Cristopher++Columbus-Makszin+Loredana

Christopher Columbus Born in 1451 - Died in 1506
Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy in 1451. His career in exploration started when he was very young. As a teenager he traveled the seas and eventually made Portugal his base. Columbus came to believe that the East Indies (present day Indonesia and surrounding islands) could be reached by sailing west through the Atlantic Ocean. He appealed to the kings of Portugal, France and England to finance a westward trip to the Indies, but all denied his request. After ten years of monumental efforts but fruitless results, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain agreed to finance Columbus in the hopes of acquiring great wealth. On August 3, 1492, Columbus, crew, and three ships, the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, left Palos, Spain and headed westward. After stopping in the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, Columbus' ships hit the open seas. Covering about 150 miles a day, the trip was long and arduous. The crew was afraid of sea monsters and grew more restless every day land was not sighted. Columbus offered a reward for he first person to sight land. On October 12, a crew member aboard the Pinta sighted one of the Bahama Islands. Columbus set foot on what he believed was one of the Spice Islands, a group of islands in Asia (now known as Indonesia), where valuable spices and riches came from. He named the land San Salvador. Columbus failed to find the riches he expected, and continued to search for China. He next visited Cuba and Hispaniola (Dominican Republic). He encountered native peoples who he named "Indians" because he believed they were inhabitants of the Indies. Columbus returned to Spain a hero. He was named viceroy of the Indies. He soon returned to the New World but never found the riches he expected. Some began to believe that Columbus had found "a new world" rather that a shortcut to the Indies. Christopher Columbus made one of the greatest discoveries in the history of the world - North America. Though he probably wasn't the first explorer to see the continent, and he believed until his death that the islands he encountered were in the Asian continent, his discoveries were instrumental in the establishment of Spanish colonies in North America. Today, we celebrate Columbus Day in October to commemorate his discoveries, =//The Round Earth and Christopher Columbus // = Today it is well known that the Earth is a sphere, or very close to one (its equator bulges out a bit because of the Earth's rotation). When Christopher Columbus proposed to reach India by sailing west from Spain, he too knew that the Earth was round. India was the source of precious spices and other rare goods, but reaching it by sailing east was difficult, because Africa blocked the way. On a round globe, however, it should also be possible to reach India by sailing west, and this Columbus proposed to do (he wasn't the first one to suggest this--see below). Sometimes the claim is made that those who opposed Columbus thought the Earth was flat, but that wasn't the case at all. Even in ancient times sailors knew that the Earth was round and scientists not only suspected it was a sphere, but even estimated its size. If you stand on the seashore and watch a ship sailing away, it will gradually disappear from view. But the reason cannot be the distance: if a hill or tower are nearby, and you climb to the top after the ship has **completely** disappeared, it becomes visible again. Furthermore, if on the shore you watch carefully the way the ship disappears from view, you will notice that the hull vanishes first, while the masts and sails (or the bridge and smokestack) disappear last. It is as if the ship was dropping behind a hill, which in a way is **exactly** the case, the "hill" being the curve of the Earth's surface. To find out how the distance to the horizon is calculated. ** Christopher Columbus ** (bt. August and October 1451-may20,1506 was a navigator,colonizer and explorer who was instrumental in Spanish colonization of the Americas . Though not the first to reach the Americas from Europe (the Vikings had reached Canada many years earlier, led byLeif Ericsson, Columbus' voyages led to general European awareness of the hemisphere and the successful establishment of European cultures in the New World Historical consensus claims that he was born in Genoa, although other minor theories exist. The name //Christopher Columbus// is the Anglicization of the Latin //Christopher Columbus//. Also well known are his name's rendering in modern Italian as //Cristoforo Colombo//, in Portuguese as //Cristóvão Colombo// (formerly //Christovam Colom//), and in Spanish as //Cristóbal Colón//. Columbus' voyages across the Atlantic Ocean began a European effort at exploration and colonization of the Western Hemisphere. While history places great significance on his first voyage of 1492, he did not actually reach the American mainland until his third voyage in 1498. Instead, he made landfall on an island in the Bahamas Archipelago that he named //San Salvador// while trying to find a sea route to India, hence the indigenous inhabitants being called "Indians". Likewise, he was not the earliest European explorer to reach the Americas, and there are accounts of European transatlantic contact prior to 1492. Nevertheless, Columbus's voyage came at a critical time of growing national imperialism and economic competition between developing nation states seeking wealth from the establishment of trade routes and colonies. The term Pre-Columbian is sometimes used to refer to the people and cultures of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and further European influence. The anniversary of the 1492 voyage is observed on October21 throughout the Americas and in Spain

=A Christopher Columbus Timeline= = = =Columbus's early years= Christopher Columbus, as he is known today, was born "Cristoforo Colombo" in Genoa, sometime between August and October of 1451. Genoa is today part of Italy, but at that time it was an independent city-state and renowned trading center, the wealthiest city in the western Mediterranean. Although we know nothing about his education, there is every indication that he was well-schooled. The native language of Genoa at that time was Ligurian, but Columbus had learned to speak several languages by the time he was an adult, including Latin, Portuguese, Spanish, and perhaps Catalan. He was also well-read in classical literature, including the geographies of Ptolemy and Marinus, and the works of Seneca, St. Augustine, Marco Polo, and many others. Columbus's father Domenico was a prosperous weaver and wool merchant in Genoa. There are a number of records of Domenico buying and selling real estate, an indication that the family was at least moderately wealthy. Columbus himself became a member of the weaver's guild, but for unknown reasons he