How Christopher Columbus Found the New World ｜ Discovery of America

During the 14th century, the port city of Genoa was a powerful marine republic, with ships sailing throughout the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. It is easy to imagine the intrigue of the boats and their crews, speaking foreign tongues and telling tales of far-off lands. Many boys, lured by the call of the sea, sought employment as cabin boys, perhaps in a determined effort to see the world beyond that of their parents. One such boy was a young wool-weaver's son called Cristoforo Columba, who we would come to know as Christopher Columbus. According to his own writings, Columbus first went to sea in 1461 at the age of 10. By the time he was 20, he was employed as a ship's captain. In 1477, he moved to Lisbon, married, and began studying sea charts, geometry, and cartography. Both himself and one of his brothers, Bartholomew, became skilled at drawing maps of the sea. Columbus continued to captain many ships and piloted a fleet of ten ships to Guinea in 1481. Trade was booming during the 14th century, but the Silk Road, in operation for over 1,500 years, had been closed off by the Ottoman Turks. The Silk Road was a network of paths that interconnected many different civilizations in the East and West. It had flourished during the reign of the Mongols, as, despite their fearsome reputation, they built their economy on trade. But when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, travel along the Silk Road became much more treacherous. Commerce became much more difficult as the Ottoman Turks boycotted trade with China and closed many routes. It was for these reasons that Europeans were desperate to find an alternative way to reach the East. In 1488, Bartholomew Dias sailed to India around Africa and into the Indian Ocean. However, this journey proved impractical, and discussions within the maritime community soon turned to talk of a journey west. Contrary to popular myth, people had known the Earth was round since the 3rd century BCE, when Hellenistic astronomers in modern-day Greece calculated the Earth's circumference. The Age of Exploration was well underway, and Europeans had already started claiming land previously undiscovered by the West. Columbus saw a way of achieving notoriety and riches beyond his station when he petitioned the King and Queen of Portugal to finance a journey designed to discover a new trade route to the Indies and China. Columbus had already achieved infamy with his tales of his navigational expertise and seafaring experiences. He was known for an extraordinary expedition to Iceland, known then as Thule, but many historians now think this claim was more clever marketing than fact. Columbus had been inspired by tales of the famous explorer Marco Polo and dreamt of exploring the unknown. In 1484, Columbus was granted an audience with King John II of Portugal. Despite interest from the king, the king's advisors assessed that the trip Columbus proposed would not be feasible. Undeterred, Columbus decided to take his proposal to Spain. King Ferdinand was away, defending southern Spain from Muslim invaders, but Queen Isabella heard of Columbus' intended quest and became interested. After hearing of Bartholomew Diaz's attempt to reach India around the Cape of Good Hope, Spain was worried that Portugal would be the first to get to the Indies by sea. However, both the queen's confessor and the king were against financing Columbus' voyage. Columbus decided to continue to France, looking for financial backing, but on the way, his story caught the attention of a prior called Juan Pérez. Pérez was entranced by Columbus' ideas and saw it as a loss for Spain should they go to France. Both Pérez and an expert in cosmography and astronomy, Dr. García Hernández, petitioned the queen on Columbus' behalf, and in 1492, Queen Isabella sent word that Columbus should return to the Spanish court. Fresh from a successful military campaign, the king and queen accepted Columbus' proposal, despite his outrageous demands. Columbus wanted this voyage to be his making and insisted on one-tenth of the profits from any discoveries he made, as well as the titles of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and High Admiral of Castile. Columbus was supplied with money, three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, and began to employ a crew. As well as seamen, Columbus recruited two barbers, a physician, a secretary, a silversmith, an assayer, and an interpreter. With his crew assembled and ships in good shape, the small fleet set sail into the unknown on August 3rd, 1492. Little did they know they were about to change the shape of the world and that the repercussions of this voyage would echo throughout history in the centuries to come. Once at sea, there were no physical points of reference for position or traveling speed. Knowing the ocean's vastness and using only an hourglass to mark the time, Columbus had a monumental task ahead of him. At night, he could use the North Star and the Greek invention of the astrolabe to roughly measure the distance they had traveled. Historians do not know if Columbus referred to any maps or projections during his voyage, but he was versed in many ancient astronomers' speculations about the size of the Earth, in particular the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. Columbus had used these famous scholars' estimates to argue that the journey to the Indies across the Atlantic was perfectly feasible. However, he had not considered that the Arab miles were longer than Roman miles and wrongfully assumed that the Arab estimations agreed with the smaller of the Greek and Roman estimations. If he had realized his error, he might have known that the land he had encountered was actually a new continent, not the East Indies. Although Columbus's original logs had been lost, copies were made, and records have survived, giving