Christopher Columbus

I

Introduction

Christopher Columbus (Italian, Cristoforo Colombo, Spanish, Cristóbal Colón) (1451-1506), Italian-Spanish navigator who sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a route to Asia but achieved fame by making landfall, instead, in the Caribbean Sea.

II

Early Life of Christopher Columbus

Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. His father was a weaver, and it is believed that Christopher entered this trade as a young man. The entire family moved to the nearby port city of Savona, west of Genoa, in 1470. Information about the beginning of his seafaring career is uncertain, but the independent city-state of Genoa had a busy port, and he may have sailed as a commercial agent in his youth.

In 1474 Columbus was hired as a sailor on a trading voyage to the island of Khíos, in the Aegean Sea. This was his first long voyage and must have proved profitable, because after spending a year on the island he was able to become economically independent of his family. On August 13, 1476, a Genoese commercial expedition of five ships bound for England gave Columbus his first opportunity to leave the Mediterranean Sea and sail to the Atlantic Ocean. Legend has it that the fleet was attacked by pirates off the coast of Portugal, where Columbus’s ship was sunk, but he swam to shore and took refuge in Lisbon.

Settling in Lisbon, where his brother Bartholomew Columbus was working as a cartographer, Columbus was married in 1479 to Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, whose father had been the governor of the island of Porto Santo, in the Madeira Islands. Soon after their marriage, the newlyweds accompanied the rest of her family back to Porto Santo, and then moved to the larger island of Madeira. Diego Columbus, the only child of this marriage, was born in 1480.

In late 1481 or early 1482 Columbus sailed to the Portuguese fortress of Elmina, in what is now Ghana, and was impressed with the riches Africa offered. In the waters off the coast of Africa and the nearby Canary Islands he first observed the ocean phenomenon known as the Canaries Current. Knowledge of this fast-moving ocean current running west of the Canary Islands could well have been the reason that Columbus later chose to start his crossing of the Atlantic in the latitude of the Canaries, far south of Spain and Portugal.

III

Christopher Columbus’s “Enterprise of the Indies”

The experiences of these years led directly to the genesis of Columbus’s plan to reach the east by going west, what he called his “Enterprise of the Indies”. Columbus apparently gained access to his father-in-law’s papers and found a wealth of information, including maps, charts revealing ocean currents, interviews with sailors, and stories about objects that had drifted to the coast of the Madeira Islands from the west. Also contributing to the formation of Columbus’s plan were his association with the Genoese community in Portugal and his expeditions to Africa. Both furthered his knowledge of Atlantic waters.

Columbus’s idea of sailing west to get to the east did not originate with him. Columbus’s theory of the size of the Earth and the distance between Europe and Asia were based on the descriptions contained in several geographical works. These included: the 2nd-century manuscript Geography by Ptolemy; Imago Mundi (Image of the World) by Pierre d’Ailly, published in the early 1480s; and The Travels of Marco Polo, written in 1298 after Marco Polo returned from China.

Columbus concluded that the Earth was 25 per cent smaller than was previously thought, and composed mostly of land. On the basis of these faulty beliefs, he decided that Asia could be reached quickly by sailing west. In 1484 he submitted his theories to the king of Portugal, John II, petitioning him to finance a westward crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. His proposal was rejected by a royal maritime commission because of his miscalculations and because Portuguese ships were on the point of finding a sea route to Asia around the tip of Africa.

Soon afterwards, Columbus moved to Spain, where his plans won the support of several influential people, and he secured an introduction, in 1486, to Isabella I, queen of Castile. Although interested in his ideas, the king and queen were in the midst of a protracted war to conquer the province of Granada in southern Spain, which had been held by the Moors since 711. Finally, in 1487, Columbus presented his project to a royal commission but it too rejected the plan. Among the reasons given for the rejection was that the ocean was simply too large to cross.

About this time, Columbus, by then a widower, met Beatriz Enriquez, who became his mistress and the mother of his second son, Ferdinand Columbus. Despite the royal commission’s rejection, Columbus continued to seek support and in April 1492 his persistence was rewarded: Ferdinand V, king of Castile, and Queen Isabella agreed to sponsor the expedition. The signed contract stipulated that Columbus was to become viceroy of all territories he located; other rewards included a hereditary peerage and one-tenth of all precious metals found within his jurisdiction.

IV

Christopher Columbus’s First Voyage (1492-1493)

The modest expedition consisted of the Santa María, a decked ship about 35 m (115 ft) long under his command, and the Pinta and the Niña, two small caravels, each about 15 m (50 ft) long, which were commanded by Martín Alonzo Pinzón and his brother Vicente Yáñez Pinzón. The fleet sailed from Palos, Spain, on August 3, 1492, carrying perhaps 90 men. Three days out, the mast of the Pinta was damaged, forcing a brief stop at the Canary Islands. On September 6 the three vessels again weighed anchor and sailed due west. Columbus maintained this course until October 7, when, at the suggestion of Martín Pinzón, it was altered to south-west. Meanwhile, the experienced crews grumbled about their foreign commander’s failure to find his way, until signs appeared that they were approaching landfall.

Before dawn on October 12 land was sighted, and early in the morning the expedition landed on Guanahaní, an island in the Bahamas. Before an audience of uncomprehending natives, Columbus claimed that, by right of conquest, their island now belonged to Spain and he renamed it San Salvador (“Holy Saviour”, although research in the 1980s suggested the island in question may have been Samana Cay). Additional landings made during the next few weeks included ones at the island of Cuba, which Columbus named Juana, in honour of a Spanish princess, and at La Isla Española, later corrupted to Hispaniola (now comprising the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Columbus believed that all the islands were in Asian waters.

In December, the Santa María was wrecked off the coast of La Isla Española. Villa de la Navidad, a makeshift fort, was built of materials salvaged from the vessel, and garrisoned with fewer than 40 men. The Niña, with Columbus in command, and the Pinta began the homeward voyage in January 1493. After storms drove the ships first to the Azores and then on to Lisbon, Columbus arrived at Palos, Spain, in March. He was received enthusiastically by the Spanish monarchs, who confirmed the honours guaranteed by his contract. Additional honours followed, including a noble title.

To prevent the Portuguese from attempting to claim the spoils of his voyage, Columbus had sent a letter to Pope Alexander VI (himself a Spaniard) as soon as he returned to Spain. His letter explained his explorations in as much detail as he felt he could reveal. The pope issued a papal bull in May 1493, granting control to Spain of every island Columbus had surveyed. At Columbus’s urging, an imaginary line, called the Line of Demarcation, was drawn in the ocean 100 leagues (about 483 km/about 300 mi) west of the Azores and Cape Verde Islands. It was declared that all previously unknown land west of this line not belonging to a Christian sovereign belonged to Spain; anything east of the line went to Portugal. This created a diplomatic problem because of previous grants that had been made to Portugal. A resolution to the dispute was reached the following year when the sovereigns of Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, which moved the Line of Demarcation 370 leagues (about 1,770 km/about 1,110 mi) west of the Cape Verde Islands.