went to sea as a young man. After being shipwrecked off the coast of Portugal in 1476, he ended up in Lisbon where his brother Bartolomeo was working as a mapmaker. From Lisbon, Columbus sailed on merchant voyages as far as Ghana, Ireland, and even Iceland. There are indications that Columbus was either owner or master of the ships on which he sailed, another sign that he was either well-off or well-connected. During his time in Portugal, Columbus married Doña Felipa Perestrello y Moniz, the daughter of a Portuguese nobleman. In about 1480 she bore him a son, Diego, but she died in 1485. When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453, the price of oriental trade goods had gone sky-high in Europe. There was a fortune to be made if a route to "the Indies" -- China, India, and Japan, the great civilizations of East Asia -- could be found, a route that bypassed the Muslim-controlled territories of the Middle East. Columbus devised a scheme to do just that: he would sail west across the "Ocean Sea", going the long way around the world, and arrive at China from the east. He tried to interest King John of Portugal in his plan, but the Portuguese were working on their own exploration route going down the coast of Africa, and weren't interested. So around 1486, the recently widowed Columbus left Portugal for Spain, and tried to interest the Spanish court in his "Enterprise of the Indies." But Spain was involved in a war against the Moors, and the Spanish Sovereigns (King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella) had neither time nor money for Columbus's plan. The war was going well, however, and Columbus felt that it would soon be won. Columbus bided his time talking up his plan and making friends around the Spanish royal court. He made no objection when the Spanish form of his name, Cristóbal Colón, was used by his Spanish friends. During this time he met another woman, Beatriz Enriquez de Harana. Although Columbus never married her, in 1488 she bore him a second son, Fernando, out of wedlock. In January 1492, the Spanish finally captured Granada, the last Moorish city in Spain, thus ending 700 years of war. Columbus immediately pressed King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to take up his plan. Instead, the Spanish Sovereigns kicked the idea to a royal commission, to examine the feasibility of the scheme. Europeans had known that the earth was round since the time of Aristotle, so the plan was theoretically possible. But drawing on ancient Greek measurements of the earth's size, the commission determined (quite correctly, as it turned out) that the distance from Spain westward to China was so great that no ship of that era could hope to make the voyage. Columbus was again disappointed, and he made plans to leave Spain for France, hoping that the French would back his plan instead. But as he was on his way out of the country, he was caught by a royal messenger: one of Columbus's friends at court had persuaded Queen Isabela to take a gamble on the Enterprise of The Indies anyway, in spite of the unfavorable review by the royal commission. The Spanish Sovereigns granted Columbus three ships, and he set sail on his first voyage on August 3, 1492. =The First Voyage of Columbus = Christopher Columbus departed on his first voyage from the port of Palos (near Huelva) in southern Spain, on August 3, 1492, in command of three ships : the //Niña//, the //Pinta// and the //Santa Maria//. His crew mostly came from surrounding towns such as Lepe and Moguer. =Columbus's Crew= Contrary to popular myth, Columbus's crew on the first voyage were not a bunch of cutthroats. They were mostly 'hometown boys' from Andalusia, and nearly all experienced seamen. It is true that the Spanish Sovereigns offered amnesty to convicts who would sign up for the voyage, but only four men took up the offer: one who had killed a man in a fight, and three of his friends who then helped him escape from jail. Of the four voyages of Columbus, only the crew of the first voyage is completely known. Alice Bache Gould spent decades combing various archives in Spain, eventually accounting for each of the 87 crewmen of the //Niña//, //Pinta//, and //Santa Maria//. Her research was published in fragments, but a summary is given below. Gould's research differs from earlier work published by John Boyd Thacher. A comparison of the two lists can be found in //The Log of Christopher Columbus// by Robert Fuson =Columbus's Ships= As everyone knows, Columbus had three ships on his first voyage, the //Niña//, the //Pinta//, and the //Santa Maria//. The flagship //Santa Maria// had the nickname //La Gallega//. It was a //nao//, which simply means "ship" in old Spanish; today, we might call such a ship a carrack. She was fat and slow, designed for hauling cargo, not for exploration. Some sources say that the //Santa Maria// was about 100 tons, meaning that it could carry 100 //toneladas//, which were large casks of wine. There has been much speculation about just how large such a ship would be; the best current thinking, by Carla Rahn Philips, puts the length of //Santa Maria// at 18 meters, keel length at 12 meters, beam 6 meters, and a depth of 3 meters from keel to deck. The //Santa Maria// had three masts (fore, main, and mizzen), each of which carried one large sail. The foresail and mainsail were square; the sail on the mizzen, or rear, mast was a triangular sail known as a lateen. In addition, the ship carried a small square sail on the bowsprit, and small topsail on the mainmast above the mainsail. The //Pinta// was captained by Martín Alonso Pinzón, a leading mariner from the town of Moguer in Andalucia. //Pinta// was a caravel, a smaller, lighter, and faster ship than the tubby //Santa Maria.// We don't know much about //Pinta//, but it probably was about 70 tons. Philips puts the length of //Pinta// at 17 meters, keel length 13 meters, beam 5 meters, and depth 2 meters. She probably had three masts, and most likely carried sails like those of //Santa Maria//, except for the topsail, and perhaps the spritsail. Smallest of the fleet was the //Niña//, captained by Vicente Añes Pinzón, brother of Martín. The //Niña// was another caravel of probably 50 or 60 tons, and started from Spain with lateen sails on all masts; but she was refitted in the Canary Islands with square sails on the fore and main masts. Unlike most ships of the period, //Niña// may have carried four masts, including a small counter-mizzen at the stern with another lateen sail. This would have made //Niña// the best of the three ships at sailing upwind. Philips puts her length at 15 meters, keel length 12 meters, beam 5 meters, and depth 2 meters. == Columbus called first at the Canary Islands, the westernmost Spanish possessions. He was delayed there for four weeks by calm winds and the need for repair and refit. Columbus left the island of Gomera on September 6, 1492, but calms again left him within sight of the western