Word: columbus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Furthermore, the common idea that the Nina and Pinta were open or half-decked boats is "preposterous." Nina, Columbus' favorite, was "one of the greatest little ships in the world's history." She drew only six feet of water, and sailed 25,000 miles under Columbus' command. Pinta was such a smart sailer that "Columbus became annoyed at a habit of Captain Pinzon in pressing on ahead when land was expected, in order to gain the reward." Morison guesses that she was about 75 feet long. Santa Maria was "somewhat" but "not very much" bigger than...
...autumn afternoon Columbus' crews saw the last of the Canary Islands disappear. "By nightfall . . . the three ships had an uncharted ocean to themselves." How did Columbus know where he was on that sea? "The Admiral liked to pose as an expert in celestial navigation. . . . Yet the testimony of his own journals proves that the simple method of finding latitude from a meridional observation of the sun . . . was unknown to Columbus." He was unable to use the newly invented astrolabe, and probably had none aboard. The common quadrant was his only instrument of celestial navigation. Mostly he sailed by dead...
...dead reckoning, Columbus had few equals. Wrote a shipmate at the end of the Second Voyage: "But there is one thing that I wish you to know, that, in my humble opinion, since Genoa was Genoa, no other man has been born so magnanimous and so keen in practical navigation as the above-mentioned Lord Admiral: for, when navigating, by only looking at a cloud or by night at a star he knew what was going to happen and whether there would be foul weather; he himself both conned and steered at the helm; and when the storm had passed...
...compline, three of the canonical hours of prayer." Whenever possible he said his prayers in his cabin at these hours. Says Morison: "A decent formality has always been observed aboard ships at sea, even to our own day . . . any departure from the settled custom is resented by mariners. In Columbus' ships these formalities were observed with a quasi-religious ritual, which lent them a certain beauty...
...having family grace said by the youngest child") with the singing of a hymn. Further similar hymns were sung at almost every half hour of the day. But piety did not prevent the sailors from becoming terrified as the voyage went on, from plotting mutiny and the murder of Columbus. Only the landfall at San Salvador in the Bahamas prevented some kind of outbreak. Nor did piety stop the "white gods" from swindling, kidnapping, murdering and raping Indians before they had been a month in the new world. Columbus returned to Spain triumphant in the belief that he had discovered...