Vicente Yáñez Pinzón

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón (c. 1462 – after 1514) was a Spanish navigator and explorer, the youngest of the Pinzón brothers. He captained the Niña on the 1492 voyage that reached the New World, while his older brother Martín Alonso Pinzón commanded the Pinta and Christopher Columbus captained the Santa María. Born in Palos de la Frontera on the Atlantic coast of Huelva, he was the youngest of three prominent sons of seaman Martín Pinzón and his wife Mayor Vicente. His birth year is uncertain, generally given as around 1462; historian Juan Gil argues from legal documents that his two daughters were over twenty in 1509, meaning he could not have been born later than 1469.

Records show he served as a corsair or privateer with his brother Martín Alonso in Mediterranean waters between 1477 and 1479, when other towns failed to supply Palos with grain during wartime. He married twice: first to Teresa Rodríguez, with whom he had two daughters, Ana Rodríguez Pinzón and Juana González Pinzón; and second, probably in 1509, to Ana de Trujillo, sometimes called Ana Núñez de Trujillo in surviving documents. He lived in Palos through Columbus’s first voyage, moved to Moguer by 1495, and relocated to Seville no later than 1502—possibly to escape creditors after the financial failure of his 1499–1500 expedition. Gil found evidence that his first wife owned a mansion in Triana, across the river from Seville, which passed to their daughters.

The last primary record of him dates to 1514, in Seville or Triana. Chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés reported that he died that year, likely in late September, and was probably buried in the cemetery of Triana. In 1499, Pinzón sailed to the South American coast, disembarking at what is now Praia do Paraíso in Cabo de Santo Agostinho, Pernambuco, or further northwest near present-day Fortaleza, Ceará.

Career

Though the Treaty of Tordesillas barred Castile from claiming the land, he named it Cabo de Santa María de la Consolación. He sighted the Amazon River and noted its vast freshwater current, calling it Río Santa María de la Mar Dulce, becoming the first European to observe an Amazon estuary. Pinzón is also considered the discoverer of the Oiapoque River. Unlike other family members, he remained loyal to Columbus, resisting official efforts during the pleitos to elicit anti-Columbus statements.