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At daybreak the ships weighed anchor
in the Spanish harbour of Palos de Frontera. Thus began on
5 August 1492 an adventure that was to change the world. The Italian
commander of the three ships — the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria —
with their crew of eighty-eight men was Christopher Columbus, who would go
down in history as the discoverer of America. Columbus, was born in Genoa
in 1451, and he had long cherished the plan of finding a western passage
to India. Since Greco-Roman antiquity, the talk of a western route to the
East had never entirely ceased. Until Columbus, no one had dared set out
to explore the possibility because the long voyage across the open sea
presented not just a problem of navigation, but a psychological barrier as
well. For centuries, vivid imaginations had pictured the ocean teeming
with giant squids and other sea monsters. With the dawn of Humanism,
however, such superstitious notions were jettisoned. Soon, with the
development of new astronomical navigation instruments, the bearings of a
ship could be taken accurately, even out of sight of land, and crossing
the Atlantic no longer seemed so daunting; indeed, it looked like a
practicable venture. Since the Ottomans had expanded their hegemony into
the eastern Mediterranean, the traditional trade routes to India were
blocked. Consequently, the Spanish King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella gave
Columbus the money he needed and permission to start. In the agreement
they concluded with him, the Spanish Kings conceded to Columbus the right
to be Viceroy of all islands and territories he should discover and ten
percent of any profit he might make. Both parties to the agreement were
hoping for a rich haul of gold and silver.
Columbus set out with a document in his pocket which
designated the purpose of his voyage as "service to God and the
dissemination of the true religion", even though four of his crew were men
who had been convicted of committing violent crimes but had been pardoned
by Ferdinand and Isabella. It took Columbus and his three ships over sixty
days before they sighted land. On 12 October 1492 they landed on the
island of Guanahani, now one of the Bahama Islands. Columbus, of
course, thought he was
in India. In fact he was the discoverer of the New World. Falling on his
knees and weeping, he kissed the earth, calling the place he had
discovered San Salvador — Holy Redeemer. Then he raised the Spanish flag,
had a crucifix erected and took possession of the land for Spain. The "Indios",
as he dubbed the natives, struck him as being friendly and gentle. They
seemed to have no idea of what weapons were. "I also think that they could
be converted to Christianity without any difficulty", he noted in his log
book. After discovering Cuba on 27 October 1492 and Haiti on 6 December,
he departed for Spain with crates of gold which he had found. When the
Spanish rulers saw what he had brought back with him, they started to plan
future voyages; these explorations profoundly changed the course of
history in the Americas, devastating ancient societies and giving rise to
new ones.
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