Did Columbus prove earth was round?

 

1.   

The man known to history “Christopher Columbus”, was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, one of the many city-states that occupied the Italian peninsula during the Middle Ages. In the absence of birth and baptismal certificates, it is impossible to know the exact date when Columbus was born, but records from later in   his life indicate that he was born between the 25th of August and the 31st of October.

His actual name was Cristobal Colon, Christopher Columbus is the anglicised version of it. Columbus’ father was Domenico Colombo, who was born around 1418, and was a master wool weaver and a member of the local guild of clothiers in Genoa. Around 1445 Domenico married Susanna Fontana Rossa, the daughter of a prosperous family who lived near the Porta dell ’Olivella overlooking the Bisagno River.

It was most likely here that Christopher was born in 1451. The couple had four more children, three sons; Bartholomew, Giovanni Pellegrino, and Giacomo, also known by his Spanish name of Diego, and a daughter named Bianchi Netta. In 1455 the family moved to a house near the Porta Sant’ Andrea, where a later house built on the same foundations serves as the house-museum Casa di Colombo.

As a child, Columbus likely studied arithmetic, geography and navigation at a school attached to his father’s guild. He was tall and had red hair. In 1470 he may have moved with his family to Savona, perhaps to escape political instability in Genoa or so that Domenico could improve his   wool trade.

During his youth Christopher was often named in business transactions alongside his father, and in August 1473 he was named in an agreement with his parents and brother Giovanni to sell the house near the Olivella gate. Genoa is a port city located in the northwest of the Italian peninsula. The Genoese Republic’s   territory consisted of a strip of land by the Mediterranean coast largely corresponding to the Italian region of Liguria.

A powerful maritime republic and once the rival of Venice, Genoa controlled the islands of Corsica and Sardinia, as well numerous Greek islands in the Eastern Mediterranean, and a colony in southern Crimea on the Black Sea. At the time of Columbus’ birth Genoa one of the largest cities in Europe with a population of 75,000, although its fortunes were in decline after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, which affected Genoa’s Mediterranean trade.

In 1458 the Doge of Genoa sold the city-state to France due to threats from the Spanish, only for the republic to be restored three years later after a rebellion. Within the Republic, the rival families of the Fregoso’s and the Adornos vied for dominance. Columbus’ family was also caught up in this torturous political wrangling and supported the Fregoso faction.

In 1463 the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, conquered the city, and though Milanese rule restored political order, the city’s maritime trade continued to decline. It is unclear when Columbus went to sea for the first time, interpretations ranging from as early as 1461 to as late as 1472. Given Genoa’s maritime traditions, it is possible that the young Columbus sailed along the coast to buy and sell goods on behalf of his father.

Between 1470 and 1472 he may have been on a Genoese warship fighting the Aragonas, a Spanish kingdom, in the service of René of Anjou, the French duke who had briefly been King of Naples. What is certain is that around 1473 Columbus was apprenticed to the banking house of Centurione, and in 1474 or 1475 he sailed to the Greek island of Chios, one of the Genoese colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Then, in May 1476 he travelled on an expedition to Portugal, during the course of which he was shipwrecked and ended up swimming six miles to the shoreline near the town of Lagos, in southeast Portugal. Eventually he made his way to Lisbon and from there he ended up travelling north   to England in 1477 and to Ireland where he spent a brief period in the port of Galway.

During this northern voyage he also possibly visited Iceland. Some have speculated that perhaps there Columbus first learned about the North American continent from legends talked about the Norse settlements that had been founded in what is now Newfoundland back at the start of the eleventh century. Columbus eventually made his home in Portugal, a kingdom that was at the forefront of European discovery and exploration at the time.

The Portuguese voyages of discovery had begun half a century earlier under the patronage of the Infante Dom Henrique, known in English as Prince Henry the Navigator. From a base in Sagres on the tip of Cape St Vincent, Henry sponsored voyages which discovered the Azores Islands in 1439 and the Cape Verde Islands in the late 1450s. By the time of Columbus’ arrival in Portugal, the Portuguese had expanded their voyages further south along the coast of Africa and were voyaging ever nearer to the Cape of Good Hope.

The primary goal of   the Portuguese navigators and their sponsors was to find a route round Africa to India, China and the Spice Islands of Moluccas of the East Indies in an effort to circumvent the Arab merchants that controlled the trade with the Far East. Yet, while most advocated for continuing the exploration of the west coast of Africa, some Europeans, such as the Florentine scholar, Paolo Tosca Nelli, wondered if a western route bypassing Africa might be a faster route to Asia. However, these ideas found little leverage in the royal court of Portugal or among mariners themselves. Instead, the Portuguese continued to establish trade relations with local kingdoms of   Africa and also began to conquer small areas they believed essential for their efforts. Columbus, like many other mariners of the day, became deeply involved in the developing trade   with Africa, his work taking him as far south as the Portuguese trading post of Elmina in modern day Ghana.

