Niña, Pinta, and the Santa María were modest-sized merchant vessels comparable in size to a modern cruising yacht.

The exact measurements of length and width of the three ships have not survived, but good estimates of their burden capacity can be judged from contemporary anecdotes written down by one or more of Columbus's crew members, and contemporary Spanish and Portuguese shipwrecks from the late 15th and early 16th centuries which are comparable in size to that of Santa María.

[6] Santa María, being Columbus' largest ship, was only about this size, and Niña and Pinta were smaller, at only 50 to 75 tons burden and perhaps 15 to 18 metres (49 to 59 ft) on deck[3] (updated dimensional estimates are discussed below in the section entitled Replicas).

The night being calm, the steersman also decided to sleep, leaving only a cabin boy to steer the ship, a practice which the admiral had always strictly forbidden.

With the boy at the helm, the currents carried the ship onto a sandbank, running her aground off the present-day site of Cap-Haïtien, Haiti.

[20] Despite the romantic legend that the Queen of Spain had used a necklace that she had received from her husband the king as collateral for a loan,[citation needed] the voyage was principally financed by a syndicate of seven noble Genovese bankers resident in Seville (the group was linked to Amerigo Vespucci and funds belonging to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici).

[citation needed] The crew of Santa María is well-known,[21] albeit in many cases, there are no surnames and the crewman's place of origin was used to differentiate him from others with the same given name.

[22] A replica was built during Expo 1986 and anchored in "Deep Sea Adventure Lake" at West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada.

Built at False Creek in Vancouver, British Columbia, the ship was hand-carved and hand-painted, and then transported by flatbed trucks across the Rocky Mountains to Edmonton, Alberta.

[24] It was built by the Scarano Brothers Boat Building Company in Albany, New York, who later cut the ship in half and transported it by truck to the Scioto River.

The ship was removed from its moorings in 2014, cut into 10 pieces, and stored in a lot south of the city, pending funding to do repairs and restorations.