Four Great Voyages Columbus lived in the perfect place at the perfect time for the role he was destined to play in history. He was bom in 1451 in Genoa. As a boy, Columbus helped his father in his wool-weaving business. His father soon pushed him into a business career. At the age of 14, Christopher began sailing on trading ships in the Mediterranean. When he was 25 years old, on his first voyage in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Portugal, his ship was attacked by pirates. The ship sank, but Columbus held onto a floating oar until he reached the Portuguese shore.
For his first great voyage, Columbus had three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The entire crew of all three ships numbered about 90. The ships sailed from the Canary Islands on September 6, 1492. Weeks went by, and the sailors became frightened. They begged Columbus to turn back; there were even whispers of mutiny. Columbus wrote in his journal, ‘I comforted them with great promises of land and riches. On October 10, Columbus and his crew agreed to sail on for 3 more days and then turn around if no land was seen.
Two days later, at night, the sailors saw light in the darkness and then white sand shining in the moonlight. Columbus’s ships were approaching an island in the Bahamas, an island that Columbus named San Salvador.
When dawn came, Columbus and some of his men came ashore in small boats. They placed a Spanish flag in the ground and declared the island a Spanish territory. They were greeted by timid but friendly people who wore no clothes. Because Columbus thought he had landed on an island in the Indies near Japan or China, he called these natives Indians.
The three ships spent a few days at San Salvador and then sailed on to Cuba and Hispaniola (where Haiti and the Dominican Republic are now located). There the Santa Maria was wrecked. Columbus built a fort on the island and left 39 men there, then the Nina and Pinta set sail for Spain. They took with them some of their findings — trinkets, plants, birds... and several New World natives. The voyage home was extremely rough, and some of the Indians died. On March 15, Columbus’s ships arrived safely in Spain.
After his first voyage, Columbus was showered with honours. He was now to be titled ‘Don’ and he had the right to sit in the presence of the king and queen. For his second expedition, he was given 17 ships and about 1,500 men.
Columbus made one more voyage from Spain to West Indies and that time he finally reached the mainland of South America. But his colony was in trouble. The Spanish colonists had expected to find gold and riches. Instead, they found hard work, unhealthy climate and constant danger.
Columbus died in 1506 and was buried in Seville. Even after his death he continued to travel. In 1542, his bones were shipped to Santo Domingo to rest with honour in the cathedral. Then his remains were moved to Havana and in 1899 again to Seville. But were they? Some say that the wrong bones were moved from Santo Domingo and that the Admiral still rests on his beloved island of Hispaniola. |