Note 200-2 — JOURNAL OF THE FIRST VOYAGE OF COLUMBUS (continued 3)

Rather, “Then the seams opened but not the ship.” That is, the ship was not stove. The word translated “seams” is conventos, which Las Casas, I. 398, defines as los vagos que hay entre costillas y costillas. In this passage he is using costillas not in the technical sense of costillas de nao, “ribs,” but in the sense of “planks,” as in costillas de cuba, “barrel staves.”