us detailed information about this infamous voyage. A Dominican historian called Bartolome de las Casas wrote in 1530 that Columbus kept two logs of distance. The one he shared with his crew underestimated the distance they had traveled to dispel the sailors' fear once they had lost sight of land. Columbus reported that many of the men were trepidatious of being so far into the ocean, especially once they could only see water surrounding them. Just over a month into the voyage, Columbus informed his crew that they had only traveled two and a half leagues when, in actuality, they had sailed 48. Toward the end of September, many men thought their journey was almost over. After spotting several birds and tufts of grass, Columbus had to explain to the hopeful men that these were signs they were near uncharted islands rather than the mainland. After more than a month at sea, even Columbus started to feel concerned. Only a slight wind was blowing, and huge waves made progress very slow. Luckily for Columbus, the wind picked up as the crew was on the point of wishing to return to When Columbus determined they were now 2,200 miles west of the Canary Islands, he must have been both astonished and worried as he had estimated that the entire journey would be no more than 1,700 miles. Feeling they must be nearing the end of their voyage, everyone on board the ship celebrated when the cry of, Land Ahoy!" rang out on September 25th. Jubilation soon turned to dismay when it was discovered they had been looking at a large cloud bank on the horizon. By early October, tensions were rising. Many of the crew thought they had overshot Japan, probably spurred on by the constant sightings of sandpipers that must have come from nearby islands. Columbus followed his instincts and continued westward, unperturbed by the thought that they had missed land. On October 7th, the crew of the Pinta saw a large flock of birds flying west-southwest. Knowing that Portuguese sailors often find land by following flocks of birds, Columbus ordered the ships to change course and headed in the direction in which the birds were flying. More birds were seen, and hopes were high that they had finally reached their goal. Unfortunately, they were again met with nothing but sea. October 10th was tense, with talk of mutiny and a retreat back to Spain, but things changed on the night of October 11th. A cane and an iron object were seen floating in the sea, along with a land plant and a small board. As the sailors roused each other from their sleep, they saw a small light in the distance and were convinced it was the flickering of a candle. At two in the morning, spurred on by the promise of a silk doublet and an annual income to whomever first saw land, a sailor called Rodrigo de Triana looked out into the night and shouted, Land ahoy! For the first time in two months, the adventurers were actually looking at solid land. Although the men were confident that they had finally reached the Indies, they had instead landed on an island in the Bahamas. As soon as they landed on the morning of October 11th, Columbus claimed the land in the name of the Spanish king and queen. The men immediately ran into the native inhabitants of the island, who they mistook to be Indian, but were members of the Taino, Lucayan, and Arawak tribes. Despite popular belief, Columbus did not set foot on American soil during this first voyage and had not yet realized that he had failed to discover a new route to the East Indies. He conducted a fruitless search for the riches he had promised to his benefactors, and on his return to Spain, Columbus left behind a makeshift colony on an island he dubbed Hispaniola. Disturbingly, he recorded his impressions of the indigenous people as, They would make fine servants. With fifty men, we could subjugate them all. Returning from his first voyage, he brought spices, gold, and some natives back with him. After six months, he was able to return to the Americas, finding his settlement destroyed. He then enslaved hundreds of indigenous peoples and continued his search for gold and riches with which to impress his patrons back in Spain. After returning from the Caribbean islands, Columbus found himself out of favor in the Spanish courts. He had not supplied nearly enough riches, neither had he found a new route to India. In 1498, the King and Queen of Spain agreed to fund another expedition across the Atlantic. On August 11th, Columbus reached the South American mainland, planting a flag on the shores of Venezuela, and still believing he would be able to find passage to India. It was only after exploring the Orinoco River that he realized he had stumbled across a continent that was hitherto unknown to the rest of the world. While Columbus is credited with bringing the Americas to the West's attention, he never knew the full extent of the continent, only ever getting as far as South America. The closest he got to achieving his original goal of finding passage to the East was four years before his death when he reached Panama, only to be forced to return to Spain empty-handed due to losing two of his four ships to storms. Columbus was not the only Western traveler to accidentally arrive in America, but he is undoubtedly the most famous. His journey West to reach the East is a captivating one, despite the long-lasting and devastating repercussions of this trip. Columbus' legacy remains highly controversial, and his travels to South America would have many far-reaching and unexpected effects on the world. To learn more about Christopher Columbus, check out our book, Christopher Columbus, A Captivating Guide to the Life of an Italian Explorer and His Voyages to the Americas. It's available as an e-book, paperback, and audiobook. Also, grab your free mythology bundle e-book while it's still available. All links are in the description. If you enjoyed the video, please hit the like button and subscribe for more videos like this.