Columbus' son On The First Return Voyage:
"As they sailed on in good weather, the winds began to increase from day to day and the seas to rise so high that they had great difficulty in weathering them. In the night of Thursday, 14 February, they were compelled to run with the wind. And as the caravel Pinta was less able to withstand the seas than the Niña, Pinzón had to follow a northward course, driven by a south wind, while the Admiral continued northeast on the direct route for Spain. Owing to the darkness of the night, the Pinta could not rejoin the Admiral, although he kept his lantern lit, and at daybreak the two ships had lost one another, and the crew of each thought that the other had sunk. Resorting to prayer and devotions, therefore, the Admiral's crew vowed that one of them should make a pilgrimage on behalf of the rest to Our Lady of Guadalupe and cast lots to decide who it should be. The lot fell on the Admiral. After this they vowed a further pilgrimage to our Lady of Loreto and the lot fell on a sailor of the Santa Maria from Santona, called Pedro de la Villa. They then cast lots for a third pilgrimage to make a vigil in the church of Santa Clara de Moguer, and the lot for this also fell on the Admiral. The storm, however, grew fiercer and everyone on the ship made a vow to walk barefoot and in their shirts to offer up a prayer on the first land they came to in any church dedicated to the Virgin. Apart from these general vows many of the men also made private ones.
For now the storm was very high and the Admiral's ship had great difficulty in withstanding it through lack of ballast, which had grown less as their provisions were consumed. To increase their ballast they conceived the idea of filling all the barrels that were empty with seawater, which was some help. It enabled the ship to stand up better to the storm and reduced its great danger of capsizing. The Admiral described this great storm in these words:
'I should have had less difficulty in withstanding this storm if I had only been in personal danger, since I know that I owe my life to my Supreme Creator and He has so many times before saved me when I have been near death that actually to die would hardly have cost me great suffering. But what caused me infinite pain and grief was the thought that after it had pleased the Lord to inspire me with faith and assurance to undertake this enterprise, in which he had now granted me success, at the very moment when my opponents would have been proved wrong and your Highness would have been endowed by me with glory and increase of your high estate, the Lord might choose to prevent all this by my death.'Even this would have been more bearable if death were not also to fall on all those whom I had taken with me, promising them a most prosperous outcome to the voyage. Finding ourselves in such terrible danger , they not only cursed their weakness in coming but also my threats and forceful persuasion which had many times prevented them from turning back, despite their resolution to do so. In addition to all this, my grief was increased by the thought that my two sons, whom I had placed as students at Cordoba, would be left without resources in a foreign land...'In this perplexity I thought your Highnesses' good fortune which, even were I to die and my ship be lost, might find a means of turning the victory I had gained to your advantage, and that in some way the success of my voyage might become known to you. Therefore I wrote a parchment, as brief as the exigencies of the time required, saying how I had discovered these lands that I had promised to you and in how many days and by what course I had reached them. I had described the goodness of the country, the manners of its inhabitants whom I had made subjects to your Highnesses, taking possession of all the lands I had discovered. I closed and sealed this letter and addressed it to your Highnesses, undertaking the cost of carriage, that is to say promising a thousand ducats to the man who should present it to your Highnesses unopened. My purpose was that if some foreigner should find it he would be too anxious to obtain the reward to open it and master its contents. I then sent for a large cask and, after wrapping this parchment in cloth and enclosing it in a cake of wax, placed the parcel in the cask. The hoops were then secured and the cask thrown into the sea, all the sailors supposing that this was in fulfillment of some vow. And since I thought it possible that this cask would not be picked up and the ships were still following their course to Castile, I prepared another similar package and placed it in another cask at the highest point of the prow, so that were the ship to sink it should float on the waves and be carried wherever the storm might take it.'
"... As they sailed on in great danger from the storm..."
from The Life of the Admiral By His Son, Hernando Colon translated into english by JM Cohen in The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus The Penguin Group 1969
and the first printing looked like this
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