Columbus: Follow the Setting Sun

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This post is the third in a series on Christopher Columbus. If you missed them, read Part I here and Part II here.

Christopher Columbus Sailing from Palos — Ivan Aivazovsky (1892)

In January of 1492, after eight long years petitioning the kings, queens, and doges of Western Europe, Columbus had finally secured state backing to sail west. He wasn’t to leave immediately, however. First came many months of legal wrangling over the terms of the expedition.

Such was Columbus’ obsession with social rank and position, he seems to have expended the bulk of his social capital with Ferdinand and Isabella on securing titles for himself and his descendants. Few documents better illustrate his vainglory than that which has come to be known as the Capitulations of Santa Fe, the memorandum of agreement for the expedition.¹ It is addressed directly to the king and queen, and was signed on their behalf by the royal secretary, Juan de Coloma, but its terms have Columbus’ fingerprints all over them.

In the very first paragraph, before he has been granted permission to style himself in this way, he is named as Don Cristóbal Colón (Don is the equivalent to the British title “Lord”). If that wasn’t bold enough, the first condition states that he is to be made Admiral of the Ocean Sea. But it goes further: there is an explicit stipulation that this be recognised as an office equal in rank to the Admiral of Castille, who at that time was Don Alonso Henríque, one of the highest ranked nobles in the Spanish court and relation of King Ferdinand himself. Columbus is also to be made Viceroy and Governor-General of all the islands and mainlands to be discovered — essentially two titles amounting to the same thing: sole rulership over all lands he finds. Only then does he come to money: a tenth of the value of all things discovered.² Next on the list was an entitlement to jurisdiction over all trade disputes, meaning Columbus could administer justice upon the lands discovered. The document concludes with the provision that Columbus is granted the right to contribute one eighth of the costs to all future expeditions to the ocean of his admiralship, and thus will be entitled to one eighth of their profits.

Notice in these terms the lack of a description of the scope of the expedition. Is this purely a scouting mission? Should Columbus look to settle any new lands he might find? Should he enter into diplomacy with any peoples and civilisations he may encounter on behalf of the Spanish Crown? It doesn’t say.³

The Capitulations were signed on 17th April 1492, some four months after Columbus first received permission for his voyage. These were written up into a proper legal deed on 30th April, in which it was stated rather plainly that “Cristóbal Colón” (notice the lack of “Don”) will only receive his titles and privileges if in fact he does discover “certain islands and terra firma” out there in the ocean sea. He has not won yet. To get what he wants, Columbus’ expedition must be a success.

Terms agreed, Columbus headed west to Palos, where he began cobbling together his expedition. Or at least, he tried to. When he arrived in the port, the Genoese called a town meeting in the Church of St George and in his rather grandiose way began waving his royal warrant around and demanding the authorities acquiesce to his wishes. Needless to say, this didn’t go down all that well; weeks passed with little progress being made. This only changed when he began working with the Pinzón brothers.

The Pinzóns were Spanish sailors/merchants/corsairs (the line between those three professions was rather blurred in the 15th century) that ranked among the leading families of Palos. They had the contacts, prestige, and, most importantly, the funds to help Columbus get his expedition off the ground. For although the crown had provided a little over half of the necessary money, Columbus still needed outside investment to acquire everything he would require for the voyage. The historian Salvador de Madriaga estimates that the crown provided just over a million maravedis; Columbus put in 500,000 himself, loaned to him by the Pinzón brothers, who themselves put in the same again.⁴ Thus it was they who secured the leases of the three ships — caravels named Santa Maria, La Pinta, and La Niña⁵ — as well as the crews, food, wine, medical supplies, weapons, and ammunition needed. Columbus made sure to stock the holds too with items with which to trade with any natives he should meet — glass beads, mirrors, hawk’s bells, and other such knickknacks.

