REDISCOVERING COLUMBUS III: The Navigator by Peter Stanford On May 22, 1492, Columbus arri ved in the Atlantic port of Palos de la Frontera, fresh from the royal court in Granada. He was no w armed with the necessary orders to acqui re and outfit the ships he needed for hi s long-pl anned voyage westward into the ocean whose far side no one had reached from Spain, though rumors and myths abounded. Palos, a small seaport on the Rio Tinto, nearthe Portuguese border, was of course where Columbus had come as hore in Spain seven years earlier, seeking the support which Thei r Catholic Majesties had now given him. What had moved them at last? The plan of the voyage and its author had been rejected by Portugal, the leading maritime nati on of the day, and by Queen Isabe lla's own learned counse ll ors in conclave assembled. It was a poetic, not practical decis ion. Now that the Castil ian horsemen had reached the edge of the land in their long push southward against the Moors, and there was no more of Iberian Spain to conquer, it was as if the horsemen took wing and jumped off to reach new lands over the sea ... and once more, to conquer them for Chri stendom. Results not at all fa nciful were to spring fro m thi s decision to make a great westward voyage. In the next hundred years a whole ocean hitherto un known to Euro peans, the Pac ific wo uld be crossed regularl y by Spani sh ships, and, on its fa r side a large cl uster of islands, the Phil ippines , wo uld be named fo r a Spani sh king. T he great ocean itself became known as " the Spani sh lake." But at thi s point in time, Spa in was not the country to make long voyages, Portugal was. T he seaport town of Palos was opportunely situated on the Portuguese frontier. It shared the art of building and sailing carave ls and had until recentl y been engaged in the long-haul trade with Africa. Portugal had proved a tough porcupine for Spa in to swallow , and the attempt to do so had been g iven up by the time of Ferdinand and Isabell a. Indeed , to secure safety fo r the ir shipping in the face of the stro ng war fl eets of Portuga l, based between the south and north Atl antic coasts of Spain , the Spani sh monarchs had agreed to keep Spani sh shi ps out of the African trade. So the ships of Palos no longer went that way, except to visit their colonies in the Canary Islands, a few hundred miles out out sea off the bul ge of West Afri ca. It is a temptati on of course to read great thi ngs into small events, because the great things did happen along later. But in the case of Columbus, the mythmak ing power was with him at the time. He did not know about the Pac ific Ocean or the Americas, nor did hi s fo ur voyages te ll him anything except that he had fo und a new continent where none had been supposed to li e; but he knew that something great, some great destin y fo r Spain and fo r the re lig ion the Spani sh monarchs served was overseas. T hi s was an indwe lling conviction of hi s; and he profoundl y be lieved that great destiny to be immanent in the world ... and he, Colum bus, was there to rea li ze the truth , to be the Chri st-bearer, as hi s name, Chri sto pher denoted. It was thi s power of conviction undo ubtably that turned the Queen's mind and bent the King's to support hi s venture. A recent biographer, G ianno Granzotto, takes this view of Columbus as a poet, even a prophet, speak ing to something in the Spani sh soul. Granzotto's view is one that makes practical sense out of the otherwise mysterious and unlike ly roya l sponsorship of Co lumbus' s voyage. Granzotto gi ves us thi s picture of Columbus as he came as hore to begin hi s long effort to sec ure that vital sponsorship, as a man whose mind was "swimming with ideas."
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" He had acc umul ated a great store of experience, adventure, refl ection , research and read ing whi ch formed a kind of labyrinth of fa ncy in which he risked getting lost. For years and years he had done nothing but fantasize. But now he had gauged the ocean , he had sailed itfarand wide. His mind was no longer filled with onl y illusions. Hehad experienceddirectphysical contact with the objects of hi s fan cy." Columbus had worked as a mapmaker in Portugal , and he was fasc inated to the point of obsess ion with the actual shape of the world and the strange lands on it to the eastward. What a visionary thing to reach those lands by sailing westward! One mi sses, I think , a most important thing about Columbus if one thinks he viewed this course in purely mechanical terms. He was a voyager in search of the meanings of the world , as we ll as its physical configuration. Granzotto gives us a further picture of Columbu s as he was after hi s "years of great angui sh," as he called hi s years seeking spon sorship for his voyage. Hi s angui sh was tempered by hi s stubborn hope, and Granzotto fee ls he learned something by hanging onto that hope through difficult times: " He was a very restless man by nature. But he knew how to be patient, and in the end thi s was the key to hi s victory, which was in a sense a triumph over himself as well. He felt it was hi s mi ssion not onl y to explore and di scover, but to own things, to conquer, and possess." There was a dark side to Co lumbus's vi sion , as the native peoples he came across in the America's were to learn. He was not alone in thi s in hi s time, no r would he be in ours. And there was a dark side to the Queen's vi sion as we ll. Columbus ' s later bi ographers are unanimou s in noting that one reason he sailed from the little port of Palos was th at the great ports were jammed with shipping taking the Jews out of Spain into exile. Hav ing dri ven out the Moors, the Catholic monarchs decided to complete the " purification" of the kingdom by driving out the Jews. Thi s was not a racia l but a reli gious matter- it was acceptable to be Jewi sh, but onl y if you abandoned your re ligion and converted to Chri stianity. Indeed, one of the men who sailed with Co lumbus, Lui s de Torres, a converso (converted Jew) went on Columbus's voyage as interpreterHebrew was thought to be the mother tongue of all langu age. Columbu s himself makes no mention of the terrible scenes taking place in the Spani sh seaports as he made ready to leave. And one wonders if there were not other reasons than the overcrowding of other ports, to bring him back to Palos to mount the ex pedition. There the monarchs had a c la im on two ships to be taken up at the ir pleasure, as compensation for some past infractio n of the rul es, perhaps a cargo too many smuggled in from Afri ca. And the fri ars of the Franciscan Monastery of La Rabida, Co lumbus's good fri ends, were learned men and we ll connected at the court. Considering the religiou s contex t in whi ch the voyage was to be carried o ut, it is not fa r-fetched to see the monas tery as a kind of sponsor of the voyage. In any event, the effort, gathering up three ships and ninety men and o utfitting them with food and other supplies for a year, wo uld sure ly be a bless ing to the local economy, as it had been shut off, for some years now, from the Afri can trade. On May 23, the day after Columbus's arri val in Palos , hi s letter of authority was read o ut in the Church of St. George. The church still stands today, though the bend in the ri ver that bro ught ships practicall y to its doorstep has long ago been fill ed in . Two locall y owned carave ls, picked up according to SEA HISTO RY 55 , AUTUMN 1990