island of Hierro until September 8. Columbus arrived at his Bahamas Iandfall on October 12, then proceeded to Cuba on October 28. While sailing north of Cuba on November 22, Martín Alonso Pinzón, captain of the //Pinta//, left the other two ships without permission and sailed on his own in search of an island called "Babeque," where he had been told by his native guides that there was much gold. Columbus continued with the //Santa Maria// and //Niña// eastward, and arrived at Hispaniola on December 5. The flagship //Santa Maria// grounded on a reef on Christmas Eve and foundered the next day. Columbus used the remains of the ship to build a fort on shore, which he named //La Navidad// (Christmas). But the tiny //Niña// could not hold all of the remaining crew, so Columbus was forced to leave about 40 men at La Navidad to await his return from Spain. Columbus departed from La Navidad on January 2, 1493. Now down to just one ship, Columbus continued eastward along the coast of Hispaniola, and was surprised when he came upon the //Pinta// on January 6. Columbus's anger at Pinzón was eased by his relief at having another ship for his return to Spain. =BAHAMAS IANDFALL=
 * 1451 || Columbus is born in Genoa, the son of a prosperous wool merchant and weaver. By the age of 14, he takes to the sea. ||
 * 1476 || Columbus swims ashore after his ship is sunk in a battle with pirates off Portugal. He joins his brother Bartholomew, a cartographer, in Lisbon. ||
 * 1477-1484 || As a master mariner, Columbus makes merchant voyages as far as Iceland and Guinea. ||
 * 1479 || Columbus marries Felipa Perestrella e Moniz, daughter of a Portuguese nobleman. They settle on the island of Porto, near Madiera. ||
 * 1480 || Eldest son Diego is born. ||
 * 1484 || Columbus conceives of "The Enterprise of the Indies," but fails to convince King John II of Portugal to back the plan. Wife Felipa dies. ||
 * 1485 || Columbus moves to Spain, settling at Palos in Andalusia. ||
 * 1488 || Second son Fernando is born out of wedlock, to Beatriz Enriquez de Harana. ||
 * 1492/1/2 || Ferdinand & Isabela capture Granada, the last Moorish city in Spain. ||

Map of the Bahamas, showing the suggested landfalls of Columbus.
Columbus visited five islands in the Bahamas before reaching Cuba. He named these (in order) //San Salvador, Santa Maria de la Concepcion, Fernandina, Isabela,// and //Las Islas de Arena//. The last of these has been identified (almost universally) with the modern Ragged Islands in the Bahamas. The first four are in dispute. To avoid confusion with modern placenames, the first four are referred to in Roman numerals as Island I through Island IV. The native names for these islands were //**Guanahani**// for Island I and //**Samoete**// (or Saomete or Samoet) for Island IV. The native names for Island II and Island III were not recorded. **The inter-island track of Columbus's first voyage** The two ships departed Hispaniola from Samana Bay (in the modern Dominican Republic) on January 16, but were again separated by a fierce storm in the North Atlantic on February 14; Columbus and Pinzón each believed that the other had perished. Columbus sighted the island of Santa Maria in the Azores the next day. After a run-in with the local governor, he arrived at Lisbon on March 4, and finally made it back to his home port of Palos on March 15, 1493. Meanwhile, Pinzón and the //Pinta// had missed the Azores and arrived at the port of Bayona in northern Spain. After a stop to repair the damaged ship, the //Pinta// limped into Palos just hours after the //Niña//. Pinzón had expected to be proclaimed a hero, but the honor had already been given to Columbus. Pinzón died a few days later. =The Second Voyage of Columbus= After the success of Columbus's first voyage, he had little trouble convincing the Spanish Sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabela, to follow up immediately with a second voyage. Unlike the exploratory first voyage, the second voyage was a massive colonization effort, comprising seventeen ships and over a thousand men. The second voyage brought European livestock (horses, sheep, and cattle) to America for the first time. Although Columbus kept a log of his second voyage, only very small fragments survive. Most of what we know comes from indirect references or from accounts of others on the voyage. The fleet left Hierro in the Canary Islands on October 13, 1493. Hoping to make a landfall at Hispaniola (where Columbus had left 40 men the previous January), the fleet kept a constant course of west-southwest from Hierro and sighted Dominica in the West Indies at dawn on Sunday, November 3. The transatlantic passage of only 21 days was remarkably fast, covering 850 leagues according to Columbus's reckoning (or somewhat less according to others). Shortly after sighting Dominica, another island to the north came into view; this must have been Guadeloupe, although some on the voyage later misattributed it as Maria Galante. This order of sighting shows that the fleet must have been very near to 16° north latitude, 60° west longitude at dawn on November 3. A little farther north, and Guadeloupe would have been sighted first; a little farther south, and Martinique would have been sighted second; a little farther west, and all these islands would have been seen simultaneously. The actual rhumbline course (rhumbline: a course of constant bearing between two points) between Hierro and this point is 252° true. Since the fleet was sailing WSW (258°.8 magnetic), we know that the average magnetic variation during the voyage was about 7° west. During the next two weeks, the fleet moved north from Dominica, discovering the Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico before arriving at Hispaniola on November 22. Returning to his fortress at Navidad on November 28, Columbus found that the fort had been burned and that the men he had left there on the first voyage were dead. According to the account of Guacanagari, the local chief who had befriended Columbus on the first voyage, the men at Navidad had fallen to arguing among themselves over women and gold. Some of the men had abandonded the fort in the intervening months, and some of the rest had raided an inland tribe and kidnapped their women. The men of that tribe retaliated by destroying Navidad and killing the few remaining Spaniards. Columbus then sailed eastward along the coast of Hispaniola, looking for a place to found a new colony. On December 8, he anchored at a good spot and founded a new town he named La Isabela, after the Spanish queen. The next several months were spent in establishing the colony and exploring the interior of Hispaniola. On April 24, 1494, Columbus set sail from Isabela with three ships, in an effort to find the mainland of China, which he was still convinced must be nearby. He reached Cuba on April 30 and cruised along its southern coast. But soon he learned of an island to the south that was rumored