Vicente Yáñez Pinzón () (c. 1462 – after 1514) was a Spanish

navigator A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's prim ...

and

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

, the youngest of the Pinzón brothers. Along with his older brother, Martín Alonso Pinzón (''c.'' 1441 – ''c.'' 1493), who captained the '' Pinta'', he sailed with

Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus (; between 25 August and 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an Italians, Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed Voyages of Christopher Columbus, four Spanish-based voyages across the At ...

on the first voyage to the

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

, in 1492, as captain of the '' Niña''.

Personal life

Pinzón was born in

Palos de la Frontera Palos de la Frontera () is a town and Municipalities of Spain, municipality located in the southwestern Spain, Spanish province of Huelva (province), Huelva, in the autonomous community of Andalusia. It is situated some from the provincial capi ...

on the Atlantic coast of

Huelva Huelva ( , , ) is a municipality of Spain and the capital of the Huelva (province), province of Huelva, in the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia. Located in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, it sits betwee ...

, youngest of the three prominent sons of seaman Martín Pinzón and his wife Mayor Vicente. His birth year is uncertain; it is generally given as c. 1462; Juan Gil concludes from legal documents that his two daughters were over the age of 20 in 1509, that it certainly cannot be later than 1469. 1469 would be quite a late date, given that there is record of him being a corsair or

privateer A privateer is a private person or vessel which engages in commerce raiding under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign o ...

(with his older brother Martín Alonso) in

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

waters between 1477 and 1479 when other towns failed to provide Palos with an adequate supply of grain in wartime. He married twice: first to Teresa Rodríguez, by whom he had two daughters, Ana Rodríguez Pinzón and Juana González Pinzón; second, probably in 1509, to Ana de Trujillo, who some surviving documents refer to as "Ana Núñez de Trujillo". It would appear that he was based in Palos at least up to and including the time of Columbus's first voyage (1492); by 1495 he was living in nearby Moguer; after the economic failure of his 1499–1500 expedition, he appears to have moved no later than 1502 to

Seville Seville ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Spain, Spanish autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the Guadalquivir, River Guadalquivir, ...

. He may have moved there to escape creditors. Historian Juan Gil, researching Pinzón's family life, found strong circumstantial evidence that his first wife left behind a mansion in Triana, across the river from Seville: her own property, not his, which passed into the hands of their daughters. The last primary record of him is in 1514, in Seville or Triana. According to the chronicler

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés (August 1478 – 1557), commonly known as Oviedo, was a Spanish soldier, historian, writer, botanist and colonist. Oviedo participated in the Spanish colonization of the West Indies, arriving in the first fe ...

, he died that year, probably at the end of September. It is not known precisely where he is buried, though Oviedo expressed confidence that it was in the cemetery of Triana.

Career

In 1499, Pinzón sailed to the

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

n coast. Pinzón eventually disembarked on the shore called " Praia do Paraíso", in present-day

Cabo de Santo Agostinho Cabo de Santo Agostinho (English: Cape of St. Augustine) is a 448 square kilometer sized municipality located 35 kilometers south of the city of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. It is believed by some historians that Vicente Yáñez Pinzón had set a ...

of the state of

Pernambuco Pernambuco ( , , ) is a States of Brazil, state of Brazil located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.5 million people as of 2024, it is the List of Brazilian states by population, ...

, or further northwest, in what is today

Fortaleza Fortaleza ( ; ; ) is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeastern Brazil. It is Brazil's 4th largest city—Fortaleza surpassed Salvador, Bahia, Salvador in 2022 census with a population of slightly over 2.4 mi ...

(capital of the Brazilian state of

Ceará Ceará (, ) is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, northeastern part of the country, on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. It is the List of Brazilian states by population, eighth-largest Brazilian State by ...

). According to the

Treaty of Tordesillas The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in Tordesillas, Spain, on 7 June 1494, and ratified in Setúbal, Portugal, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Crown of Castile, along a meridian (geography) ...

(1494) between the

Crown of Castile The Crown of Castile was a medieval polity in the Iberian Peninsula that formed in 1230 as a result of the third and definitive union of the crowns and, some decades later, the parliaments of the kingdoms of Kingdom of Castile, Castile and Kingd ...

and Portugal, Castile (later Spain) could make no claim, but the place was named "''Cabo de Santa María de la Consolación''" by Pinzón. He also sighted the Amazon River and ascended to a point about fifty miles from the sea. He called it the "''Río Santa María de la Mar Dulce''" ("River of Saint Mary of the Fresh Water Sea") on account of the vastness of the fresh water river mouth, and he thus became the first European explorer to discover an

estuary An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime enviro ...

of the Amazon River. Pinzón is also considered the discoverer of the

Oiapoque River The Oyapock or Oiapoque ( ; ; ) is a long river in South America that forms most of the border between the French overseas department of French Guiana and the Brazilian state of Amapá. Course The Oyapock runs through the Guianan moist for ...

. In 1505, Pinzón was named commander-in-chief and ''corregidor'' of the island of Puerto Rico. This was to be the first administrative step in the colonization of the island called "Borinquén" by its Taino inhabitants and "San Juan Bautista" by the

. However, Pinzón did not fulfill this commission. In 1508, he travelled with Juan Díaz de Solís to South America. No record exists of Pinzón after 1514.

Legacy

In 1832, botanists Mart. & Zucc. published '' Pinzona'', a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s belonging to the family

Dilleniaceae Dilleniaceae is a family of flowering plants with 11 genera and about 430 known species. It is known to gardeners for the genus '' Hibbertia'', which contains many commercially valuable garden species. Description and distribution The family is ...

and named in honour of Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. Together with his brother, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón is the namesake of Pinzón Island in the Galápagos. On November 19, 1999, a statue of Pinzón and his brother was dedicated in

, Spain, on the occasion of the fifth centennial of the discovery of Brazil and of the brotherhood with the city,

, Brazil.

References

Bibliography

English * Spanish * * *Izquierdo Labrado, Julio (1987) ''Palos de la Frontera en el Antiguo Régimen (1380-1830)'' Huelva: Instituto de Cooperación Iberoamericana y Ayuntamiento de Palos de la Frontera *Izquierdo Labrado, Julio (2004) ''Palermos ilustres'' Huelva: Ayuntamiento de Palos de la Frontera * * *Ortega, Fray Ángel (1925) ''La Rábida. Historia documental y crítica'' 4 vols. Sevilla. *

External links

*
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. Los Viajes Andaluces
. Geocities.com.
Ayuntamiento de Palos de la Frontera

''Hermanos Pinzón'', Enciclopedia GER

''The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus''
(PDF), by Washington Irving. NLJ.gov.jm.
''Voyages and discoveries of the companions of Columbus''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinzon, Vicente Yanez 1460s births 16th-century deaths Spanish maritime navigators 16th-century South American people People from Palos de la Frontera 15th-century Castilians 16th-century Spanish people 15th-century Spanish explorers Spanish West Indies Spanish explorers of South America