"Ponce de Leon at 4'6" was the tallest man in his crew"

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

So I was told by our tour guide at a tourist trap in St Augustine some years ago.

Has anyone ever heard anything like this?

[Ursa Major]

Yeah, but only AFTER they found the Fountain of Youth and were all reduced to ten-year-olds!

Seriously, the story sounds to me like a combination of the myths that people were significantly smaller in centuries past and that old galleons were extremely cramped. Both assumptions have been severely exagerated by pop-historians.

[Lissa]

People in the fourteenth and fifteenth century weren't much shorter than we are, on average. They might have been slightly shorter than we, but the difference wouldn't be notable if you met a person from those times face-to-face. Wasn't Henry VII close to 6' tall? I sincerely doubt that Ponce was as short as the guide said he was.