While sailing along the coasts of Africa he improved his navigation and cartographic skills and became more experienced in sailing in newly discovered waters. When back in Lisbon, Christopher and his younger brother Bartholomew worked together in the map and navigational   chart business making Columbus a skilled cartographer by the 1480s. Around 1479 he   married Felipa Perestrelo e Moniz, a woman in her early twenties with an Italian father and   a mother from one of Portugal’s leading noble families. Columbus’ father-in-law   had been involved in the colonisation of the island of Madeira and received the captaincy   of the small island of Porto Santo near Madeira, which at this time was in the   hands of his son and namesake Bartolomeo.  The newlywed couple moved to Porto Santo, where Columbus listened to tales from his mother-in-law of her late husband’s voyages, inheriting his instruments and charts.

Soon after the Columbuses moved to Porto Santo, Felipa gave birth to the couple’s first and only child, a son named Diego. Tragically, while Columbus was on a voyage to Africa, Felipa died sometime between 1482 and 1484, leaving Columbus a widower with a   young son to raise. Despite the loss of his wife, Columbus remained committed to his profession. In August 1481 João II became King of Portugal and sought to further expand Portugal’s maritime   empire.

The following year he sent Diego Cao, on a voyage to explore further south down the African coast becoming perhaps the first European expedition to cross the equator.   Portugal was abuzz with news about the growing list of accomplishments of Portuguese mariners.   Columbus was widely read and was a master in several languages including Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian. He also paid attention to news from abroad.

In Lisbon he heard stories of mariners sailing out of the port of Bristol in southern England sighting land to the west of Ireland and he corresponded with Paolo Tosca Nelli about his theories about the size of the Earth and the potential of finding a western route to Asia. In creating his theories, Columbus drew upon Tosca Nelli as well as geographers from the Islamic world and ancient Greece.

He made his own calculations which indicated that Japan, or Cipango as the famous explorer Marco Polo called it, was 2,400 nautical miles due west of the Canary Islands. Armed with these calculations, around 1484 Columbus asked King João for three caravels, small manoeuvrable sailing ships, for a westward expedition to Japan.

After consulting with three experts, the King turned Columbus down. Disheartened by his failure in the Portuguese court, Columbus sent his brother Bartholomew to England in an attempt to interest King Henry VII in the   proposal after he rose to the throne there in 1485, but the English monarch was likewise   uninterested at that time, although he would sponsor similar voyages in years to come.

Meanwhile, in mid-1485, Christopher went to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the rulers of the two Spanish kingdoms, Aragon and Castile, who were at that time forging a new Spanish nation after their marriage had brought the Castilians and the Aragonas into a political union.

Upon his arrival in Spain, Columbus initially called on the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Duke of Medina Celi, both wealthy aristocrats with plenty of influence at court. While Medina Celi was prepared to furnish Columbus with the three or four caravels he requested, he recognised the potential impact of such a voyage and requested permission from Queen Isabella, who agreed to meet the Genoese navigator.

While he was waiting for an audience with the queen in Spain, Columbus met a young, orphaned peasant girl named Beatriz Enríquez de Harana who would become his mistress and mother to his second child Ferdinand in 1488. Columbus’ fortunes seemed to be on the rise, particularly   after an encouraging first meeting with Queen Isabella in May 1486. Following the meeting, Isabella appointed a commission to examine Columbus’ proposed voyage.

As the commission met in the university town of Santander, its members were sceptical about Columbus’ theory of a narrow western ocean but did not dismiss a western voyage altogether. In 1487 Columbus was   put on the royal payroll. However, for the time being in the late 1480s and into the early 1490s, Isabella and Ferdinand’s primary focus remained on conquering the last Muslim emirate in southern Spain, the emirate of Granada, and for a time Columbus’ plans were delayed further.

Frustrated, but still undaunted, in 1488 Columbus returned to Portugal to make a second attempt at convincing King João to fund his expedition. While he was in Lisbon, in December, another mariner in Portuguese employ, Bartolomeu Dias, returned from a voyage down the African coast.

Although Dias had not reached India, he had rounded the southern tip of Africa and became the first of the voyagers   to look out onto the Indian Ocean. Dias’s voyage established a viable eastern route to India and the King of Portugal lost any and all interest in Columbus’ proposed western route.

Hence, between 1489 and 1491, Columbus returned to Spain to petition Isabella and Ferdinand. But he received   word in 1490 that the commission established by Queen Isabella to investigate his proposed western voyage had finally reported and rejected Columbus’ idea, claiming among other things that it would in fact take three years to sail west to Asia, thus making it a far less pragmatic option   for the monarchs of Spain than sending their own ships around the continent of Africa.

Yet, when Ferdinand and Isabella received the report, they neither accepted nor rejected it, but informed Columbus that his proposals might be considered once again after the conquest of Granada. After waiting for several months without any further information, Columbus considered going to   France, where his brother Bartholomew was hopeful about the support of the King of France.

But then a potential breakthrough came for Christopher while in Spain in the summer of 1491 when he was granted an audience with Queen Isabella, who was at the fortified camp of Santa Fe overseeing the siege of Granada.

According to Ferdinand Columbus’ biography of his father, written many years later, Columbus’ idea was rejected yet again on this occasion, not because the committee found his   ideas impractical, but because the King and Queen were not prepared to accept his demands   for titles and revenues. At this juncture he had nearly resolved to head to France and commit to   convincing the government there to support his plan, but in January 1492 the city of Granada, the   last Muslim stronghold in the Iberian Peninsula, capitulated to the Spanish besiegers.

