People all over the world, if they were asked who first found America could answer, “Christopher Columbus” and give the date of the great event: October 12, 1492. Columbus reached one of the Bahama islands, east of America, with his three small ships on that day, after sailing for two months across seas which were mostly unknown.
Erly Life of Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian, the son of a poor weaver. He was born in 1451 in Genoa, an Italian seaport. At that time Genoa was one of the richest cities in the world. Genoese merchants travelled all over Europe to sell silks, coral, fruit and other things and Genoese seamen sailed the merhant ships not only in the Mediterranean but on other seas too. In the middle of the 15th century much of the world was still unexplored, and most European countries were eager to find and lay claim to new territory and thus become rich. Consequently there was much fighting on the seas.
The Mediterranean galleyswere constantly passing in and out of the port of Genoa to load or unload cargoes. Their hardly crews had often been engaged in dangerous adventures and their fine and graceful ships were in a battered condition, and the seamen had plenty of exciting stories to tell little Christopher Columbus.
The boy helped his father to weave wool, but he did not like this work. He was intersted in the big ships which came from or left for strange and distant lands, and he liked to sit out-of-doors and whath them for hours.
Although his parents were very poor they managed to send him to the University ofPavia for his nautical training. There Christopher studied geography, geometry, astronomy, mathematicks, navigation and learnt how to make maps used by sailors. He soon became very clever at this work.
He was interested in the accounts written by earlier seamen and explorers, particulary those written by Marco Polo. The more he studied them, the more he longed to go to sea himself.
At last he felt that he could not stay at houme any longer, and when he was fourteen, he went to sea.
After many adventures on the sea he came to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, which was then a great and very important port. His chief occupation, when not at sea, was charting maps.
A Western Route to Asia
In the 15th century Portugal was a growing empire. The greatest desire of her ruling class was to discover a new sea route to India by which it could trade freely with the rich merchants of Bombay and Calcutta. As the only known land routes across Asia were barred by the Turks, and as the Red sea was controlled by Italy, Portugal’s rival in trade, Portugal had to find a new route.
Few people in Europe in those days knew much about other parts of the world, but it was known that far away to the east there were other great rich countries. At that time traveling was diffcult; gold and other valuable things had to be brought to Europe from the East mainly by land. Sailing ships could be used part of the way to Suez; but no route completely by sea to west was then known. Fom Suez to the north of Egypt goods had to by transported by land.
Columbus made a careful stody of the reports and geographical theories of many navigators and compared their findings. He became convinced of one very important fact:that the world was not flat but round.”If the world is round”, he thought, “surley India can be approaced not only from the west but also from the east. Surely the most direct route must lie across the Eastern Indian Ocean.” He had no doubt, that there was land across the Atlantick (the Eastern Indian Ocean at the time), because pieces of carved wood, very thick canes, trees and the body of a man of an unknown race had been drifted to the Canary Islands by westerly winds. Columbus, lessafraid of the stormy Atlantic than other seamen, decided to try to find his way to eastern India by crossing the ocean, and thus to open a new trade route. He began to plan the voyage which was to lead to his great discovery.
For nearly fourteen years Columbus perfected his plans to rech India by sailing westward from Europe and now the time had come to go and find out if his theory was correct.
The Expedition
To make the journey Columbus needed men, money and ships. He tried to get help from Portugal, from Genoa, and from England, but he failed. For seven years he did his best, but no one wanted to help him. At last the Spanish government gave him what he wanted.
At 8 o’clock in the morning of August 3, 1492, Columbus and a hundred and twenty men left the port of Palos in Spain in three small ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina. The Santa Maria was the bigest:ninety feet long. It carred the royal banner of Spain. The other two ships were much smaller. The tiny fleet set sail for the unknown witth a promise from the king of Spain of a pension for the man who first sighted land. Few of the men who were with Columbus had been willing to set out across an unknown sea for an unknown number of monyhs in sailing ships of this size. Some of them were men of Palos who had been allowed to leave prison to join the expedition. Some were young men who had got into difficulties and wanted to go away to sea until their misdemeanours were forgoten; others went because they needed money.
Trouble began soon after the ships left Palos. The men feared the yourney and wanted to return to their homes. As time passed they grew ever more afraid of the endless sea: they thought that if they went too far they would perhaps never be able to return at all. The men became mutnous.