Tuesday, 25 December 1492 - Christmas Day
Our Lord willed that at midnight, when the crew saw me lie down to rest and also saw that there was a dead calm and the sea was as in a bowl, they all lay down to sleep and left the helm to that boy. The currents carried the ship upon one of these banks. Although it was night, the sea breaking on them made so much noise that they could be heard and seen at a 3 mile distance. The ship went upon the bank so quietly that it was hardly noticeable.* When the boy felt the rudder ground and heard the noise of the sea, he cried out. I jumped up instantly; no one else had yet felt that we were aground. Then the master of the ship, Juan de la Cosa,* who was on watch, came out. I ordered him to rouse the crew, to launch the small boat we carry on our stern, and to take an anchor and cast it at the stern. The master and many others jumped into the small boat, and I assumed they were going to follow my orders. Instead, their only thoughts were to escape to the Nina, which was 1 ½ miles to the windward. The crew of the Nina would not receive them, with was correct, and therefore they returned to the ship. But the boat from the Nina reached the ship before my own boat did!
When I saw that some of my own crew were fleeing and that the sea was becoming more shallow, with my ship broadside to it, I did the only thing I could. I ordered the mast cut and the ship lightened as much as
Possible, to see if it could be refloated. But the water became even more shallow, and the ship settled more and more to one side. Although there was little or no sea, I could not save her. Then the seams opened, though she remained in one piece.
*Columbus used the term "banco" (bank), where the Santa Maria grounded, not his term for coral reef (restinga de piedras). The ship appears to have missed the reef, where the waves made the noise Columbus heard, and gently eased into a sand bank. The ship was not really damaged very much, merely hopelessly stuck.
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