to be rich with gold. Columbus left Cuba on May 3rd, and anchored at Jamaica two days later. But the reception he recieved from the Indians was mostly hostile, and since he had still not found the mainland, he left Jamaica on May 13, returning to Cuba the following day. But the Admiral quickly found that the southern coast of Cuba is dotted with shoals and small islands, making exploration treacherous. Making slow progress in difficult conditions, Columbus press westward for several weeks until finally giving up the quest on June 13. But not wanting to admit that his search for the mainland was a failure, Columbus ordered each man in his crews to sign a document and swear that Cuba was so large that it really must be the mainland. The voyage back to Hispaniola was even worse, since they now had to rethread the shoals and islands they had come through before, and now they had a headwind to work against. After four weeks, tired of the incessant headwinds, Columbus again turned south for Jamaica and confirmed that it was indeed an island. Columbus finally returned to Hispaniola on August 20, 1494, and proceeded eastward along the unknown southern coast. But by the end of September, Columbus was seriously ill. His crew abandoned further explorations and returned to the colony at La Isabela. Over the next eighteen months Columbus worked, mostly without success, at his job of colonial governor. His relations with the Spanish colonists were poor. Columbus took his title of Viceroy -- titular King -- seriously, and governed with an arrogance that the colonists did not appreciate. Many of these colonists were younger sons of the Spanish nobility who were trying to carve out their own fiefdoms in the New World, and they viewed Columbus as a foreigner and an impediment to their plans. The large amounts of gold they had been promised turned out to be more of a trickle, and Columbus, acting under royal decree, appropriated a large fraction of that for himself. Further, La Isabela turned out to have been a bad location, in a swampy area with few resources and a poor harbor. Meanwhile, relations with many of the Indian tribes had soured too, and war soon broke out between the Spaniards and some of the tribes. But the Spanish had a huge technological edge, and the warfare was grossly one-sided. Many Indians were killed, and even more were captured and forced to work at the thankless job of finding gold. As supplies brought from Spain dwindled, Columbus decided to return to Spain to ask for more help in establishing the colony. He set sail from Isabela on March 10, 1496, with two ships. They sighted the coast of Portugal on June 8, his second voyage complete. =Columbus's Death and Burial= Christopher Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain, on May 20, 1506, at the age of 54. He had suffered through a long terminal illness that first showed symptoms on his third voyage eight years before. According to his son Fernando, the cause of death was "gout." But in those days, gout was a catchall diagnosis for anything that caused joint pain. Recent research by Gerald Weissmann indicates that the most likely cause of death was Reiter's Syndrome, a rare tropical disease. Upon his death, Columbus was initially buried in a small cemetary in Valladolid. Shortly thereafter, his body was moved to Seville. When Columbus' eldest son and heir Diego died in 1526, he was buried beside his father. But Diego's widow petitioned the Spanish court to move both bodies to the cathedral in Santo Domingo on Hispaniola. So the remains of Columbus were moved across the Atlantic, and were buried under the right side of the altar in the cathedral in Santo Domingo. And there matters stood for two centuries. In 1795, France captured the island of Hispaniola from Spain. By this time, the Spanish viewed the Admiral's remains as a national treasure, and wanted to prevent their capture by the French at all costs. So, relying on old records, they dug up the remains and removed them to Havana, Cuba. A century later, when Cuba won independence from Spain, the remains were moved again, from Havana back across the ocean to Seville. And so, if you visit the cathedral in Seville today, you will find the tomb of Columbus. But that's not the whole story. In 1877, workers were restoring the cathedral in Santo Domingo and found, under the left side of the altar, a box containing human remains. The box bore Columbus's name. It immediately became clear to some that the "left" and "right" sides of the altar depend entirely upon the direction one is facing. And therefore, some argue, the body that had been moved to Havana in 1795 was really that of Diego, while the Admiral's remains had been in Santo Domingo all along. And so, if you visit the cathedral in Santo Domingo today, you will find another tomb of Columbus. Meanwhile, one historian has argued that the wrong body was moved from Havana to Seville, and therefore, Columbus's remains are really in Havana. And another historian argues that Columbus's remains never left Valladolid! Furthermore, portions of the remains in Seville were given to the city of Genoa in 1892 as part of the quadricentennial celebration. Recently, Spanish scientists tried DNA analysis to answer the question. As it turned out, DNA was not even necessary: a cursory examination of the bones in Seville showed that they must have been those of Columbus's sickly son Diego, not the Admiral himself. So the discoverer's final resting place is in Santo Domingo after all. =Who **really** discovered America?= Everyone recognizes that many people were in America long before Columbus. The Asiatic peoples who became Native Americans were certainly the first, tens of thousands of years ago. Also Norse expeditions to North America, starting with Bjarni Herjolfsson in 986, are well established historically. Many other pre-Columbian discoveries are not well established. Claims have been made for St. Brendan, Basque fishermen, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Africans, and even Carthaginians. Some of these claims may be true; most are probably not. For example, Gavin Menzies recently made a big splash by claiming in a bestselling book that America (and most of the rest of the world) was discovered in 1421 by the Chinese Admiral Zheng He. While it is true that Zheng He made a number of important voyages, none of them went beyond the Indian Ocean, as numerous contemporary Chinese accounts make clear. A number of notable scholars have quietly demonstrated that Menzies' evidence is tissue-thin and his claims unfounded. Even though Columbus wasn't the first, his discovery (or re-discovery, if you prefer) is rightly regarded as the most historically important, and will continue to be -- even if other earlier claims are eventually proven true. That is because, unlike the others, Columbus inaugurated permanent large scale two-way commerce between the Old World and the New. Previous discoveries were so obscure