Rodrigo de Triana

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Monument in Seville

Rodrigo de Triana , actually Juan Rodríguez Bermejo (* 1469 in Seville , † after 1525), was a Spanish sailor . He was one of the Jews Columbus hired to save them from the Inquisition that came into effect in Castile the afternoon of his departure .

Rodrigo de Triana took part in 1492 as a sailor on Christopher Columbus' first voyage under the command of Martín Alonso Pinzón on the Pinta . According to the logbook kept by Christopher Columbus, De Triana was the first participant in the first sea voyage to discover land: an island in what is now the Bahamas (see Discovery of America in 1492 ). The land view took place on the night of October 11th to October 12th, 1492 at 2 a.m.

“After sunset I returned to the west direction. We were advancing at 12 nautical miles and by 2 a.m. we were 90 nautical miles. Since the caravel “Pinta” was faster than the other two ships and had driven up to me, the first thing on board the “Pinta” was to discover the land and give the ordered signals. The first to spot this land was a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana "

- Christopher Columbus

De Triana's sighting is controversial, however: The Pinta on which he was sailing was still 205 kilometers from the island at the time. If the curvature of the earth is taken into account, the sailor cannot have seen land.

In 1507 Rodríguez Bermejo became captain and in 1525 he traveled to the Moluccas with García Jofre de Loaísa .

Since 1898 a street in Triana is named after him, and in the street Pages del Corro in Seville is located since 1973 a monument showing the discoverer, as he pointed to the mast standing with an outstretched left arm on the land.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christopher Columbus: log book (with an afterword by Frauke Gewecke) . Frankfurt a. M. and Leipzig 2006, p. 42-43 .
  2. ↑ The sailor Rodrigo de Triana is said to have been the first to see land in 1492. Colon.net
  3. ↑ Rafael Rodríguez Gómez: Trianeros pasajeros a Indias in: Revista Triana 57 . Seville 1998, p. 86-87 .
personal data
SURNAME Triana, Rodrigo de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bermejo, Juan Rodríguez (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish sailor
DATE OF BIRTH 1469
PLACE OF BIRTH Seville
DATE OF DEATH after 1525