Word: capitana
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...correct some of their mistakes, Professor Morison decided to apply the alfresco, learn-by-doing methods that Francis Parkman used for his History of France in the New World. In the summer of 1939 Morison and some friends bought the barkentine, Capitana, which was "near enough to Columbus' larger ships in rig and burthen to enable us to cross the ocean under conditions very similar to those of his day. . . ." In the Capitana they explored the European end of Columbus' routes, then headed back across the Atlantic. "Our crossing from Gomera to Trinidad was approximately on the route...
...there is not much known; it had little of the romance of the first, and not much of its terror and hardship. It came at a time when the Admiral was at the height of his fortunes: his fleet was big and well-equipped (although his flagship La Capitana, nicknamed La Galante by the sailors, was so slow that it held up the others) and the weather was fine, the northwest trades strong, and the reckonings true...
...that the authors of such books, no matter how skillfully they could find their way around the archives, had no knowledge of the sea. Last fall Professor Morison set out to test his own generous and idealistic picture of the great Discoverer, by sailing a 147-ft. barkentine, La Capitana, eastward over the route Columbus followed on his return voyages; by sailing westward from Palos, whence Columbus set out, to the Canary Islands, thence to Trinidad, Columbus' landfall on his third voyage...
...very fine seaman, who "could get to a place and then come back and find it again when he wished," who was good at dead reckoning, and who, like the old Yankee skippers, "was good by guess and by God." Greatest triumph of the rediscoverers came when Capitana made the same landfall Columbus had made. After 26 days Columbus took his bearings, sighted three hills in the distance and called the place Trinidad (trinity). Thus had Professor Morison imagined the scene before he followed in the Admiral's wake: "About five on Sunday morning . . . when the faintest grey...
...When Capitana, after 20 days, reached the approximate position where Columbus said he had seen Trinidad, Professor Morison sent young, square-jawed Seaman Malcolm Armstrong aloft. Seaman Armstrong climbed to the royal yard, called back laconically, "There's them three hills...