that almost no one in either hemisphere was aware of the other hemisphere's existence prior to Columbus. But after Columbus, everyone knew. The "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," unlike his predecessors, changed the world. =Columbus and the Destruction of Native peoples= The first and most important thing to understand is that the Native American population on Hispaniola (and later, Cuba) was destroyed over the course of a century or less, and that the Spanish were primarily responsible for this. Certainly Columbus was not a perfect person by any means, and was a man of many flaws. But neither was he a genocidal mass murderer. The destruction of these peoples is a historical tragedy, but this complex episode deserves more study than simply assigning blame. Columbus initially had friendly relations with the Native Americans he encountered in the West Indies on the first voyage. Beginning with the second voyage, these relations began to sour, with some tribes more than others. The Spanish had come to America as conquerors. In 1492, they had just successfully finished a centuries-long war to evict the Moors from Spain, and the idea of spreading Christianity (in general) and Spanish control (in particular) was central to Spanish culture. The idea that one could arrive at a new country with no strong central government, and **not** claim such lands for the sovereigns one had sworn to support and defend, was simply unthinkable. It would be like expecting a 21st-century American to renounce democracy or free enterprise. Although Columbus was born in Genoa, by 1492 he had been in Spain for about seven years, and was in effect a Spanish citizen. Further, Columbus was devoutly Christian, perhaps even more so than most Spaniards of his day. Therefore it is completely unsurprising that war soon broke out between the Spanish settlers on Hispaniola and some of the Native American tribes there; in fact, it is probably more surprising that war did not break out with **all** the tribes on the island, and that some of them accepted Spanish rule (and Christianity) without a fight. This warfare began in 1494, and continued sporadically for another decade or so. Some people have tried to blame Columbus personally for this warfare. To me, this is a bit like personally blaming Abraham Lincoln for the Civil War. The causes of war are often large social forces, usually beyond the control of any individual. I believe that is true in this case. And it is also true that Columbus personally killed some Native Americans during this war (although thousands, and perhaps even hundreds, would be a gross exaggeration). But most people in most societies (including Native American societies) view killing in wartime as acceptable; few would claim that it is morally equivalent to murder, much less genocide. The second important charge generally made against Columbus was his alleged role in the slave trade. Again, this has been overstated by many. In Spain of this period, slavery was legal under certain circumstances: the person had to be a prisoner of war awaiting ransom. In effect, such a person had a monetary value equal to his expected ransom, and therefore it made sense (to a 15th century Spaniard, anyway) that such an "asset" could be bought or sold. (This system of ransoming prisoners of war was actually a huge improvement over the previous ethic of "take no prisoners".) Therefore, when the Spanish took a number of Native Americans as prisoners on Hispaniola, Columbus saw an opportunity for profit. In 1496, he sent 300 of these prisoners to Spain, to be sold as slaves. The Spanish Sovereigns (King Fernando and Queen Isabel) very properly objected to this, since there was obviously no chance that such prisoners could ever be ransomed. They promptly sent these prisoners back to Hispaniola, and Columbus made no further ventures in the slave trade. An undercurrent to this debate is the issue of the general decline of the Native American population on Hispaniola (and later, in other parts of the New World) after the arrival of the Spanish. Warfare was a part of this, and disease also played a role; although disease can hardly be seen as a moral stain on its carriers. Although the scale of the depopulation has probably been exaggerated by some scholars (the best source on this controversy is David Henige's recent book, //Numbers From Nowhere//, which I highly recommend; ), perhaps the most important reason for this population decline was the //encomienda// system that the Spanish established in the New World. This system established a serfdom for the Native Americans, with the Spanish acting as the "nobility", entitled to the fruits of their labor. Under this system, many Native Americans were simply worked to death. However, Columbus himself had no role in the establishment of this system; in fact, he viewed all Spanish territory in the New World as his personal demesne, and was bitterly disappointed when the Spanish Sovereigns relieved him of his role as governor of Hispaniola in 1500. The Sovereigns had acted primarily in response to complaints from the Spanish colonists on Hispaniola who felt that Columbus was controlling every aspect of the local economy personally. It was Columbus's successor, Francisco de Bobadilla, who established the //encomiendas//. It should be noted that this system was not hugely different from the feudal system then in place in Spain and much of the rest of Europe; but the Spanish treatment of the Native Americans was far harsher than a Spanish peasant would tolerate, primarily because most Spanish colonists on Hispaniola were, in our modern context, unbridled racists. But the Native Americans did have their defenders among the Spanish, too. The establishment of the //encomienda// system and subsequent decline of the Native American population did not escape the notice of the Spanish clergy, who by 1511 began preaching against the harsh conditions under which the Native Americans were forced to work. Although a number of Spanish clerics advocted for humane treatment of the Indians, by far the most eloquent and prolific spokesman for the rights of Native Americans during the 16th century was Bartolome de las Casas (1474? - 1566). His masterwork, the //Historia de las Indias//, still has never been completely translated into English; and his better-known indictment of Spanish treatment of the Native Americans (known as the //Apologetica Historia//) remains a primary source for most of what we know of this period. It is worth mentioning in this context that Las Casas was a lifelong friend of the Columbus family. =Columbus and Dead Reckoning (DR) navigation= At the end of the fifteenth century, celestial navigation was just being developed in Europe, primarily by the Portuguese. Prior to the development of celestial navigation, sailors navigated by "deduced" (or "dead") reckoning, hereafter called DR. This was the method used by Columbus and most other sailors of his