With this, Isabella and Ferdinand suddenly became much more receptive to Columbus’ proposals. Concerted negotiations commenced and in April 1492 an agreement was finally reached. Columbus was to be sent westwards with three caravels and sailors, paid for by the Spanish monarchs. The king and queen also agreed to appoint Columbus as Viceroy and Governor-General to all the lands that he might discover or claim in their name.

Armed with these promises, Columbus left Granada on the 12th of May 1492 and arrived at the port of Palos de la Frontera on the 22nd of May 1492. The authorities at Palos were ordered by the King and Queen to provide and refit two caravels, the Niña and Pinta, while Columbus himself chartered the carrack, Santa Maria. It is important to bear in mind how small these ships that would discover the Americas were.

The caravels were around fifteen metres in length and five metres wide at its widest point, while the Santa María may have been up to twenty metres in length and around six metres wide. The white sails on the ships were painted with red crosses, a symbol of the religious piety of the   Admiral and the Catholic Monarchs who sponsored his expedition. Columbus’ flagship was the   Santa Maria, with its owner Juan de la Cosa as second-in-command.

Martín Alonso Pinzón and his younger brother Vicente Yáñez Pinzón captained the Pinta and Niña respectively. There is some   evidence that Martín Alonso had been curious about a western passage to Japan before joining   Columbus’ voyage. On the 3rd of August, Columbus’ fleet departed Palos for the Canary Islands. Nine   days later the Santa María and the Niña arrived at the island of Gomera in the Canaries.

The Pinta, whose rudder had been damaged, would not arrive in Las Palmas until the 24th of August. Columbus and the rest of the ships arrived at Las Palmas on the following day and waited for the Pinta’s rudder to be rebuilt under the supervision of Martín Alonso.

On the morning of the 6th of September Columbus’ fleet weighed anchor, though unfavourable winds meant that it was not until the 9th of September that the ships left the Canaries behind and made their journey into the great unknown. Columbus’ ships carried provisions for over a year and if he sailed far enough, he was   guaranteed to hit land, but he made a conscious decision to understate the distance he believed the fleet had travelled in order to make his crew believe that they were closer to home than   they actually were. By the 19th of September they were over a thousand miles west of the Canaries, carried by favourable trade winds, but from the 20th onwards the winds turned against them, enabling the Admiral to reassure his crew that they would also have suitable winds   for the homeward passage. The fleet made good progress during the first week of October, and by the 6th of October they had sailed further west than where Columbus had expected to find Japan.

While Martín Alonso suggested changing course, the Admiral continued west hoping to hit China instead. At sunset on the 7th, noticing a flock of birds heading west-southwest, Columbus changed course to follow the birds hoping they were headed for land. A couple of days later, the Pinzón brothers advised Columbus to turn back, and on the 10th the crew of the Santa María were   in open mutiny.

The Admiral quelled the mutiny by promising the men that they would sail on for three or four more days and turn back then if they did not reach land. After changing course back   west late on the 11th, the Pinta’s lookout Rodrigo de Triana sighted land at 2 o’clock in the morning   of the 12th.

Columbus gave orders to lower sail, and after daybreak he came ashore thirty-three days after leaving the Canaries. Columbus had succeeded in directing his fleet across the   Atlantic. However, the lands he discovered were not the ones he believed they were. Columbus and his men had arrived in the Bahamas and set foot on an island known locally as Guanahaní, which the Admiral claimed for the Spanish Crown as San Salvador.  

The visitors were greeted by the Taino people, a tribe that cultivated corn and made pottery, but were typically unarmed and naked. Columbus declared to the natives that he was sent “not   to subjugate you but to teach you the true religion.” Writing in his Journal which he   intended to present to the sovereigns, Columbus believed that these “Indians” would be useful as   servants and was deeply impressed with what he saw as the goodness of the culture of the people. Given how far he sailed, Columbus was certain that he had reached the Indies,  

though the poverty of the Indians he encountered convinced the Admiral that he had not reached Japan. After exploring San Salvador for a couple of days, on the afternoon of the 14th Columbus   set sail seeking again in search of Japan, which he figured would lie to the southwest, with China beyond it.

Through hand gestures and other signals, the Taino were able to supply and guide Columbus to the island of Rum Cay, and thence onto Long Island by the 16th. It took several days for the   natives to understand that the Spaniards were looking for gold, and Columbus’ men went from   island to island marvelling at the unknown flora and fauna but without finding either gold or Asia. Convinced that he was only a day or two away from Japan, on the 23rd of October Columbus   set sail for Cuba, which he believed from what the natives had indicated might be Japan.

After arriving there on the 28th, he described the place as “the most beautiful that eyes have ever seen:   full of very good harbours and deep rivers.”  When he did not find any sign of the “gold, pearls and precious stones” that Marco Polo wrote of in his description of Japan, Columbus concluded   that he must be on the Chinese mainland.

