Christopher Columbus

Ernle Bradford

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781497617124
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Militär- & Seefahrtsgeschichte

The "outstanding" biography of the Italian navigator and explorer from the bestselling author of The Great Siege ( The New York Times ). Christopher Columbus, credited with discovering America in 1492, was a great explorer who forever changed the world—but his iconic image obscures a far more complex and fascinating life story. Born Cristoforo Colombo, the son of a weaver from Genoa, he renounced his father's trade early in life and took to sailing. Though he began in the Mediterranean, Columbus soon found employment sailing the Atlantic Ocean, where he experienced shipwreck, inclement weather, and perhaps the Norse legends of uncharted lands to the west. With the help of Florentine astronomer Paolo Toscanelli, who in turn based his theories on the works of Marco Polo, Columbus devised a plan to find a western passage to the Indies. Though he achieved something far greater—the discovery of a hemisphere previously unknown to Europeans—Columbus insisted to the end of his days that he had succeeded. In this engrossing and deeply researched biography, historian Ernle Bradford portrays Columbus's stubbornness and greed, as well as his genius, bravery, and masterly navigation skills.

 

A Sailor out of Lisbon

 

Columbus’s first visit to Lisbon was necessarily a short one. Young shipwrecked sailors do not have the time or money for hanging about the beach or enjoying the pleasures of dockyard, doxy or tavern—pleasures which in any case were unattractive to Columbus’s somewhat austere, if not puritanical, temperament. Shortly after reaching the city he was embarked again, possibly in one of the survivors from the convoy. The little that we know about this voyage comes on the authority of Ferdinand, quoting from a now lost memorandum from his father. “In the month of February 1477 I sailed one hundred leagues beyond the island of Tile. Its southern part is 73° North and not 63° as some say. Furthermore it does not lie on the meridian where Ptolemy says the west begins, but a great deal further west. To this island, which is as big as England, the English merchants go, especially those from Bristol. And at the time when I was there the sea was not frozen, but there were vast tides, so great that they rose and fell as much as 26 braccia [about 50 foot] twice a day.”

Tile is clearly Thule, Ultima Thule as it was called, or Iceland. There was a regular trade at that time between Lisbon, Bristol and Iceland, and the Bristol merchants were in constant relations with the Icelanders, exporting their manufactured goods largely in return for fish. The ship on which Columbus sailed from Lisbon may even have been an English merchantman out of Bristol. There is nothing at all improbable in this voyage, indeed it is entirely likely that Columbus would have shipped aboard the first vessel that needed a hand. The two things which are in error are his categorical statement that the southern coastline of Iceland is 70° North when it is in fact on a latitude of 63° 30’: almost exactly the figure that he challenges. His second error lies in the height of the tides, for the maximum range at Reykjavik is less than 15 foot. On the other hand Columbus, recalling his voyage many years afterwards, may well have been remembering the violence of the tidal streams in these waters; the crest of the tidal wave around Iceland moving at nearly 80 miles an hour, and the resultant tidal streams running in places at as much as 7 knots—something which would certainly have made a deep impression on a young sailor fresh out of the almost tideless Mediterranean. On the question of latitude, if, as some sceptics have maintained, this proves that he never went to Iceland at all, the answer is surely that if he was spinning a yarn Columbus could at the time of writing have checked his facts from many a chart. Clearly the figure 730 had stuck firmly in his memory, and one can only presume that the captain or the navigator of the vessel in which Columbus shipped was as dogmatic and as inaccurate about his latitudes as Columbus was later to show himself.

Some confirmation that he did indeed go to Iceland is given by the fact in a note in his own handwriting to his copy of the ‘History of Memorable Things that have happened in my time’ by the author-Pope Aeneas Silvius (Pius II) which reads as follows: “Men have come hither from Cathay in the Orient. Many remarkable things have we seen, particularly at Galway in Ireland, a man and a woman of most unusual appearance adrift into two boats [from a wreck].” Columbus’s assumption that the two bodies he saw came from the Orient suggest that so early in his life he was all ready obsessed with the idea of Marco Polo’s Cathay. The identity of the bodies has been convincingly suggested by Madariaga, Morison and others as Lapps or Finns, who, with their Mongol-type features, would undoubtedly resemble Orientals. There can of course have been no Chinese sailing around Irish waters at that moment in history. Columbus is indeed very likely to have visited Galway if, as he says, he had been on a voyage to Iceland. It is the natural intermediate port of call between Iceland and Bristol.

