Columbus was born in in the Republic of Genoa, part of what is now Italy. In his 20s he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, and later resettled in Spain, which remained his home base for the duration of his life. Columbus first went to sea as a teenager, participating in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.
One such voyage, to the island of Khios, in modern-day Greece, brought him the closest he would ever come to Asia. His first voyage into the Atlantic Ocean in nearly cost him his life as the commercial fleet he was sailing with was attacked by French privateers off the coast of Portugal. His ship was burned and Columbus had to swim to the Portuguese shore. He made his way to Lisbon, Portugal, where he eventually settled and married Filipa Perestrelo.
The couple had one son, Diego, around His wife died soon after, and Columbus moved to Spain. He had a second son, Fernando, who was born out of wedlock in with Beatriz Enriquez de Arana.
After participating in several other expeditions to Africa, Columbus gained knowledge of the Atlantic currents flowing east and west from the Canary Islands. The Asian islands near China and India were fabled for their spices and gold, making them an attractive destination for Europeans — but Muslim domination of the trade routes through the Middle East made travel eastward difficult.
Columbus devised a route to sail west across the Atlantic to reach Asia, believing it would be quicker and safer. He estimated the earth to be a sphere and the distance between the Canary Islands and Japan to be about 2, miles.
Many of Columbus' contemporary nautical experts disagreed. They adhered to the now known to be accurate second-century B. Despite their disagreement with Columbus on matters of distance, they concurred that a westward voyage from Europe would be an uninterrupted water route.
Columbus proposed a three-ship voyage of discovery across the Atlantic first to the Portuguese king, then to Genoa and finally to Venice. He was rejected each time. Their focus was on a war with the Muslims, and their nautical experts were skeptical, so they initially rejected Columbus. Having grown up in the maritime community of Genoa, he had begun seafaring when he was fourteen years old.
We have very little data on what kinds of ships he sailed on, in what capacities, or under whose banners. In any event, Genoese mariners were among the most renowned of the Middle Ages. It was the Genoese marine that the pope called upon during the First Crusade, in the eleventh century, to conduct a massive fleet from the southern ports of France to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
During the following centuries, as the Mediterranean bustled with commerce and political intrigue, the republic of Genoa rose in power along with the republic of Venice. He certainly did. But he was deeply devout, charged with a messianic zeal, and determined to take risks.
To tell thee all the dangers of the Deep Which humane Judgment cannot comprehend Suddain and fearful! They fired his imagination and allayed his fears. Columbus was a stranger at Palos de la Frontera, the small coastal town where the Spanish monarchs had made provision for two of his ships.
He had virtually no connections with either common sailors or officers and was therefore obliged to rely on the help of two prominent seafaring families. We know the names of all but three of those who signed on for the epochal trip. They came primarily from towns and villages in Andalusia; all but four were Spaniards. Columbus was, of course, one of the foreigners.
Each ship had a master, a captain, a pilot, a marshal, and a surgeon, supported by the usual complement of able seamen and cabin boys. Did they sign on eagerly? Not everyone. Experienced sailors questioned the feasibility of such a trip westward, but all were paid the going wage by the crown, and despite legends to the contrary, no prisoners were used to pad the crews. He was meant to be the interpreter between Columbus and the grand khan of China. If the New World was destined to be named by Europeans, it should have been named after Columbus.
A more appropriate European name would have been North and South Columbia. But the two continents were named instead after Amerigo Vespucci, who voyaged to the New World after Columbus. Renaissance geographers were skilled and conscientious scientists, but as they worked to locate obscure New World islands on their charts, they found the data vague and often misleading.
By this bold and imaginative step, he in effect introduced a new hemisphere. The name America had been suggested for this new land mass by a fellow geographer and poet named Matthias Ringman. Several tracts of the period discuss the outbreak and indicate that until then the morbus gallicus French disease had been unknown in Europe.
Many scholars hold that it was spread among women infected by Spanish soldiers who had sailed with Columbus to the New World and contracted it there. Whether or not the affliction had existed in Europe before, its first virulent manifestations did date from the Neapolitan campaign.
Columbus is silent on the subject in his writings. In any case, it was not a fit topic to raise with Queen Isabella, for whom, together with King Ferdinand, his reports were intended. But the truth is that from this island of Haiti or Hispaniola this disease spread to Europe, as has been said; and it is a very common thing here among the Indians, and they know how to cure it, and have very excellent herbs, trees and plants appropriate to this and other infirmities.
The disease became known in Europe by a string of names, most of them imputing blame for its spread: the French Pox, the German Sickness, the Polish Disease. Yes, but it was catastrophic. The tiny settlement was called La Navidad because the plan to set it up was made on Christmas Day of Located in a shallow bay off the northeast coast of the large island that Columbus called Hispaniola, the site was not the most advantageous, but then Columbus had not exactly chosen it.
Nor had it been his intention to establish a colony. While Columbus slept on Christmas Eve, his helmsman ran the flagship aground on the reefs of a Haitian bay. Thirty-nine men, including three officers, were chosen to be the first Spanish settlers in the New World. He was confident that when he returned to the New World, the colony would be nothing less than a storehouse of gold. But only desolation greeted him on his second trip, in November of In their greed for treasure and in their lust for local women, the colonists had quarreled with one another and antagonized the natives.
None survived. To the king who had turned him down. After detaining Columbus for some tense days of interrogation, John II permitted the forty-two-year-old mariner to sail on.
Meanwhile, Columbus sent word of his discovery to the Spanish monarchs in Barcelona by a soon-to-be-famous letter that was forthwith printed and issued in many editions. They were received ceremoniously. Columbus organized a grand procession to the Spanish court, and as the native Americans paraded through Barcelona in their exotic dress, crowds thronged to see them.
What the Indians thought of it all, we shall never know. Making them Christians was the highest priority. The six he brought back to Spain were promptly baptized and given Christian names, with King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella, and the infante Don Juan, their godparents. When Columbus embarked on his second voyage to the New World, in September of , five of them returned with him. The sixth, named Don Juan, remained attached to the royal Spanish household.
He died within two years. Yet it began in the grandest manner. Columbus made four voyages to the New World between to , according to Enchanted Learning. The voyages were in October , June , October and November On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in Asia, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands.
In May , Columbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. More Dates in History January. Media Credits The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit.
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