Persuaded by the local Taino that the city of Quinsy, Marco Polo’s designation for the Chinese city of Hangzhou, was some twenty-five miles to the south, Columbus dispatched an embassy to the “Grand Khan “headed by the Arabic interpreter Luis de Torres carrying an official letter of credence from Ferdinand and Isabella. On the 5th of November, the delegation returned to report that all they had seen was a village of several hundred   people living in thatched huts, and the man they hoped would be the Emperor of China was merely   a local chieftain or cacique. Yet in their quest for gold, they had stumbled on local  

Taino’s rolling cigars and smoking tobacco, a crop that would soon become quite valuable. Although disappointed not to have found any trace of the Chinese Emperor, Columbus wrote   in his journal intended for the King and Queen that the Indians would make good Christians. Columbus did take six captives from the local Indians, whom Columbus hoped would learn Spanish, become Christians and thus become equals with the Spanish, and serve as interpreters for future   voyages. However, Columbus wrote in his diary that, “we might form great friendship, for I knew that they were a people who could be more easily freed and converted to our holy faith by love than by force.” On the 10th of November Columbus sailed east heading for the island of Banque, since   identified as Great Inagua, where the Indians spoke of beaches covered in gold. By the middle of November, the fleet was struggling against the wind and Columbus decided to turn back to Cuba.  

After stopping off at various harbours there, on the 5th of December the Admiral reached the eastern extremity of the island and was planning another attempt at Banque when he decided to take advantage of favourable winds to cross over to the island to the east, which the Taino called Haiti. Columbus named the new land Española, subsequently Latinised as Hispaniola.

On the 16th of December he entertained a local chief there and was encouraged by the fact that the people here wore gold jewellery. The chief and other locals informed him that the gold lay further to   the east and they duly sailed along the northern coast of Hispaniola in search of it. By the 22nd, Columbus arrived at Acul Bay and was receiving gifts from the natives which included small pieces of gold.

He received messengers from Guacanagarí, the supreme chief in northwest Haiti, who informed him that the precious metals they had were from a region of central Hispaniola that they called the Ciboa. Perhaps this was where Marco Polo’s Cipango was to be found, Columbus speculated. On Christmas Eve, Columbus sailed east, hoping to spend Christmas Day with Guacanagarí. On the night   of the 24th, after rounding Cape Haitien, the Santa María ran aground while those on   board were asleep, lulled into the false sense of security provided by the bay.

Alerted by a small boy who remained awake, Columbus realised that the ship was taking in water and ordered Juan de la Cosa to take steps to save it, but instead the Santa María’s owner sought refuge with the Niña, whose captain ordered him to go back to save his ship. By the time he returned, Columbus was forced to abandon the Santa María and evacuate her men and stores to the Niña, a task carried out with the assistance of Guacanagarí and his subjects.

After meeting Columbus on the morning of the 26th, the cacique presented the Admiral with gifts of gold and gestured where to find a mine with a great abundance of gold. When Guacanagarí expressed his fears about the allegedly cannibal Caribs who lived there, Columbus showed the chieftain the bows and arrows and muskets salvaged from the Santa María and won his trust. Many Spaniards begged to remain behind to profit from the local mine.

Columbus ordered a fort to be built on the site, which he named La Navidad. Thirty-nine men led by Diego   de Harana, the cousin of Columbus’ mistress Beatriz, stayed behind at the new settlement. Following reports from Indians that the Pinta, which had sailed away from the main fleet some weeks earlier, had been sighted further to the east, after bidding farewell to his host on the 2nd of January, Columbus set sail on the 4th.

By the 6th he found the Pinta sailing in his direction and welcomed Martín Alonso aboard.  Both men defended their conduct on their day of separation, and Pinzón reported to his superior that while he had reached Banque, he found no gold there and sailed south to Hispaniola and reached the peninsula of Monte Cristi three weeks earlier.

By this time Columbus and the other senior mariners were coming to the   conclusion that the time had come to return to Spain to report on their discoveries, even if they had not located Japan, China or a major source of gold. Thus, in mid-January they turned back east and headed home. During the return voyage, in mid-February, Columbus composed a letter which he intended to submit to the king and queen when he arrived   back to Spain, one which outlined his discoveries and made the case for a second voyage.

He claimed that Cuba was China and told tales of Hispaniola and its gold, even though he had found no major   source of the precious metal. Soon after finishing the letter, the fleet was caught up in a terrible   storm and the two caravels lost sight of each other. After praying for salvation, the wind died   down on the 14th and on the 17th, they arrived at the island of Santa Maria in the Azores.

Since he was in the service of the Spanish monarchs, Columbus had sought to avoid any Portuguese territory, but the damage to the Niña forced him to make repairs and take on   provisions. Upon his arrival Columbus proudly announced that he had discovered the Indies, but   the deputy captain of the island was unconvinced and ordered the arrest of half the Niña’s crew, though he later relented.

By late February Columbus set sail for Palos, but another storm blew them towards Portugal, and rather than risk sailing round the coast, Columbus sailed into Lisbon on the 4th of March. As Columbus sat at anchor, none other than Bartolomeu Dias came   aboard as the second-in-command of a Portuguese warship and invited Columbus to an audience with the King.

The Admiral refused but agreed to show his credentials from Ferdinand and Isabella, after which he was welcomed into the city. A few days later he met King João, who congratulated   him for his accomplishment but claimed the newly discovered lands for the Crown of Portugal under   the terms of the 1479 Treaty of Alcoves, which recognised Spanish dominion of the Canary Islands and Portuguese sovereignty over the Cape Verde islands and West Africa.