It would seem almost certain that Columbus went on a trading voyage as a seaman to Iceland, from Lisbon, calling at Galway on his way back to Bristol. But the evidence above is all that we have to go on. It has nevertheless provided a bone of contention between scholars, those of the ‘Nordic School’ maintaining—without a shred of evidence—that Columbus heard from the Icelanders about the lands to the West, known to their Viking forefathers. The ‘Latin School’ derides the whole idea, maintaining among other things that Columbus would not have been able to talk to anyone in Iceland since he did not know the language. This in itself is not a stumbling block, for two countries such as England and Iceland could hardly have carried on, as they did, a regular trade for centuries without having some interpreters. Since Lisbon also played a large part in this trade the interpreters would naturally have also spoken Portuguese. If Columbus was already obsessed with the idea of reaching Cathay across the Atlantic it would have been quite natural for him to have made some enquiries while in Iceland, just as we know that he took careful note of what appeared to be shipwrecked ‘Orientals’ when he was in Galway.

The story that Columbus might well have heard in Iceland was a part of the Saga of Erik the Red. It describes among other things how one of Erik’s two sons, Leif, sailed direct from Norway for Greenland in the year 1000, instead of going by way of Iceland as was the usual custom. Whether driven south and westerly by gales, or through a navigational error, Leif missed Cape Farewell, the southernmost point of Greenland, and landed up either in Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. The saga describes how Leif and his men “were a long time at sea, finally striking upon a land they had not expected. It had fields of natural [self-sown] wheat and wine berries. Among the trees were maples …” This new land they called Vinland, or Wineland, after the grapes. Now the first medieval account to tell Europeans about the mainland of North America was the ‘History of the Church of Hamburg’. This was completed about 1070 by its author Adam of Bremen, who had spent some time in the Danish court, where he had heard about Iceland and Greenland—and Vinland as well. Adam of Bremen recounts how the Danish King, Svein Estridsson, knew all the history of the sea-explorations by heart and that “he mentioned yet another island [apart from Iceland and Greenland] which many had discovered in that ocean, and which is called ‘Vinland’ because vines grow of themselves and produce excellent wine. There too is an abundance of unsown corn. This we know not from fables or supposition but from reliable information from the Danes.”

In conclusion, considering Columbus’s early voyage to the North and to Ireland, one can say no more than that he may possibly have heard while in Iceland of the lands to the north and west. Almost certainly he will have heard of Greenland, for it was only within recent years that the Norse colony there had lost touch with Iceland. There must have been many who remembered—or had even sailed to—the remote land to the north. In Ireland, it is equally tempting to suppose, he had heard of St. Brendan, that 6th century Irish saint and hero of a legendary voyage into the Atlantic where he had found the fabulous “Promised Land of the Saints”. The earliest extant version of this legend—or, as Irish patriots would have it, this true expedition to North America—is to be found in the nth century ‘Navigatio Brendani’. In any case, whether in Iceland or in Ireland, Columbus could indeed have heard of mysterious lands lying to the west across the sullen and apparently empty Atlantic Ocean. That in his later years, when he did set out on his great voyage of exploration, he took the southern route is easily explainable. Living in Portugal he had ample time to hear about islands beyond islands in the ocean, and he was in daily communication with men who had opened up West Africa, used the Canaries as a regular port of call, and were familiar with the Azores, all of which had been recorded between 1439 and 1452, as well as the Cape Verde islands which the Venetian Cadamosto had discovered in 1456. Portuguese colonies, planted by Prince Henry, were already thriving on these new lands far out in the Atlantic.

These were realities. To a Mediterranean man like Columbus they must also have sounded far more attractive, with their warm climates, blue seas, and semi-tropical vegetation, than the harsh North which seemed to produce little except furs and fish. He was on the track of the Orient and Cathay.

The Lisbon to which Columbus returned, after his voyage to the North and to the edge of the Arctic Circle, was the most exciting port and city in the world. It was the Cape Kennedy of its day (and a great deal more). It was the place from which men were gradually pushing back the barriers of darkness and extending the boundaries of knowledge. It was also vital, rich, amusing—and intellectually and aesthetically stimulating. Here on the Tagus waterfront were the ships and the men who sailed regularly to Africa and drove the prows of their caravels night after night into an unknown darkness, while the navigator’s friend, the North Star, steadily declined above their phosphorescent wake.

The eight years and more that Columbus spent either in Portugal or under the Portuguese flag as a sailor are almost completely undocumented. It is a tragedy that this—which must have been the most formative period of his life—is like one of these blanks on ancient maps marked ‘Terra Incognita’. Only occasionally does one catch a glimpse of him, once through the same Antonio Gallo of Genoa, who knew the family. He recorded that Columbus’s younger brother, Bartholomew, was in Lisbon before him and had established himself there as a map-maker. Columbus, according to Gallo, was taken into partnership by his brother, something which seems to be confirmed by a chaplain who knew him well in later years, Andres Bernáldez.