era. In DR, the navigator finds his position by measuring the course and distance he has sailed from some known point. Starting from a known point, such as a port, the navigator measures out his course and distance from that point on a chart, pricking the chart with a pin to mark the new position. Each day's ending position would be the starting point for the next day's course-and-distance measurement. In order for this method to work, the navigator needs a way to measure his course, and a way to measure the distance sailed. Course was measured by a magnetic compass, which had been known in Europe since at least 1183. Distance was determined by a time and speed calculation: the navigator multiplied the speed of the vessel (in miles per hour) by the time traveled to get the distance. In Columbus's day, the ship's speed was measured by throwing a piece of flotsam over the side of the ship. There were two marks on the ship's rail a measured distance apart. When the flotsam passed the forward mark, the pilot would start a quick chant, and when it passed the aft mark, the pilot would stop chanting. (The exact words to such a chant are part of a lost oral tradition of medieval navigation). The pilot would note the last syllable reached in the chant, and he had a mnemonic that would convert that syllable into a speed in miles per hour. This method would not work when the ship was moving very slowly, since the chant would run to the end before the flotsam had reached the aft mark. Speed (and distance) was measured every hour. The officer of the watch would keep track of the speed and course sailed every hour by using a //toleta//, or traverse board. This was a peg-board with holes radiating from the center along every point of the compass. The peg was moved from the center along the course traveled, for the distance made during that hour. After four hours, another peg was used to represent the distance made good in leagues during the whole watch. At the end of the day, the total distance and course for the day was transferred to the chart. Columbus was the first sailor (that we know of) who kept a detailed log of his voyages, but only the log of the first voyage survives in any detail. It is by these records that we know how Columbus navigated, and how we know that he was primarily a DR navigator. Since DR is dependent upon continuous measurements of course and distance sailed, we should expect that any log kept by a DR navigator would have these records; and this is exactly what Columbus's log looks like. If Columbus had been a celestial navigator, we would expect to see continuous records of celestial observations; but Columbus's log does not show such records during either of the transatlantic portions of the first voyage. It has been supposed by some scholars that Columbus was a celestial navigator anyway, and kept his celestial records hidden for some unknown reason. (This supposition is necessary to support some theories of the first landfall[|.]) But this hypothesis does not hold water. Columbus's ships were steered by helmsmen at a tiller, below the quarterdeck. The helmsmen could not see the sky, so the only way they could keep a course was by magnetic compass. The officer of the deck had his own compass, and would call down course changes as necessary. This means that the courses used aboard ship (and in the log) would have been magnetic courses.      =Columbus and Celestial Navigation= Although Columbus was primarily a dead reckoning navigator, he did experiment with celestial navigation techniques from time to time. However, these experiments were usually unsuccessful -- and in some cases, actually fraudulent.

1. Introduction
In celestial navigation, the navigator observes celestial bodies (Sun, Moon and stars) to measure his latitude. (In Columbus's day, it was usually impossible to measure your longitude.) Even in ancient times, it was fairly easy to find your latitude by looking at the Sun and stars, as long as you weren't too concerned about accuracy. Each star has a celestial latitude, or declination. If you know the declination of a star that is directly overhead, that's the same as your latitude on earth. Even if a star isn't directly overhead, if you can measure the angle between the star and the overhead point (called the zenith), you can still determine your latitude that way -- provided you measure the star at the time of night that it is highest in the sky. But in the Mediterranean Sea, it's not very useful to find your latitude, because your latitude is roughly the same wherever you are. In those confined waters, dead reckoning was the easiest way to navigate. It was not until the fifteenth century, when Portuguese mariners began to make long voyages north and south along the coast of Africa, that celestial determination of latitude began to be useful for southern European sailors. Columbus was from Genoa, one of the leading Mediterranean ports, and he must have learned his dead reckoning navigation from Genoese pilots. But he had spent time in Portugal, and was aware of all the new ideas in navigation, including celestial navigation. So on his first voyage he made at least five separate attempts to measure his latitude using celestial methods. Not one of these attempts was successful, in part because of bad luck, and in part because of Columbus's own ignorance of celestial techniques and tools.

2. The tools.[[image:http://www.columbusnavigation.com/pictures/quadrant.jpg width="211" height="175" caption="Quadrant image"]]
The most important tool used by Columbus in his celestial attempts was the quadrant. This was a metal plate in the shape of a quarter-circle. From the center of the circle hung a weight on a string, that crossed the opposite edge of the circle (see figure 1). The navigator would sight the North Star along one edge, and the point that the string crossed the edge would show the star's altitude, or angle above the horizon. (In the case of the North Star, this is always pretty close to your latitude). Many examples of quadrants survive in maritime museums, and often have several scales along the edge. For example, in addition to the angle, you might also read the tangent of the angle from the quadrant. The tangent scale is useful if the quadrant is to be used for architectural purposes. [[image:http://www.columbusnavigation.com/pictures/astrola2.gif width="166" height="182" caption="[Astrolabe"]] Columbus also carried an astrolabe on the first voyage, which is somewhat similar to the quadrant. The astrolabe was a complete circle of metal, and had a moving arm (or alidade) that the navigator would sight along to find the star's altitude. Columbus tried to use the astrolabe once, but was stymied by bad weather, and he never used it again. Both the quadrant and astrolabe are dependent upon gravity to work, so they can measure only vertical angles. The quadrant was accurate to about a degree or so, and the astrolabe was a little less accurate.