It was agreed that the eldest Pinzón, Martín Alonso, would captain the fastest of the three ships he procured, the Pinta, assisted by his middle brother, Francisco Martín, who was appointed shipmaster (second in rank to the captain). Command of the Niña was given to Vicente Yáñez, the youngest of the brothers, while Columbus himself captained the flagship, the largest, the Santa Maria. The crews the Pinzóns assembled were made up of ninety or so experienced sailors (not the pardoned criminals sometimes suggested), but — and this will be important later — they owed their loyalty to the brothers of Palos first, Columbus second. Among these sailors are two worth mentioning at the outset: Juan de la Cosa, a cosmographer of high repute and owner of the Santa Maria; and Luis de Torres, a converted Jew who could speak both Hebrew and Arabic, which Columbus believed would be useful later when they came to speak to the Great Khan of China.

Ships rigged, supplies boarded, the small fleet was finally ready to depart on 2nd August 1492. Columbus had just turned 41.

The first stage of the journey was rather straightforward. The three ships sailed southwest from Palos along a well-travelled route to the Canary Islands. Columbus himself, as well as many among the crews, had likely made this passage many times before.

Slow winds delayed them somewhat, and they didn’t make landfall at Gran Canaria until 12th August. Even more frustrating for Columbus, who was gagging to get on, was the news that the Pinta’s helm had snapped twice en route and was in need of repairs. He left Martín Alonso to oversee the refit, while he impatiently flitted to and fro among the other islands in the archipelago, picking up other supplies here and there, seeing if there wasn’t another ship he could lease to replace the damaged Pinta. In this period of anxious waiting, Columbus claims to have heard rumour of three Portuguese ships that were heading his way to capture him. This is almost certainly not true, but through this anecdote we catch a glimpse of Columbus’ paranoia and sense of self-importance even at this early stage.

After a month of delays, the Pinta was finally deemed fit for sea. The fleet left the Canaries on the 6th September, heading due west — out into open ocean.

I wonder what must have been on Columbus’ mind in those first few days, bound at last for unknown waters. Was he feeling triumphant? Was he proud of himself for having finally — after all those years of being mocked and laughed at in the courts of Iberian royalty — set out on the voyage all deemed impossible? Or was there a nagging doubt, a modicum of uncertainty, now that he had at last come to it, now that his prow beat white upon the waves of the vast Atlantic, with nothing but roiling seas between him and Asia? Could everyone else be right, and he wrong, could there be nothing out here for him but a slow and starving death under the bleak western sky?

It’s so easy for us, from our modern vantage point, knowing what happens next, to forget that the consensus at the time was that to set out on such a voyage was to doom yourself to certain death. Columbus — proud, arrogant, obstinate Columbus — believed differently to every expert alive at the time. Indeed, I suspect many among the sailors on his ship believed too that he was wrong, and had only been cajoled and persuaded to join this mad venture by the charismatic, wealthy Pinzóns. Columbus was attempting something almost no one else alive at the time would dare try. He believed it possible to cross this black and seamless sea, and he was staking his life upon it.

If the Admiral harboured any secret doubts, he didn’t record them in his otherwise extensive journal. In fact, so detailed were his notes on the first voyage, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that posterity was always on his mind; he believed history was watching him. So sure was he about this, he actually kept two logbooks. One was public, which he shared with the crew; the other was secret, only for himself. Why record things twice? He was lying to the crew. In the notes he shared with his fellow seamen, he consistently underestimated the distances they’d covered, recording the true distances only in his secret log. I suspect two things here: first, Columbus was worried about the men losing nerve the further west they travelled with no sight of land — he lied to reduce their fears. Second, even at this stage the Admiral is paranoid about others following him west; he wants to ensure he is the only man alive who knows the way. He is muddying the waters to protect his monopoly — before he has even discovered anything!

The irony of this subterfuge is that it was entirely pointless. The pilots on the other two ships in the fleet were also recording estimates of the distances travelled. They were likely as close to the truth as the secret measurements Columbus’ kept in his second logbook. The false distances the Admiral pronounced likely only seeded doubt among the men that he had any clue what he was doing.