Bernáldez wrote in his ‘Historia de los Reyes Catolicos’ that Columbus was a traveller or agent for the sale of books in Andalusia. He went on to say that, although he had little formal education, he was a man of keen intelligence, “being very skilled in cosmography and in making maps of the world.” One thing is certain: it was during these years that he learned the rudiments of Latin and became a fluent Portuguese speaker. Castilian Spanish was probably a somewhat later acquirement, although it would not have been surprising if Columbus had learned it at much the same time as his Portuguese. Castilian was the preferred language of the upper classes in Portugal—and Columbus was soon to marry into a noble Portuguese family. The Spanish philologist, Ramon Menendez Pidal, who made an intensive study of the writings of Columbus proved conclusively that they were written by a man to whom Portuguese was his first language, and that many of the spellings used are Portuguese and not pure Castilian. This would be natural enough, since quite apart from his everyday conversations with his wife after his marriage, the language of his trade in Lisbon and elsewhere was Portuguese. Some historians have made great play with the fact that Columbus did not write in Italian. But, as has been seen, the Genoese dialect with which he grew up was unwritten and, from the age of 25 onwards, his whole life was cast among Portuguese and Spanish speakers. Even had he been able to write formal Italian it would have been no use to him in his daily life.

The consideration of Columbus’s self-taught linguistic abilities leads on at once to that of the change of his name from Colombo (as he had been born) into Colón. Colombo means ‘a dove’, and Columbus, as he is generally known to English speaking people, is no more than a Latinised form of his Italian name. To this day only the Italians refer to him by the real names with which he was born, Cristoforo Colombo. Columbus himself changed his name into the Spanish equivalent, Colón or Colom—an abbreviation and a simplification which was more readily pronounceable in the Portuguese or Castilian tongues. While treatises and complicated and ingenious theories have been built upon this change of name—much as the variant spellings of Shakespeare have been used to ‘prove’ that a man who did not spell his name consecutively the same could never have written a play. The simplest explanation of this name change can be found in the nomenclature to be found in any country, such as England or, even more, the United States, where immigrants from non-English speaking countries have anglicised their names in order to make them either easier to pronounce, or socially more acceptable.

During all these years it is more than probable that Columbus filled in some of his time by going to sea. It is possible that, like many sailors in other centuries, he worked at two trades: map-maker and book-seller in the winter months, and seaman (when he could get a ship) at other times. There is, however, only one record of Columbus at sea during these early years in Portugal, and that concerns a voyage he made to Madeira for a Genoese merchant to purchase a quantity of sugar for sale in Genoa. Some confusion took place between Columbus’s employer and the suppliers in Madeira about the payment of the money and Columbus was forced to sail to Genoa with far less than the required consignment. A subsequent investigation in court showed that Columbus was blameless in the matter and he returned to Lisbon. It was shortly after this, probably in 1479, that the twenty-eight year old Genoese took a decisive step in his private life, and one that was to prove equally important in his future career. He married Felipa Moniz Perestrello, the daughter of Bartholomew Perestrello who had been made first governor of Porto Santo in the Madeiras. She was also the granddaughter of Gil Moniz, who came from one of the oldest families in Portugal and who had been a close companion of the great Prince Henry.

How did a middle-class Genoese, part seaman and part dealer in books and maps, come to meet with, woo, and marry—in those days of strict class distinction—a young woman, noble on both sides of her family, who must certainly have been living under the strictest chaperonage? They met, according to his son, at the Convent of the Saints in Lisbon where Columbus used to go to attend Mass. Out of the dozens of churches and chapels with which pious Lisbon was thronged, it is not insignificant that Columbus should have chosen this one as the site for his devotions. It was remarkable for being the convent belonging to the nuns of the Military Order of St. James, the purpose of which was to provide a home for the wives and daughters of this famous order of knights militant while the knights themselves were away fighting the heathen in the Holy Land or elsewhere. For an ambitious’ young man, anxious to become acquainted with a potential wife from upper class society, there could have been no better place to choose for his church-going. Young women were scrupulously chaperoned and there was no social life in those days where a man like Columbus could meet a suitable bride from a completely different stratum of society. Only in a church was it possible for the two sexes to see one another—however fleetingly—and churches as we know from innumerable accounts, were regularly used for just this purpose, and even (in later days and laxer societies than that of Lisbon) for the arrangement of assignations.

