Westward Traces Columbus A Documentary Crew Re-Traces Columbus's First Voyage Through the "Indies" by Jeffrey Bolster
Sea Edu cation Association schooner Westward.
January 12, 1990 "Richard, our Chief Mate, is making observations with the bronze astrolabe and wooden quadrant. Albert, Jessica , and I are mapping the low Bahamian island as it slides by, much as Columbus might ha ve done. We use nothing but the ship' s compass and a pencil, eye-balling Westward ' s speed to measure distance. The ship is running free , forecourse pulling like a train , mainsail wung-out. It' s glorious sailing, and we' re in the wake of Columbus!" My sea journal begins only a little less ex huberantl y than Columbus ' s, kept498 years earlier in the same waters . The Admiral wrote a sple ndidly compelling log of that hi storic first European voyage through the Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti , and the Dominican Republic. Now we were using it to re-trace hi s route. Hi s enthusiasm was contagio us. Everyone on board had been bitten by the Columbus bug-seamen, hi storians, archeologists, scientists and the television documentary crew. Aboard Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria Columbus and his men made hi story. Their courage and Christian convictions, their overpowering greed, their eco logical exchange-alI changed the cou rse of the world . Aboard Westward we were to make hi story in a different sense-to shape it, to fas hion it, to interpret it for millions of people in a National Public Television documentary series . T he executive producer, Zvi Dor-Ner, intuitively knew that the authenticity he sought could only be achieved by filming from a ship under sail. If Columbus 20
sailed in 1492 for God , gold, and glory, we sailed a similartrack in 1990 with the more modest mission of teaching our contemporaries a hi story of di scovery . We picked up the Spanish explorers ' track at San Salvador, the island man y authorities believe to be Columbus ' s New World landfall. Captain Wallace Stark dropped anchor in the lee of Cockburn Town , and shore parties boarded inflatabl es to land on the beach. Near a rock formation , poss ibly the one Columbus described as "a quarry of stones shaped very fair for church edifices or other royal works," the cameras rolled while the ship 's company disc ussed the landfall controversy . Our stay was short, much shorter than the Admiral's. We had only to film one sequence of the documentary. He had to ex plore, to try to learn the langauge of the people he found on the island they called G uanahani , and to marve l at the fa ntasy unfolding before him . Westward headed south , with Rum Cay (poss ibly Columbus's Santa Mari a de la Conception) to leeward. We anchored again off Crooked Island (poss ibly the fourth island that Co lumbu s ex plored), and then bore away southwest for Cuba. No Indian canoe could have made the cross ing that night. Easterlies registering Force F ive on the Beaufort scale turned the cobalt blue sea into a frenzy of white foam , and our normall y dry decks were covered in spray. Some of the less seasoned members of the exped ition found their enthusiasm tempered by the age-old malady of sea-voyagers. If the Americas were not a New World for us, Cuba at least was . Sealed off as it has been for thirty years, C uba remains an eni gma to most Americans. Yet here we were, smoki ng cigars , talking politics with Cubans, choking on the ex hau st of East German cars, and travelling into the interior as had Columbu s' s envoys to local ch iefs . Our voyage in 1990 did not replicate Columbu s' s wo nders, but it had its own-as all voyages shou ld. Gibara, our first Cuban port call , is where Co lumbus initi ally saw " men and women , carrying a charred , ho I low wood in their hands and herbs to smoke in thi s wood." Had Columbus filled hi s ships with this tobacco, instead of some of the pseudo-aloes and psuedo- rhubarbs that he found , he might have started a profitable trade, and hooked Ferdinand and
Isabell a on nicotine. Columbus named thi s place Rio de Mares; and tried to establish its latitude with hi s quadrant. We carried afifteenthcentury style quadrant aboard Westward, and we too observed the Pole Star from Gibara, interrupted only by the sweeping strobe li ght of the Cuban Guarda Costas. They understandably paid close attention to these Americans anchored offshore. But for the strobe light, it was a perfect opportunity to compare observations by astrolabe, quadrant, and modern sextant. They were remarkably close. Our voyage continued to the east, to more C uban ports, and to Haiti . Every inch we fought the buffeting trade winds Columbus had to wait-out, or tack against. We had the edge, with a diesel auxiliary engine. Despite the diesel, and despite West ward' s staunch steel hull- more evocative of a sea-kindly North Sea pilot boat than Columbus's burthensome Santa.Maria, or hi s nimble caravels Pinta and Nina-we felt linked to the fifteenthcentury Iberi an marineros who preceeded us. We shared the tropical dawn, pink and azure before the glaring whiteness of day in full-swing ; we shared the slap of waves on the hull, and the constant almost imperceptible motion which to a seaman signifies that his hull is afloat, and alive in her e lement. W e shared the gear failures, the dangerof stranding, the separate-ness from those who stayed at home. We shared a common knowledge of seafaring under sail. In Haiti we sailed into Acul Bay, a place worthy of the prai se Columbus lavi shed on it. " I have been sailing the seas for 23 years," he wrote , "and I have seen all the East and West (as it is called in go ing to the north, which is England), and I have travelled through Guinea, but in all those regions harbors as perfect as these will never be found." Acul Bay is breathtak ing. Its shores are lush and green, its harbor deep, its surrounding mountains prec ipitous. With no town , no crui se ship facilities, no marina, it is access ible only to enterpri sing yachtsmen. The Arawaks recognized its beauty and productivity . Five hundred years ago Columbu s noti ced , " the area is inhabited with many people." We had bare ly set back on the anchor in a mangrove-fringed cove, when a fl eet SEA HISTORY 55, AUTUMN 1990