After further questioning about his discoveries, Columbus was dismissed on the 11th, and on the 15th of March the Niña   arrived back in Palos with the Pinta, last seen a month earlier, following close behind. While at Seville in early April, Columbus received word from the King and Qu n in   Barcelona confirming his titles and privileges and ordering preparations for a second voyage.  

The Admiral drew up a plan of colonisation for two thousand settlers to be distributed across three   or four towns in Hispaniola, each with a church and sufficient clergy. He also set out regulations   governing the gathering of gold. Even before Columbus’ arrival at court in Barcelona at the   end of April, Ferdinand and Isabella had sent news of Columbus’ discoveries to Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard by birth, who issued four papal bulls confirming Spanish sovereignty over not only the   lands which Columbus had discovered, but any future lands “one hundred leagues towards the   west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verdes.” After negotiations with Portugal, the line of demarcation was moved to 370   leagues west of the Cape Verdes through the Treaty of Tordesillas of June 1494. In their formal instructions from the end of May, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered Columbus to sail   to the Indies for the purpose of converting the natives, taking care that they were “treated very   well and lovingly,” and to punish any Spaniards who mistreated the Indians. For his second voyage, Columbus was provided with a much larger fleet of seventeen ships which consisted of three larger   ships and fourteen caravels, a clear indication of how seriously Isabella and Ferdinand considered   his new discoveries to be.

Columbus flew his flag on the Santa María, nicknamed the Mariagalante, while the Niña and very possibly the Pinta from the previous expedition were among the caravels. Among the 1,200 men who sailed on the second voyage were the mapmaker Juan de la Cosa   and Juan Ponce de León, who would later discover Florida. The fleet set sail from Cadiz on the 25th   of September 1493, and arrived at the Canaries a week later.

On the 7th of October the fleet sailed west, and Columbus plotted a southwest course in an attempt to find the fabled isle of Matinino en   route to Hispaniola. After a relatively smooth passage, land was spotted early on Sunday the   3rd of November, prompting Columbus to name the island Dominica. Following an unsuccessful attempt   to find a harbour, the fleet sailed on.

After claiming a small island named Mariagalante after the flagship, the fleet continued north along the Lesser Antilles. On the 4th they arrived on an island which Columbus named Guadeloupe after the famous Spanish monastery in Estremadura.  Six days later the fleet set sail, passing islands which he named Montserrat and Antigua. After passing the three islands of St Kitts, St Eustatius and Saba, Columbus made land on the 13th at an island he named Santa Cruz after the Holy Cross, now known by the French form St Croix. Following a skirmish with a small group of local Caribs during which a Basque seaman was mortally wounded, Columbus headed for a   chain of islands which Columbus named Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins after a medieval legend which told of the daughter of a Cornish king who went off to sea accompanied   by eleven thousand young women who were also eager to escape being married off.

On the 18th of November the fleet arrived at a large island which Columbus named San Juan Bautista or St   John the Baptist. A few years later Juan Ponce de Léon would find the city of San Juan here, later nicknamed San Juan de Puerto Rico, which eventually gave its name to the whole island.   After collecting water and provisions, including a large haul of fish, the fleet left Puerto Rico on   the 22nd of November and headed for Hispaniola, following the instructions of the Taino guides.  

As they arrived at the flat eastern tip of the island that evening, some of the veterans from   the first voyage were unconvinced that it was the same island since they had only encountered   the mountainous northern coast of Hispaniola, but the natives assured them that this was so. The fleet sailed west along the northern coast of Hispaniola and soon reached the bay from where the   first expedition had departed homewards at the beginning of the year.

Keen to learn the fate of the colony of Spaniards he had left behind at La Navidad, the fleet arrived on the night   of the 27th of November, where flares were made without a response from the fort. In the night a   group of Taino approached in a canoe led by one of Guacanagarí’s cousins, who informed   Columbus that the settlers were well, but some had died of illness while others were killed in   a quarrel.

On the morning of the 28th the fleet made anchor and found La Navidad burned   to the ground, after which Guacanagarí’s cousin admitted that all the men were dead, and they had been killed by Caonabó, a rival chief. A couple of days later, after speaking to Guacanagarí himself, it emerged that the Navidad garrison   had fought among each other for gold and women.

A large party left the fort and was captured and put to death by Caonabó,  who then attacked and killed what remained of the Navidad garrison, despite  Guacanagarí’s best efforts to defend his allies. For all Columbus wrote about their timidity during the first expedition, the Spaniards realised that the Taino were capable of putting up resistance.

Mourning the loss of his comrades and seeking a location for a new colony nearer to the gold of the Ciboa, Columbus left the unhappy site of Navidad on the 7th of December and   attempted to sail eastwards against the trade winds. On the 2nd of January 1494, having covered barely thirty miles in twenty-five days and with the men unwilling to go further, Columbus founded the colony of La Isabela in honour of the Queen.

Even though the new location did not have a suitable harbour and the nearest source of drinking water was a mile away, the Admiral began to lay the foundations of the new settlement. On the 6th he ordered Alonso de   Ojeda to lead an inland expedition to the Ciboa.  The party returned with gifts of gold from the   natives living among the rivers that flowed from the mountains, but Columbus was keen to find a   mine to bring back the vast quantity of gold that he had promised Ferdinand and Isabella.