3. The First Voyage Failures.
After navigating successfully across the Atlantic using his familiar dead reckoning methods, Columbus tried to find his latitude using the quadrant on October 30, 1492. At the time, he was at Puerto de Mares, Cuba, usually identified with the modern Puerto Gibara, at about 20 degrees North latitude. But the result he obtained from the quadrant was 42 degrees. He made another reading from the same place on November 2, and got the same flawed result. Continuing along the coast of Cuba, Columbus again tried a quadrant latitude reading on November 21, and again came up with 42 degrees. Columbus was by now aware that the quadrant reading was incorrect, but he dutifully recorded the reading in his log anyway -- he blamed the quadrant for the bad result, and remarked that he would not take any more readings until the quadrant could be fixed. Columbus made two separate attempts to measure his latitude by two different methods on December 13, while anchored in a harbor in northern Haiti. Columbus had read works by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and he knew that Ptolemy often referred to a city's latitude according to the length of daylight at the summer solstice (more northerly places have longer daylight at summer solstice). December 13 was the day after the winter solstice in 1492, which is just as good for latitude measurements (because: the length of daylight at summer solstice is about the same as the length of night at winter solstice). Columbus took the opportunity to measure the length of daylight, finding that the day was 10 hours long. This is also a fairly bad result, but Columbus did not convert the daylight measurement into a latitude, probably because he did not know enough trigonometry to do so. That night, he made his second attempt to determine latitude within 24 hours. Going back to the quadrant, he again tried to determine the altitude of the North Star, and this time got a reading of 34 degrees -- still far from his correct latitude of 19 degrees. Finally, on February 3, 1493, while on the return voyage, Columbus tried to determine the altitude of Polaris using both the quadrant and astrolabe; but the waves were so high he could not get a reading. The quadrant readings Columbus obtained on his first voyage are horrible by any standard. Some have suggested that Columbus mistook another star for Polaris, but that seems ridiculous: Columbus used the stars of Ursa Minor to tell time at night, so he was very familiar with that constellation. In 1983, James E. Kelley, Jr. provided the solution to the mystery: as mentioned above, many quadrants in maritime museums have tangent scales. If Columbus misread the scale, he might have recorded the tangent of his latitude (without the decimal point) instead of his actual latitude. If that were the case, Columbus's measurements would only be wrong by a couple of degrees or so, which is not bad considering the technology. In any case, it is clear that at this point in his career Columbus was not familiar enough with celestial techniques and tools to use them successfully. So it is not surprising that on his second voyage, there is no record that Columbus attempted to use celestial navigation (except for the fraudulent eclipse longitudes). Instead, he stuck to the tried and true dead reckoning practice of "rhumbline sailing", keeping a constant west-by-south course the whole way from Gomera to Dominica in the West Indies.

4. The Third Voyage: Some Improvements?
In 1498, Columbus sailed from Spain with six ships of supplies for the settlers on Hispaniola. This is the only voyage on which Columbus made regular and serious attempts at celestial navigation. However, the results he obtained were quite poor, even by the standards of his day. When he reached the Canary Islands, Columbus split his fleet: three ships would sail WSW, direct for Hispaniola, while Columbus himself would take the other three ships southward to the Cape Verde Islands, and then west. The reasons for this maneuver are still debated. On the passage west from Cape Verde, he made a series of observations of the North Star to determine his latitude. According to Columbus, the North Star varied from 5° to 15° above the horizon, depending on the time of the night. Actually the North Star was about 3.5° from the celestial pole in 1498, so its total movement in altitude should have been seven degrees, not ten. (This 3.5 degree figure was known to navigators of that era trained in celestial techniques. This is evidence that Columbus was still unfamiliar with celestial navigation.) The island of Trinidad lies close to the coast of Venezuela, and is separated from the mainland by two straits, which Columbus named //Boca del Sierpe// (serpent's mouth) and //Boca del Drago// (dragon's mouth). Columbus tried to measure the distance between these two straits using celestial observations -- or at least, he claimed to. Here's a quote from a letter Columbus wrote to the King of Spain:

"I found that there between these two straits, which, as I have said, face each other in a line from north to south, it is twenty-six leagues from the one to the other, and I cannot be wrong in this because the calculation was made with a quadrant. . . . In that on the south, which I named //la boca de la Sierpe//, I found that at nightfall I had the pole star at nearly five degrees elevation, and in the other on the north, which I named //la Boca del Drago//, it was at almost seven." In this case, we know both the dates of the observations (between August 1 and August 12, 1498 -- the period in which he explored the Gulf of Paria) and the time of day (nightfall, according to Columbus's own writings). Therefore we can be fairly sure what the true altitude of the North Star must have been. Giving Columbus every benefit of the doubt, we may assume that he measured the altitude of Polaris on August 1, 1498, at the Boca del Sierpe (10 N, 62 W) at the beginning of nautical twlight -- the time when the Sun reaches 6 degrees below the horizon, and bright stars first become visible. This occurred at 2249 UT for that date and location. At that time, Polaris was already 8° 10' above the horizon, and rising -- compared to Columbus's report of less than 5 degrees. The observation at Boca del Drago could have been made either on August 4 or August 12, but August 4 is the less unfavorable (nautical twilight began at 2248 UT). His anchorage was 10° 43' N, 61° 53' W, so Polaris was already 9° 1' up (and rising), compared to Columbus's report of less than 7 degrees. Errors of two or three degrees are rather large for a quadrant; a skilled navigator, at anchor, should be able to manage a degree or less of error. The most likely explanation for these results is that Columbus had already measured the distance along the west coast of Trinidad using dead reckoning, and it came out at 26 leagues of coastline. His letter records this figure, which is about 69 nautical miles. (And indeed, the west coast of Trinidad is about this long, because it takes a big jog to the east on its way north.) Columbus then may have created fake observations of Polaris to match his already-known distance, using his adopted size of one degree of latitude, which was 56 2/3 miles (or 14 1/6 leagues). In other words, since Columbus knew that the west coast of Trinidad was 26 leagues long, and he also knew that 28 leagues was about two degrees of latitude, he manufactured "observations" of Polaris that differed by about 2 degrees, to match his dead reckoning. =Columbus and Longitude=

Columbus twice claimed to have found his longitude by timing lunar eclipses. These claims are probably false.
