Columbus Voyages

On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from Palos, Spain, with three ships – the Santa María, the Pinta (“painted one”) and the Niña (“girl”) – hoping to reach Asia by going west. Instead, he landed in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, and believed he had reached the Indies. After exploring Cuba and Hispaniola, where the Santa María was wrecked on December 25, he returned to Spain in March 1493.

The second voyage left Cádiz on September 25, 1493, with 17 ships and was meant to convert the Indigenous people to Christianity. Columbus explored the Lesser Antilles and Puerto Rico, found that Fort Navidad had been destroyed, and founded the settlement of La Isabela on Hispaniola in January 1494. On his third voyage, which began on May 30, 1498, he reached Trinidad and the South American mainland near modern Venezuela. However, unrest among the colonists led to his arrest, and he was sent back to Spain in chains in 1500.

Columbus left Spain for the fourth and last time on May 9, 1502, searching for a westward passage to the Indian Ocean. He explored the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama but never found it. After storms wrecked his ships, he was stranded on Jamaica for about a year and finally returned to Spain on November 7, 1504. He died in 1506.

Note

These souvenir sheets contain reprints of a series of U.S. stamps commemorating Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the Americas. The stamps were issued in 1893 (see the Columbus page) – roughly on the four-hundredth anniversary. These souvenir sheets were issued on the five-hundredth annniversary.

An almost identical set of souvenir sheets were issued at the same time in Spain, Portugal, and Italy – the countries of origin of Columbus and his crew. I have the ones from Italy in my collection (see the Columbus Sheets page). There are few differences, such as the text is translated to Italian, and the face amount is in lira;

Contains 6 spots: own 6 – 6 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Mar 7, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot

own

catalog

subject

description

comment

Columbus’ Expeditions - Quintennial

1.1	✓	2624a	Columbus in Sight of Land	1c (may 1992) comm., black grey blue
1.2	✓	2624b	Fleet of Columbus	4c (may 1992) comm., dark cyan blue
1.3	✓	2624c	Queen Isabella Pledging Jewels	$1 (may 1992) comm., orange red
2.1	✓	2625a	Landing of Columbus	2c (may 1992) comm., brown violet
2.2	✓	2625b	Santa Maria	3c (may 1992) comm., dark blue green
2.3	✓	2625c	Queen Isabella and Columbus	$4 (may 1992) comm., pink carmine

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.