However, with the men at La Isabela falling sick, on the 2nd of February Columbus decided to send   twelve ships back to Spain under Antonio de Torres to request further supplies, leaving behind two bigger ships and three caravels. On the 12th of March, Columbus led   an expedition up the mountains of the Ciboa and established an inland fort at Santo Tomás, which   he intended as the centre of mining operations.  He would remain here for several weeks.

On the 24th of April, Columbus took the three caravels and went to Cuba, hoping to   prove his theory correct that it was a peninsula connected to the Chinese mainland. After reaching   the eastern promontory, on the 30th, Columbus and his captains decided to explore the unknown south coast.

Late in the day, they entered a harbour which Columbus called Puerto Grande but was known   by the native Taino as Guantanamo. After hugging the shore before it turned northeast at Cape Cruz, Columbus sailed south for Jamaica, where he was told there would be large quantities of gold.   Arriving there on the 5th of May, Columbus encountered more than sixty canoes full of   warriors, who dispersed after a blank salvo from the Spanish cannons.

The following day they came   across another band of warriors and killed several with crossbows, and after failing to find the   promised gold, the fleet returned to Cuba. After going round the coast, the fleet headed west and   discovered an archipelago off southern Cuba which Columbus named the Queen’s Garden. Here   they encountered flamingos for the first time.

As the fleet continued west, Columbus was   encouraged by natives who informed him that the coast had no end. After getting tangled in another   archipelago off the Zapata Peninsula, on the 27th of May the fleet anchored near the fishing port   of Batabanó, where twenty years later the town of San Cristóbal de la Habana, later simply Havana, would be founded.

By the middle of June, Columbus was less than fifty miles from the western end of   Cuba, but as the coast curved to the south the Admiral convinced himself that this was   the Malay Peninsula. He turned back east on the 13th of June and eventually decided to   return to Jamaica to resupply. In the weeks that followed Columbus would have been surprised to   see his brother Bartholomew, who some time earlier had left France for Spain following   news of his brother’s discoveries.

There he been knighted by Ferdinand and Isabella and was placed   in command of three caravels sent westwards to the Caribbean to resupply Christopher.  This piece of good news aside, Columbus had much to worry about. He had still failed to find Japan, China or any other part of Asia, which was his ultimate goal, while a source of the gold which he   saw the natives wearing also eluded him.

Finally, his men were increasingly in conflict with the   natives on several of the islands which had been discovered, the soldier Mosen Pedro Margarit and   the 400 men under his command roamed the islands extorting gold from the natives but after a rebuke   from Columbus’ brother Diego, Margarit stormed back onboard and sailed back to Spain. Among the   men who joined him was Fray Buil, the Catalan friar who had been tasked with converting the native Indians.

Indeed, much of the remainder of 1494 and all of 1495 were spent fighting the Taino on Hispaniola and the other islands as Columbus’ second voyage became bogged down in distractions   despite the far superior resources he had been afforded by comparison with the first expedition.   In June 1495 a hurricane destroyed three of Columbus’ ships, with only the Niña remaining   afloat, and with the wood salvaged Columbus ordered the construction of a new vessel nicknamed   India.

Keen to defend himself against Margarit and Buil’s reports to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus set sail in March 1496 once the India was fully equipped. Before doing so, he gave his brother Bartholomew, whom he appointed Adelantado or Leader, instructions to abandon La   Isabela and found the new colony of Santo Domingo on the southern coast of Hispaniola. Over two   hundred Spaniards and thirty Indians were aboard the Niña and India as Columbus returned home.

On the 8th of June the two caravels sighted the coast of Portugal, and arrived at Cadiz on the 11th. In the summer of 1496 Columbus met the King and Queen at court in Burgos and   presented his case for a third voyage. The sovereigns agreed to Columbus’ proposal to   send two ships to re-provision Hispaniola and six to explore the ocean south of the islands, where King João of Portugal believed there was a large continent.

Since the monarchs were otherwise distracted by the wars they were engaged in against the French and others in Italy, it was not until April 1497 that they issued instructions for a new voyage. In January 1498   the Niña and India were sent ahead to Hispaniola, while Columbus chartered six further ships, which consisted of the Admiral’s flagship and five caravels.

Columbus’ third voyage began on the 30th of May 1498 and after anchoring in the Canaries on the 19th of June the Admiral ordered three caravels to sail to Hispaniola via Dominica and Puerto Rico, while he took the rest to the Cape   Verdes. On the 4th of July, Columbus set sail for the Indies on a southwest course in his attempt   to validate the theory of a large continent south of the Caribbean islands.

In late July he passed an island with three mountains to the west, which Columbus named Trinidad. Then, for the first time   in his voyages, Columbus caught sight of the American mainland on the 1st of August 1498, but from ten miles away it looked like an island which Columbus named Isla Sancta. After anchoring on the south-western cape of Trinidad, the men came ashore, where Columbus was disappointed to find that the native inhabitants were the familiar Caribs.

On the 5th of August the fleet headed west and anchored on the American mainland for   the first time. The following day the fleet anchored on the south of the Paria peninsula, where Columbus encountered natives wearing jewellery made of guanin, an alloy of gold, silver, and copper.

