Christopher Columbus

1451-1506

Explorer

Sources

Crossing the Atlantic. Christopher Columbus, a Genoese merchant mariner sailing for the Spanish government, departed from Palos in Southern Spain on 3 August 1492. He sailed south along the coast of Africa to the Canary Islands and then turned west until he reached an uncharted island (present-day San Salvador). Columbus believed that he was somewhere to the east of Cathay (China) and the west of Japan. He mistakenly believed that he was close to his originally projected destination of India, and thus he called these islands the Indies.

Enterprise of the Indies. He had planned his Enterprise of the Indies for several years and had made pleas to the kings of Portugal and Spain. Both turned him down, but Isabella, the queen of Spain, had sufficient confidence in Columbus to underwrite a three-ship fleet: two caravels of seventy feet each, the Nina and Pinta, and a larger flagship named the Santa Maria. At one point the crew of the Santa Maria purportedly demanded that Columbus turn the boats around, but he negotiated two more days of sailing. Land was sighted on the second day. Columbus had reached the uncharted Caribbean Islands that lie between eastern North and South America, but until his death he believed that he had sailed to Asia.

Return Voyage. Columbus traveled as far west as Cuba before tacking north along the western edge of the Sargasso Sea, a vast track of the Atlantic Ocean filled with seaweed due to the circular pattern of currents. Columbus sailed north of the Sargasso Sea and then turned east toward the Iberian Peninsula. He was uncertain of his exact location until he reached the Azores that are west of Portugal. Columbus had little status and importance when he moved from Genoa to the Iberian Peninsula, but this one voyage transformed him into a powerful celebrity.

Family and Personality. At the conclusion of his first journey across the Atlantic Ocean, Columbus returned to Spain. Later that year (1493), he set out with his brother Diego on a second voyage to America. Columbus was accompanied by Diego and his other brother, Bartholomew, on his third voyage (1498-1500). Ferdinand, Columbus's fourteen-year-old son, accompanied the three brothers on a fourth and final voyage (1502-1504). Columbus's family was eager to sail with him, but other sailors were frequently disgruntled with his leadership. On the third voyage the three Columbus brothers were arrested and returned to Spain as prisoners, and on the fourth voyage Columbus lost all of his ships due to careless seamanship. Columbus's loyalty to his Genoese family has prompted some historians to label him a self-serving family man whose loyalty to the Spanish Crown was questionable. He was well known for his persistence, a trait that did not endear him to his crew or even his patrons (reportedly Ferdinand and Isabella were eager to be rid of him before the fourth voyage in 1502).

Round versus Flat Earth. Contrary to popular belief, Columbus and his sailors did not think they might sail off the edge of the world. In the Renaissance, navigators and sailors were relatively certain that the world was round. Columbus, however, did err in his calculation of the circumference of the globe. Like his contemporary, the Nuremberg globemaker Martin Behaim, Columbus appears to have calculated the circumference based on Marco Polo's land distances and Ptolemy's erroneous estimate of the earth's size. Behaim and Columbus agreed on the earth's circumference, but their views were not shared by the various committees that reviewed and ultimately rejected Columbus's proposal in January 1492. Shortly thereafter, Queen Isabella rapidly accepted the plan because powerful friends intervened on his behalf.

Navigator. Columbus made up for his weak sailing and interpersonal skills by proving to be an outstanding navigator. Having spent his young adulthood in Portugal and Spain, he had an opportunity to learn the best navigation techniques of the Iberian Peninsula. He also knew the Atlantic islands off of Africa, as he had lived on Madeira after his 1479 marriage. On his first voyage, Columbus was able to turn his familiarity with Mediterranean and Atlantic shipping to good use. He chose what was perhaps the best route to the West and, more remarkably, the best route back. Columbus headed south to the Canaries and then took the trade winds across the Atlantic on his outbound voyage. He was obviously aware of the winds off the western coast of Africa. On the return voyage, he turned northward and caught the westerlies (winds that blow from west to east) to the Azores. Columbus's successful voyages reveal a keen awareness of navigation techniques along with a familiarity of winds to the south and west of the Iberian Peninsula. He may have held wildly inaccurate views of the earth's size, but he understood the oceanic wind patterns.

Naming the New Land. Several years after Columbus, another Italian sailor named Amerigo Vespucci sailed to South America and correctly identified that he was on a new continent. A mapmaker named Martin Waldseemüller adopted the name America for South America in 1507 and twenty-one years later Gerardus Mercator used the name America for South and North America; hence, Vespucci's name identifies what Columbus mistakenly called the Indies.

Legacy. Columbus transformed himself from a self-interested Genoese merchant mariner into a Spanish national hero. He may not have been the first to sail to the Americas, but he was the first to construct a written record of his journey across the Atlantic. The record shows his mis-taken ideas about a narrow Atlantic and the location of the islands that he chartered. History also reveals a man of questionable personality traits, whose lack of political skills produced a good deal of animosity. Columbus and his contemporaries viewed his voyage as a contribution both to the expansion of European trade and an extension of the militant Christianity that had begun with the Crusaders’ assaults on Islam years earlier. Columbus's perseverance helped turn his erroneous quest for Asia into a voyage that changed the way Europeans viewed the globe. Historians may never agree on Columbus's intentions and merits, but they continue to recognize the fact that Columbus forced cartographers to reconsider how they mapped the world. Columbus's legacy lies in the convergence of the European quest for contact with Asia and the gradual mapping of the Atlantic Ocean.

Sources

Alfred W. Crosby, The Colombian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972).

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonisation from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229-1492 (Houndmills, U.K.: Macmillan Education, 1987).

Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown, 1942).

William D. Phillips Jr. and Carla Rahn Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Peter Rivière, Christopher Columbus (Stroud, Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 1998).