Columbus Sets Out a Fourth Time

May 11, 1502

Sixty years old, gout-ridden and half-disgraced, Columbus left Cadiz with four battered caravels on a last search for a westward passage to the Indies. Forbidden to land at Hispaniola, he would spend the voyage marooned on Jamaica and never find the strait he was chasing. His exploration of the Central American coast, though it failed to find a strait, provided the first European knowledge of the isthmus Balboa would cross.