Before the invention of accurate clocks, it was nearly impossible for sailors to find their longitude. This did not stop them from trying, however. Columbus made two attempts in his lifetime to measure his longitude. Both results were pretty bad, even by the standards of his day. The only practical method for determining longitude in the fifteenth century was the well-known method of timing lunar eclipses. This method had been in use since ancient times, but since eclipses are rare, it is of limited use. A recent suggestion (Molander 1992) that Columbus used planetary conjunctions to determine his longitude on the first voyage has been shown to be incorrect (Pickering 1996) The eclipse timing method is simple: first, you determine the local time that the lunar eclipse starts or ends by direct observation. Then you compare your local time for that event against the local time at some distant place. The difference in the two times is the difference in longitude. For example, if the eclipse starts at 8:00 p.m. where you are (say, in Virginia), and the same eclipse starts at 1:00 a.m. in London, you find that there is five hours difference between Virginia and London; or you might say five time zones, which is the same thing. This works out to 75 degrees of longitude. We now know that observers can tell the moment a lunar eclipse starts or ends to within a few minutes. That means that the biggest source of error for Columbus would have been finding the correct local time. But this is also easy: in the tropics, the sun rises at nearly 6:00 a.m. and sets nearly 6:00 p.m. every day. Also, sailors used a device called a nocturnal which was used to determine the time of midnight from the positions of the circumpolar stars. Using these clues and a sandglass, Columbus should have been able to determine the correct local time of an eclipse to within about ten minutes, if he was careful. The problem is that both of Columbus's eclipse timing longitudes are off by much, much greater amounts than this. His 1494 longitude was recorded as 5 hours 23 minutes west of Cadiz; at the time, he was 4 hours 10 minutes west of Cadiz, so his error is an hour and 20 minutes. Columbus's error in 1504 is even worse: from Jamaica, he claimed a longitude of 7 hours 15 minutes west of Cadiz, while his actual longitude was 4 hours 45 minutes west of there -- an error of two and a half hours! The best way to explain the errors is to assume that Columbus didn't really use the lunar eclipses at all. We know that Columbus believed that one degree of the Earth's surface was 56 and two-thirds miles long. Using this formula, it's possible to convert Columbus's transatlantic distance (1142.25 leagues -- see the first voyage summary ) into a longitude. When we make this conversion, the transatlantic distance measured by Columbus on his first voyage comes out to 5 hours and 23 minutes -- the exact figure he reported on the second voyage as his longitude. The 1504 longitude can be explained in a similar manner. On his fourth voyage, Columbus reported that the distance from Puerto Rico to a place in western Cuba was 400 leagues. This is the longest east-west distance within the Indies that Columbus ever recorded in his lifetime. If we add this 400 leagues to the transatlantic distance from the first voyage (the longest transatlantic distance that he recorded in his lifetime), we get 1542.25 leagues. Converting this to a longitude using Columbus's own formula yields 7 hours and 15 minutes, exactly the figure that Columbus reported. So Columbus didn't really use these lunar eclipses to find his longitude. He really used his dead-reckoning distances, and claimed that they were celestially determined. This was probably done to make his results look scientifically respectable.

5. The Fourth Voyage
Not much of Columbus's own writing about the fourth voyage survives today. But we do know that while marooned on the north coast of Jamaica, he found his latitude to be 19°, which is within a degree of the correct number. This high accuracy could only have been achieved if Columbus had been using celestial techniques. It also suggests that even late in his life, Columbus continued to be fascinated with the latest navigational methods, and continued to learn. =How long was Columbus's league?= At sea Columbus measured distances in leagues, each of which was four miles long. But in the fifteenth century, there were many "mile" units of various lengths in use, both in Europe and in the Arabic world. This has given rise to disagreements over just how long Columbus's league and mile were in modern terms. Samuel Eliot Morison assumed that Columbus used the "Roman" mile of 4860 feet. This would make his league 3.2 nautical miles long, which is the accepted length of the so-called Portuguese Maritime League (PML). The PML was known to be in common use among Spanish as well as Portuguese sailors. The PML has serious problems, however. First, when we compare the distances Columbus reported sailing along the north coast of Cuba (between known points), we find these distances are much less than what Columbus reported. Also, if we accept Morison's landfall at Watlings Island there are several other coastline lengths that would have been vastly overstated by Columbus. To solve these problems, Morison suggested that Columbus measured coastlines with a //different length league// (about 1.5 nautical miles) than he used for distances in the open sea. But there are no historical records that support such a league length; Morison's guess was entirely empirical. Also, when tracing Columbus's transatlantic voyages (both eastbound and westbound), it is impossible to make the distances come out correctly when using the PML. Most of those who have traced the transatlatic tracks of Columbus have had to rely on fudge factors to make the distances come out correctly. And finally, Columbus was Genoese, not Spanish. A shorter mile, the Italian or Geometric Mile of 4060 feet, was in common use in 15th century Italy. If Columbus used the Geometric Mile, his league would be 2.67 nautical miles, which is the Italian League, or Geometric League (GL). There are a number of 15th century documents on metrology that support this league length. James E. Kelley, Jr. was the first to propose that Columbus used this league, in his 1983 paper. Kelley supported his thesis with an analysis showing how the shorter Geometric League, combined with an accounting of currents along the north coast of Cuba, could explain Columbus's overstated length of the island. In 1992, Douglas Peck showed that this league length could also reconstruct Columbus's transatlantic track without the usual fudge factors for distances. For these reasons the 2.67 nautical mile Geometric League has gained wide support among historians as the league used by Columbus