1492 A journal of Christopher Columbus' voyage
Sunday 9 September
He made 15 leagues that day and he decided to report less than those actually traveled so in case the voyage were long the men would not be frightened and lose courage. In the night they made 120 miles at ten miles per hour, which is 30 leagues. The sailors steered badly, straying to the west by north and even to the half division (i.e. west-northwest], because of which the Admiral rebuked them many times.
Monday 17 September
He sailed on his route west and made, day and night, somewhat more than 50 leagues. He put down but 47. The current was helping them. They saw much weed and very often and it was vegetation from rocks and it came from a westerly direction; they judged themselves to be near land. The pilots took the north, marking it, and found that the compasses northwested a full point [i.e., eleven and one-quarter degrees]; and the sailors were fearful and depressed and did not say why. The Admiral was aware of this and he ordered that the north again be marked when dawn came, an they found that the compasses were correct.
Thursday 11 October
....And because the caravel Pinta was a better sailer and went ahead of the Admiral it found land and made the signals that the Admiral had ordered. A sailor named Rodrigo de Triana saw this land first, although the Admiral, at the tenth hour of the night, while he was on the sterncastle, saw a light, although it was something so faint that he did not wish to affirm that it was land...After the Admiral said it, it was seen once or twice; and it was like a small wax candle that rose and lifted up, which to few seemed to be an indication of land. But the Admiral was certain that they were near land, because of which when they recited the Salve, which sailors in their own way are accustomed to recite and sing, all being present, the Admiral entreated and admonished them to keep a good lookout on the forecastle and to watch carefully for land; and that to the man who first told him that he saw land he would later give a silk jacket in addition to the other rewards that the sovereigns had promised, which were ten thousand maravedis as an annuity to whoever should see it first. At two hours after midnight the land appeared, from which they were about two leagues distant.
Christopher Columbus, 1451-1506: Columbus was a Genoese sailor who convinced Spain's King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to finance a mission to reach the Indies by sailing westward from Europe. His estimate of the short distance to the Indies was influenced by miscalculations of the Earth's diameter by Ptolemy, and by apocryphal Biblical accounts. Columbus made four voyages to the new world, in 1492, 1493, 1498, and 1502.
Dunn, Oliver, and Kelley, James, ed. The Diario of Christopher Columbus' First Voyage, 1492-1493. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989, pp. 29, 33, 63.
|
