Castile in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Americas on 12 October, ending the period of human habitation in the Americas now referred to as the pre-Columbian era . His landing place

7400-493: The most successful Lord Proprietor , in honour of the Prince of Orange-Nassau who became William III of England . The three branches of Bahamian Government : the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary, are all headquartered on New Providence. New Providence functions as the main commercial hub of The Bahamas. It is also home to more than 400 banks and trust companies, and its hotels and port account for more than two-thirds of

7500-521: The much desired gunpowder was evacuated before capture. Hopkins spent two weeks loading his ships with the booty before finally returning home. The frigate South Carolina , of the South Carolina Navy , arrived at Havana on 12 January 1782. At Havana, after negotiations between Alexander Gillon and the Spanish, the South Carolina joined a force of 59 vessels carrying Spanish forces under

7600-463: The nautical charts and logs that had belonged to her deceased father, Bartolomeu Perestrello , who had served as a captain in the Portuguese navy under Prince Henry the Navigator . In the mapmaking shop where he worked with his brother Bartholomew, Columbus also had ample opportunity to hear the stories of old seamen about their voyages to the western seas, but his knowledge of the Atlantic wind patterns

7700-403: The northern coast of South America in 1498, and the east coast of Central America in 1502. Many names he gave to geographical features, particularly islands, are still in use. He gave the name indios ("Indians") to the indigenous peoples he encountered. The extent to which he was aware the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain; he never clearly renounced his belief he had reached

7800-689: The overall command of Bernardo de Galvez . On 22 April the expedition sailed to capture New Providence. By May 6 the whole fleet had reached New Providence and on 8 May the British colony surrendered. This was the third capture of New Providence by a foreign force during the American Revolutionary War. After the American Revolution , several thousand Loyalists and their slaves emigrated to New Providence and nearby islands, hoping to re-establish plantation agriculture. The shallow soils and sparse rainfall doomed this activity to failure, and by

7900-677: The packet. Upon reaching Bermuda, Whipple learned that the powder from the magazine was already en route to Philadelphia . Katy was purchased by Rhode Island 31 October 1775, soon after she returned to Providence. Late in November, she sailed for Philadelphia carrying seamen enlisted by Commodore Esek Hopkins in New England for Continental service. She arrived on 3 December and was immediately taken into Continental service and renamed Providence . Captain Whipple assumed command of USS  Columbus ,

8000-583: The port at Lisbon. From there he went to Vale do Paraíso north of Lisbon to meet King John II of Portugal, who told Columbus that he believed the voyage to be in violation of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas . After spending more than a week in Portugal, Columbus set sail for Spain. Returning to Palos on 15 March 1493, he was given a hero's welcome and soon afterward received by Isabella and Ferdinand in Barcelona. To them he presented kidnapped Taínos and various plants and items he had collected. Columbus's letter on

8100-511: The range of 21 to 23 °C (70 to 74 °F), excellent drainage, ample variety and number of Christian (Protestant) churches, well-tended and rectilinear roads, modern luxurious facilities, and native English speakers. Steam ships plied between the coastal southern United States, Cuba, and Nassau, and the popularity of the destination proceeded to grow. By the late 1920s, New Providence had become well-established especially as an American vacation destination with many tourist facilities, including

8200-574: The resources of newly discovered lands". Despite a popular misconception to the contrary, nearly all educated Westerners of Columbus's time knew that the Earth is spherical , a concept that had been understood since antiquity . The techniques of celestial navigation , which uses the position of the Sun and the stars in the sky, had long been in use by astronomers and were beginning to be implemented by mariners. However Columbus made several errors in calculating

8300-399: The revenues from the new lands in perpetuity. He also would have the option of buying one-eighth interest in any commercial venture in the new lands, and receive one-eighth ( ochavo ) of the profits. In 1500, during his third voyage to the Americas, Columbus was arrested and dismissed from his posts. He and his sons, Diego and Fernando, then conducted a lengthy series of court cases against

8400-499: The same year the monarchs furnished him with a letter ordering all cities and towns under their dominion to provide him food and lodging at no cost. Columbus also dispatched his brother Bartholomew to the court of Henry VII of England to inquire whether the English crown might sponsor his expedition, but he was captured by pirates en route, and only arrived in early 1491. By that time, Columbus had retreated to La Rábida Friary , where

8500-539: The size of the Earth, the distance the continent extended to the east, and therefore the distance to the west to reach his goal. First, as far back as the 3rd century BC, Eratosthenes had correctly computed the circumference of the Earth by using simple geometry and studying the shadows cast by objects at two remote locations. In the 1st century BC, Posidonius confirmed Eratosthenes's results by comparing stellar observations at two separate locations. These measurements were widely known among scholars, but Ptolemy's use of

8600-457: The smaller, old-fashioned units of distance led Columbus to underestimate the size of the Earth by about a third. Second, three cosmographical parameters determined the bounds of Columbus's enterprise: the distance across the ocean between Europe and Asia, which depended on the extent of the oikumene , i.e., the Eurasian land-mass stretching east–west between Spain and China; the circumference of