Given this, perhaps it should come as no surprise that after two weeks at sea, sailing west, always west, whispers of discontent began to circulate among the men. It did not go unnoticed that the winds had been at their backs the entire passage thus far. How would they ever return home if the wind only blew westwards? Columbus’ haughtiness only worsened their fears; he was not to be diverted from his course now, but neither had he the charisma to convince those on board to trust his judgement. Soon the mutterings of discontent became a mutinous conspiracy. The Admiral will not turn back. He will sail us all to our doom. We must act now, or die.

Fortunately for Columbus, the Pinzón brothers caught word of the unrest. They informed the Admiral, advising him to throw overboard the ringleaders. The Genoese seemed to have lacked the courage to assert his authority in so overt a manner, instead announcing they would sail on a few days more — if they hadn’t found land by then, they would reconsider. This didn’t commit the captain to any course of action, but it seems to have staved off the rebellion, for now at least.

They had by this point travelled far enough that Columbus asked the crew to keep an eye out for land. According to his calculations, they should be approaching Cipangu (Japan). As an incentive, the Spanish Monarchs back home had promised a reward for the first man to sight land — some ten thousand maravedis per year for the rest of his life. They began to see a green weed pass by the ships, then birds flying westwards overhead, then a whale — all signs, surely, of approaching land.

On 25th September, at dusk, the Pinta gave the signal: land ahoy! The men celebrated all night. But the next morning it had vanished; it was only a mirage. The crushed hopes began to stoke unrest anew. To head this off, Martín Alonso suggested to Columbus that they alter course slightly, from due west to southwest, and give the men renewed purpose with a new direction. Columbus — jealous, petty, paranoid Columbus — refused. He could allow no man aside from himself decide their course. They continued due west.

The following day, the Niña thought they too had sighted land. This too proved to be an illusion. Columbus must have thought of Pinzón’s advice. Should they change course? He looked to the sky, and like the augurs of old he found an answer. A flock of birds flew overhead, heading southwest. With this justification in hand, the Admiral gave the order to change course: follow the birds. All that night they continued hearing flocks passing overhead. A few days later the Pinta picked up reed-stems floating in the water, as well as a stick that seemed to have upon it human-made carvings. Surely, they were nearing land now. That night, on 11th October, Columbus thought he saw a light upon the horizon, a lantern swaying in the dark. He asked two of the men if they could see it too; one said yes, the other no.

Two hours later they heard a shout. Rodrigo de Triana, upon the prow of the Pinta, gave the signal: land.⁶ This time it was true.

It was decided they would wait until dawn to make an approach, spending the rest of the night lying to. Imagine Columbus, unable to sleep. He stood on the precipice of victory. The world was wrong, and he right. He had sailed west, and so found the East. Or so he thought.

Think too of the Taíno on shore. Were any of them awake at that late hour? Could they glimpse strange lights bobbing out at sea? They weren’t to know it, but this was to be the last night of a happier age. With the breaking of dawn they would meet strangers from across the sea. They carried with them more than one plague, for those three ships would be to the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Upon them rode Conquest, Pestilence, Famine, and Death. Brought to their shores by one man’s quest for glory.

1. This is not in itself a true legal deed, but a record upon which one will be drawn up later.

2. The vagueness of this line in particular will later cause legal problems for Columbus and his descendants for decades and decades to come. Is it a tenth of all trade conducted in the Indies forevermore, or is it just the expeditions Columbus himself leads?

3. I assume this lack of direction is due to the fact that those at the Spanish court hadn’t much hope he’d find anything of note at all.

4. In today’s money that’s around $1 million. Source.

5. Pinta means the “Painted One”; Niña means “The Girl”; while Santa Maria was reportedly not actually called Santa Maria at all, but instead Marigalante, or “Gallant Mary”. Columbus evidently did not care for this irreligious invocation of his beloved Madonna, as he referred to his flagship only as Santa Maria (Saint Mary) in his logbooks.

6. The man Columbus wrongly recorded in his journal as Rodrigo de Triana was actually Juan Rodriguez Bermejo. In an episode which rather sums up Columbus, Bermejo never got to claim the reward for being the first to sight land. Columbus kept it for himself, arguing that the first sighting was actually the light he’d glimpsed a few hours earlier. He was not a good leader of men.