Recognising that these Indians were of a different and seemingly more advanced   culture and spoke a different language, Columbus captured a few to become interpreters. As they   sailed along the coast, the Spaniards were excited to see the women wearing pearl necklaces. On the   10th of August Columbus sailed west under the assumption that Paria was an island, but was eventually forced to turn back east.

After sailing through the northern channel   between Trinidad and Venezuela, which Columbus named the Boca del Dragón, the Admiral sailed   west along the coast and finally realised that he must have discovered the hypothesised continent, hitherto unknown to mankind. Convinced that he was south of China, Columbus desperately   wanted to continue exploring, but instead was compelled to resupply his brother in Hispaniola.

On the 20th of August Columbus arrived at Beata Island a hundred miles from Santo Domingo, where he met his brother the following day.  On the 22nd they made their way back to the   port and arrived on the 31st. During Columbus’ absence, Francisco Roldán, whom Columbus had   appointed chief justice on the island, had led a rebellion against Bartholomew.

After the arrival   of the Niña and India carrying news of royal confirmation of the Adelantado’s authority, the men aboard joined Bartholomew in pacifying Roldán. The Spanish rebel remained at large and   his rebellion had been bolstered by men from the three caravels Columbus sent from the Canaries, who missed Santo Domingo and ended up near Roldán’s headquarters at Aragua.

On the 18th   of October Columbus sent two of his ships back to Spain with news about his discoveries of the   mainland continent and requested reinforcements to deal with the rebellion. In the meantime, the   Admiral sought to negotiate with Roldán and was forced to grant concessions to him in September   1499, offering the rebels free passage home with their slaves and free land grants for those who   stayed.

In the process, Columbus helped to set up the encomienda system by allocating large tracts of land and the Indians who lived on it to individual settlers. The caciques   consented to this new arrangement, which was less of a burden than the gold tribute. While Columbus struggled to restore order on Hispaniola, he received news that Alonso de Hojeda had obtained permission to lead a voyage of his own, reaching the Gulf of Paria   and continued his discoveries on the mainland, which he named Venezuela.

The Florentine Amerigo   Vespucci who joined this expedition would later lend his name to the whole continent, America being named after Amerigo who published some pamphlets back in Europe in the years that   followed advertising the discovery of the new continent which now bears his name. Hojeda was not along in undertaking such voyages independent of Columbus.

Vicente Yáñez Pinzón carried out his own expedition in 1499, discovering the mouth of the Amazon River and large   parts of the Brazilian coast before doubling back to Paria and Hispaniola. These voyages, carried out without the knowledge of the Admiral of the Indies, were a sign that Ferdinand and   Isabella were running out of patience with Columbus’ promises of gold and a sea route   to Asia. But worse was to follow.

In July 1500 Francisco de Bobadilla sailed for Santo Domingo as royal commissioner with authority over the Admiral. Upon his arrival in August, Columbus   was arrested and sent back to Spain to answer for why the monarchs’ resources had been squandered. Columbus returned to Spain in chains and arrived at Cadiz at the end of October, but it was not until mid-December that he, as well as his brothers Diego and Bartholomew, who   had also been arrested, were released and summoned to court.

There the king and queen treated them   graciously but were distracted by a new round of hostilities in Italy. Even with these conflicts, the monarchs continued to grant charters for new voyages to explore more of the American continent, further diminishing Columbus’ role in the governance of America. For instance, on the 3rd of September 1501, Isabella and Ferdinand appointed Nicolás de Ovando as   governor of the Indies, while Hojeda and Vicente Pinzón were allocated their own fiefdoms in the   Americas. After Ovando set sail in February 1502, Columbus requested ships for another voyage, hoping to find a western passage to India which he expected to be west of Cuba. On the 14th of March, he received royal authorisation for a fourth voyage. This time the rulers of Spain instructed   him to finally find the western route to Asia and to sail around the world. On the 9th of May 1502, Columbus left Cadiz with a fleet of four caravels and around 140 men on board   on what would be his fourth and final voyage to the Americas.

After stopping off at the Canaries the fleet began its ocean crossing on the 25th.  Although aiming for Dominica, in mid-June they   arrived to Martinique. Despite being warned by the monarchs not to call at Hispaniola on the   outbound voyage, Columbus arrived there at the end of the month seeking to replace one of his ships, which he deemed too unwieldy for exploration.

Ovando’s fleet of thirty ships was preparing to sail home and Columbus warned the new governor not to do so until an expected storm had passed over.   The dismissive governor refused the Admiral entrance into Santo Domingo and ordered the   fleet to depart. Soon enough almost the entire fleet was destroyed, including the flagship with   Antonio de Torres and Bobadilla and a substantial quantity of gold on board.

Only a single ship arrived back in Spain, the one carrying the agent Columbus had appointed to bring home his   share of the gold, worth 4,000 pesos. While Santo Domingo itself was destroyed by the hurricane, Columbus intelligently shielded his fleet from the most powerful winds and all four ships survived. The hurricane was a sign of things to come for Columbus’ fourth voyage.