We know nothing about the appearance of Dona Felipa, but whether she was prepossessing or not she was an undoubted ‘catch’. As for the lady herself, it is hardly surprising that she was taken by the appearance of this ‘extranjero’, this foreigner with a romantic background. He was, wrote Oviedo who first saw him fourteen years later in Barcelona, “a man of fine appearance, well built, taller than most and with strong limbs. His eyes were lively and his features in good proportion. His hair was very red, and his face ruddy and freckled. He spoke well, was tactful in his manner and was extremely talented. He was a good latinist and a very learned cosmographer, gracious when he wished, but hot tempered if he was crossed.” No doubt the years had put more polish upon Columbus when this was written, and had also endowed him with an air of authority.

But the promise was already there in the young Columbus, and the appearance—so dissimilar from the small, dark-skinned men of Portugal—was clearly irresistible to Dona Felipa. Under the strict eye of her mother, she “held such conversation with him and enjoyed such friendship that she became his wife.”

There were practical reasons why Felipa’s mother may well have been pleased to see her eldest daughter married to a young man who was clearly ambitious, of good character, and likely to make his way in the world. The family, although well born, were far from well off. She had a second daughter to support and raise, as well as having to maintain her own status in Lisbon. Her husband, Bartholomew Perestrello, had died in Porto Santo and she had been compelled for financial reasons to sell her rights in the governorship of the island. (These were later reclaimed by her son, also called Bartholomew, but at no advantage to the widow.) All in all, the red-headed, handsome Genoese who was eager to marry her daughter—and without a dowry—must have seemed a very suitable answer to the widow’s problems. As far as Columbus was concerned, whether he was deeply attracted to Felipa or not, the advantages of the match were immense. She was to prove the key that was to open the way for his acceptance into a world where power and influence could be courted and obtained.

 

 

 

Islands in the Ocean

Southwest of Cape St. Vincent, some five hundred miles out into the Atlantic from Portugal, lies the island of Porto Santo. Just over six miles long by three wide it is hilly at either end, soaring up to over 1,500 feet at one point. This was the island of which Dona Felipa’s father had been made governor after its discovery by the Portuguese in 1419. In fact, as is now known from the Italian map (the Laurentian portolano), the island and its larger brother, Madeira, had been recorded as early as 1351, and it is possible that the Madeira group was known to the Genoese even before this. But it was the Portuguese, at the direction of Henry the Navigator, who had settled and colonised the islands, Madeira having been discovered by a further expedition sent out to Porto Santo in 1420. It was at Prince Henry’s instigation that, within a few years of their settlement, the hardy malvasia grape-vine was imported from Crete and the sugar cane from Sicily. Both of these were in due course to play their part in making Madeira a great wine exporter.

But Porto Santo, the island which Bartholomew Perestrello had governed, and where his son now followed in his father’s footsteps, never prospered like Madeira. It was in fact almost completely ruined by Bartholomew Perestrello who, in an understandable desire to have some food available in Porto Santo, introduced the rabbit. Within two years the rabbits had grown to be such a plague that the settlers began to hate everything to do with Porto Santo …

This was the island to which Columbus and his wife moved from Lisbon and where their one and only child, Diego, was born. But before this transference to the remote Atlantic island it seems that Columbus and Felipa lived in her mother’s house in Lisbon where, according to Ferdinand Columbus in his biography, Christopher Columbus’s mother-in-law, seeing how interested he was in everything to do with the sea and with discovery, told him what she could remember of her husband’s experiences. She also gave him “the charts and writings which he had left her. The Admiral was greatly excited by these and he made himself well acquainted with the voyages of exploration upon which the Portuguese were engaged.” It was inevitable in any case that Columbus should know both from his own activities, as well as those in his brother’s chart and map-making business, of the navigational progress that was every year being made on the African coast and in the Atlantic. It was the common talk of the city and waterfront. He could see with his own eyes the slaves brought back from Africa and the gold dust, strange fruits and spices, that were being unloaded yearly when the caravels returned. But the fact that his dead father-in-law had been a protégé of Henry the Navigator gave him an added incitement to find out more about the unknown world. It was natural then that, with his brother-in-law established in Porto Santo, he should in due course leave Lisbon and, taking his wife with him, make for the island which, coupled with Madeira, was at that time the advance headquarters, as it were, of man’s invasion of the Atlantic.

For the next two or three years, from 1480 to 1483, Columbus had his home first in Porto Santo and then at Funchal, the small but thriving capital of Madeira. In both islands the modern inhabitants point authoritatively to the houses where he and Dona Felipa are said to have lived but, as with most such ascriptions, the visitor must allow for foreign demand being met by local supply. What is certain is that, while Columbus probably engaged in trade—and certainly went on a number of voyages during these years—his curiosity was constantly being whetted by meeting with sailors and ships’ captains who had been to the edge of the unknown, and by the fact that he himself was living on the frontiers of the Atlantic.

“He learned,” wrote Ferdinand, “from pilots who were experienced in the voyages to Madeira and the Azores f...