8700-622: The snow Kitty . Providence had been troubled by leaks which developed during bad weather on the cruise, so she headed back for Rhode Island and arrived at Newport two days later. The British seized Narragansett Bay in December 1776 and Providence retired up the Providence River with other American vessels. She ran the British blockade in February 1777 under Lt. Jonathan Pitcher and put into New Bedford, then cruised to Cape Breton where she captured

8800-542: The southern coast and led his little fleet to the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, which they reached on 1 March and staged for a raid on New Providence . The next day, they seized two sloops on which Hopkins placed a landing party of 200 marines and 50 sailors. The Americans went ashore unopposed on the eastern end of New Providence at mid-morning of the 3rd, under cover of the guns of Providence and Wasp . They advanced toward Fort Montagu which opened fire, interrupting

8900-423: The statement in the apocryphal book 2 Esdras ( 6:42 ) that "six parts [of the globe] are habitable and the seventh is covered with water." He was also aware of Marco Polo's claim that Japan (which he called "Cipangu") was some 2,414 km (1,500 mi) to the east of China ("Cathay"), and closer to the equator than it is. He was influenced by Toscanelli's idea that there were inhabited islands even farther to

9000-539: The time accepted Ptolemy's estimate that Eurasia spanned 180° longitude, rather than the actual 130° (to the Chinese mainland) or 150° (to Japan at the latitude of Spain). Columbus believed an even higher estimate, leaving a smaller percentage for water. In d'Ailly's Imago Mundi , Columbus read Marinus of Tyre 's estimate that the longitudinal span of Eurasia was 225° at the latitude of Rhodes . Some historians, such as Samuel Eliot Morison , have suggested that he followed

9100-409: The vacancies created by manning his prizes, burned a British fishing schooner, sank a second, and captured a third besides a shallop which he used as a tender. Providence took several more prizes fishing near Ile Madame before riding out a severe storm. The whaler Portland surrendered to her before she returned to Narragansett Bay on 8 October. While Providence was at home, Hopkins appointed Jones

9200-616: The way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas . His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America. The name Christopher Columbus is the anglicization of the Latin Christophorus Columbus . Growing up on the coast of Liguria , he went to sea at a young age and traveled widely, as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what

9300-598: Was a carrack , the Santa María , owned and captained by Juan de la Cosa , and under Columbus's direct command. The other two were smaller caravels , the Pinta and the Niña , piloted by the Pinzón brothers . Columbus first sailed to the Canary Islands. There he restocked provisions and made repairs then departed from San Sebastián de La Gomera on 6 September, for what turned out to be

9400-478: Was an island in the Bahamas , known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani . He then visited the islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola , establishing a colony in what is now Haiti . Columbus returned to Castile in early 1493, with captured natives. Word of his voyage soon spread throughout Europe. Columbus made three further voyages to the Americas, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and

9500-642: Was not a scholarly man. Yet he studied these books, made hundreds of marginal notations in them and came out with ideas about the world that were characteristically simple and strong and sometimes wrong ... Under the Mongol Empire 's hegemony over Asia and the Pax Mongolica , Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage on the Silk Road to India , parts of East Asia , including China and Maritime Southeast Asia , which were sources of valuable goods. With

9600-844: Was not from Genoa, but from the Aragon region of Spain or from Portugal. These competing hypotheses have been discounted by most scholars. In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the wealthy Spinola , Centurione, and Di Negro families of Genoa. Later, he made a trip to the Greek island Chios in the Aegean Sea , then ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe. He probably visited Bristol , England, and Galway , Ireland, where he may have visited St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church . It has been speculated he went to Iceland in 1477, though many scholars doubt this. It

9700-489: Was rich in gold. Columbus, for his part, continued to the northern coast of Hispaniola , where he landed on 6 December. There, the Santa María ran aground on 25 December 1492 and had to be abandoned. The wreck was used as a target for cannon fire to impress the native peoples. Columbus was received by the native cacique Guacanagari , who gave him permission to leave some of his men behind. Columbus left 39 men, including

9800-459: Was still imperfect at the time of his first voyage. By sailing due west from the Canary Islands during hurricane season , skirting the so-called horse latitudes of the mid-Atlantic, he risked being becalmed and running into a tropical cyclone , both of which he avoided by chance. By about 1484, Columbus proposed his planned voyage to King John II of Portugal . The king submitted Columbus's proposal to his advisors, who rejected it, correctly, on

9900-510: Was the captain of the replica frigate Rose in the 1970s. She was launched in 1976 and designated in 1992 as the flagship and tall ship ambassador of the state of Rhode Island . The ship was in drydock for the winter of 2015, when she was toppled and severely damaged by high winds during the January 2015 nor'easter . Providence is currently docked in Alexandria, Virginia, under the care of

10000-438: Was unable to use his artillery, and his riflemen would have been unable to repel an attack had the British taken the offensive. Cooke, therefore, ordered Whipple to cruise for two weeks off Sandy Hook, New Jersey to intercept a powder-laden packet expected from London. He was then to proceed to Bermuda to capture the powder stored in the British magazine there. Katy departed Narragansett Bay on 12 September but caught no sight of

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