From the end of July to mid-October, the fleet sailed along Central America trying to find the straits that would   carry them westwards to what Columbus imagined was the Indian Ocean. After reaching land on   the northern coast of Honduras on the 16th of August, the fleet sailed east and then   south along the eastern coast of Nicaragua towards Costa Rica.

In early October the   fleet sailed into a channel which for a brief moment appeared to be the desired straits, but instead turned out to be a wide bay which the Admiral named Almirante Bay. Over the next   few days Columbus was made to understand by the natives that there were no straits and   he was on an isthmus which separated him from what he still believed was the Indian Ocean.  

He consoled himself that these natives wore large gold disks on their chests as jewellery. For the   remainder of the year the fleet sailed along the coast of the Veraguas region to Panama, which the Indians identified as a great source of gold. The fleet spent Christmas and New Year of   1503 anchored within sight of the location where the Panama Canal would be built four centuries   later.

On the 6th of January 1503 Columbus set up camp near a river he named Belén, which was   intended as a base for exploring the promised gold of Veraguas. The Spanish soon obtained permission   to explore from the local cacique of the Guaymas tribe, and at the beginning of February they   managed to find a source of gold richer than any in Hispaniola. Finally, Columbus seemed to have   accomplished one of his main goals; to find a source of precious metal and he now ordered   the construction of a permanent settlement nearby which he named Santa María de Belén.

In early April 1504, Columbus decided to leave some of his men behind and head home to Spain   with news of the discovery of a source of gold.  This was a violation of his instructions which had   commanded him to find the western route, but the discovery of a source of gold left him confident that his employers would want him to return home to inform them of what he had found.

After sailing   east along the Panama coast, Columbus imagined that Hispaniola was directly due north, but   instead his fleet, now down to two after another worm-eaten ship had to be abandoned, was heading   straight for Cuba. On the 10th of May they came across a group of islands full of turtles which they named Las Tortugas, now the Cayman Islands.

By the time they reached the southern coast of Cuba, the remaining ships were in extremely bad condition and taking on water, prompting   Columbus to head south for Jamaica. As the ships were no longer seaworthy, they ran ashore on the   25th of May at a place now called St Ann’s Bay.  They would spend over a year here effectively   waiting to be rescued by their compatriots on the other islands of the Caribbean.

During this time Columbus had to contend with infighting amongst his men, native revolts and dwindling resources. In the end it was only at the end of June 1504 that a small caravel of Spanish colonists   from Hispaniola found them stranded on Jamaica.  After taking on the hundred or so survivors that   remained, the vessel arrived in Santo Domingo six weeks later.

There, in September 1504, Columbus chartered a new ship and sailed for Europe, leaving America behind for the last time, though his aspiration was to return again when he left. He arrived in Spain on the 7th of November   1504. When Columbus returned, he received no invitation to make report from the king and   queen as Queen Isabella was terminally ill and died just two and a half weeks later.

Columbus was himself increasingly ill too and could not travel to court in the months that followed. It   was only in May 1505 that Columbus felt well enough to travel to the court at Segovia, where he met King Ferdinand. The monarch, who was now embroiled in a clash with the   nobles of Castile to see if he could rule his deceased wife’s kingdom following her death, gave him a frosty response, doubtlessly exacerbated by Columbus’ failure to find the   western route to Asia and suspicious of any claims his Italian navigator made about finding gold in the Americas at this stage. Columbus spent the last year of his life petitioning at the Spanish   court to have his claims to 10% of any gold found in the Americas given to him and to have his son   Diego succeed him as Viceroy of any territories that had been discovered. It was in this rather   un-salubrious manner that he died at Valladolid on the 20th of May 1506 at the age of fifty-four. 

There is no doubting the significance of Christopher Columbus as an historical figure. 1492, the year that he crashed into the New World while looking for Asia, is one of the most significant years in human history. Some modern descriptions of him as a   navigator who simply got lost are not accurate.

He was correct in his analysis that a western   route existed to Asia, he just hadn’t realised there was an enormous landmass in the way. His   success lies in his persistence in petitioning at various European courts all through the 1480s and   early 1490s for an expedition to be undertaken westwards, when all the monarchs of Europe were   more interested in further exploring the route to Asia around Africa.

Admittedly, though, in this age of intense European overseas exploration, someone was going to discovery the   Americas before very long. It is worth remembering that John Cabot, another Italian explorer in the   service of King Henry VII of England, was actually the first person to reach mainland America in   early modern times when he arrived there in 1497 at a time when Columbus and the Spanish were still exploring the islands of the Caribbean. As such, had Columbus not rediscovered the New World in 1492 in the way that he did, someone else would have done so before long. His accomplishments   would not have satisfied him. Ultimately, when he died in 1506, he did so believe his work   to have ended in failure as the western route to Asia was not found nor riches obtained. It   would be fourteen years before Ferdinand Magellan sailed around the southern tip of the Americas in   1520 before the western route into the Pacific Ocean was located, right around the time that   Hernan Cortes was conquering the Aztec Empire in Mexico and setting Spain on the road to obtaining vast riches from the Americas. Had he lived to see those events, Columbus might have   believed his life’s work had ended in success. What do you think of Christopher Columbus? Was   he a visionary who should be credited with discovering the Americas or would someone else have founded the New World before very long if he hadn’t done so?