The ship is "the horse of them that fight by sea." Francisco de Bobadilla, who had Co lumbus sent home in chains at the end of hi s third voyage in 1500. Meanwhile, the Caribbean islands were booming, with fe udal estates flourishing on land grants from the crown. These estates came to be called "encomi endas" because they were fo unded on Indian labor "commended " to farm the land for the benefi t of the landlord, usually a sprig of the warrior caste who ruled not as chief fa1mer but as a conqueror or "conqui stador." Despite unexpected imperial opportunity in the Americas, both the hard-charging Spanish and their tough cousins in Portugal kept their eyes on the glittering prize of the Indies trade. Dividing Up the Ocean World Here it seems a good idea to catch up with the farranging Portuguese. Their great sailor Bartolemeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, at the southe rn tip of Africa, in 1487 , thus open ing the direct sea route Th e 85-ton Victoria, which completed Magellan ' s voyage round the world. looked something like this ship of 1530, dra wn by Holbein-a trim , able hull eastward to the Indies. Anxious to protect their ocean driven by a more articulated rig rhan Columbus's ships ofjust a generarion trade routes , the Portuguese negotiated the Treaty of earlier. Bur look at rhe crew, shown oursize and full of sin. This is rhe Tordesillas with Spa in on learning of Columbus 's Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools. (From The Good Ship: Ships, Shipbuilding successful first voyage, whi ch most people thought had and Technology in Eng land , 1200-1520, by Ian Friel (Brirish Museum opened direct westward access to the Indies. Ratified Press, London UK , 1995)) by the Pope, Tordesillas divided the ocean world between the two Iberian kingdoms, assigning everything east of a mid-Atlantic line to Portugal , and everything man ," like the French chevalier or Italian cavaliere and the to the westto Spain. The line was set at 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, the demarcation protecting Portugal 's modem German Ritter, or " horse rider." The brute basis of the African trade, and, they fe lt, their prospective Indi es trade. chivalric order was that a knight mounted on horseback could Thi s arrangement paid an unexpected dividend when Pedro overawe or ride down the peasantry he owned, under the same right by which he held hi s land. And as Barbara Tuchman Alvares Cabral, leading a large fleet to follow up Vasco da details for us in A Distant Mirror, her close look at European Gama 's successful 1498 voyage to India, came upon the life in the 1300s, the knight did not hes itate to use his power eastern bulge of Brazil in 1500, which clearly fell within the with extraordinary brutality. This idea of people as property eastern, or Portuguese, sphere marked off by the Tordesill as had been broken in England by the 1500s-broken so deciline. The immense historic conseq uences of this early oceanic sively that the English had been able to win stunning victories voyag ing are shown by the fact that today Portugual 's heritage is rooted among some 162 million Portuguese-speaking Brain battl es on the Continent by anning the ir yeoman fanners as zil ians, or 15 times as many people as the 11 million living archers , as we have seen. o European king dared do this. today in Portugal. ¡ These opposed ways of looking at man were to add to the Columbus then addeq one more note to history. Managin g confusion that characteri zed the tumultuous 1500s. The cento persuade Ferdinand and [sabella to authorize hi s fourth tury was to unfo ld incredibly diverse, rapid and fundamental voyage in 1502, he joined the growing stream of Spanish changes in technology, yes , and in the spread of knowledge vessels coursing westward to the Caribbean islands. By this and the development of info1m ation abo ut the world . But even time a chastened man , he felt that God had punished him for more notable was the change in attitudes, ideals and expectations, reaching through to the heights, depths and further reaping too much glory pursuing hi s mission. He took to reaches of the human experience-the things Wordswo1th , wearing the rough garb of a Franciscan friar, and stayed at writing 300 years later about a Caribbean slave revolt, was to religious houses rather than the abodes of the rich and fan1ous. call "ex ultations, agonies, and man ' s unconquerable mind ." But staggering trials lay ahead in thi s voyage. He came to repent that he had ri sked the li ves of hi s brother and hi s twelveIn the Wake of Columbus year-old son Fernando, who accompanied him. However motivated , and whatever their expectati ons, people crowded aboard ships to follow Columbus to the Americas. Columbus called this voyage the Alte Viaje-the "High Yoyage"-and I agree with hi s assessment. Arriving off Hi s second voyage was made by a fleet of seventeen ships, Santo Domingo, the great city the Spanish had built in Haiti , enough to make the empty ocean white with sail , as Morison Columbus sought refuge from an impending hurri canenotes . This voyage confirmed Columbus 's remarkab le abiliwhich apparently he alone had the sea-sense to recognizeties as navigator-he hit the island chai n of the Lesser Anti ll es but was denied shelter by the governor. Finding a sheltered precisely as he planned. It shou ld also have confiimed hi s nook further down the coast, his littl e fleet survived the standing as a humanitarian-since, when he found the Taino hu1Ticane, which did a1Tive as predicted. Governor Ovando Indians had killed all the people he'd left behind to found a meantime ordered a large fleet to sea which had been preparcity, he accepted the Taino account of what the Europeans had ing for the voyage to Spain. Of the 30 ships , 25 were dedone to provoke the slaughter, and he took no revenge. But the voyage also showed him to be an erratic administrator and no stroyed, including one carrying home Co lumbus's nemesis politician at all. This led to hi s replacement by the courtier Bobadilla. SEA HISTORY 79, AUTUM
1996
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