It seems now strange that so much difficulty should have surrounded an expedition in itself so small.

But the plan met then all the superstition, terror and other prejudice of the time.
All that Columbus asked or needed was three small vessels and their stores and crews.

The largest ships engaged were little larger than the large yachts, whose races every summer delight the people of America.
The Gallega and the Pinta were the two largest.

They were called caravels, a name then given to the smallest three-masted vessels.
Columbus once uses it for a vessel of forty tons; but it generally applied in Portuguese or Spanish use to a vessel, ranging one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty Spanish "toneles." This word represents a capacity about one-tenth larger than that expressed by our English "ton." The reader should remember that most of the commerce of the time was the coasting commerce of the Mediterranean, and that it was not well that the ships should draw much water.

The fleet of Columbus, as it sailed, consisted of the Gallega (the Galician), of which he changed the name to the Santa Maria, and of the Pinta and the Nina.