His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood. In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of
Visit Website Christopher Columbus: Early Life Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool merchant, was born in Genoa, Italy, in about When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a merchant ship. He remained at sea untilwhen French privateers attacked his ship as it sailed north along the Portuguese coast.
The boat sank, but the young Columbus floated to shore on a scrap of wood and made his way to Lisbon, where he studied mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation.
He also began to hatch the plan that would change the world forever. The First Voyage At the end of the 15th century, it was nearly impossible to reach Asia from Europe by land. The route was long and arduous, and encounters with hostile armies were difficult to avoid.
Portuguese explorers solved this problem by taking to the sea: But Columbus had a different idea: Why not sail west across the Atlantic instead of around the massive African continent?
He argued incorrectly that the circumference of the Earth was much smaller than his contemporaries believed it was; accordingly, he believed that the journey by boat from Europe to Asia should be not only possible but comparatively easy.
He presented his plan to officials in Portugal and England, but it was not until that he found a sympathetic audience: Columbus wanted fame and fortune. Ferdinand and Isabella wanted the same, along with the opportunity to export Catholicism to lands across the globe. Columbus, a devout Catholic, was equally enthusiastic about this possibility.
On October 12, the ships made landfall—not in Asia, as Columbus assumed, but on one of the Bahamian islands. In Marchleaving 40 men behind in a makeshift settlement on Hispaniola present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republiche returned to Spain. Then he headed west, with his own complement of native slaves, to continue his mostly fruitless search for gold and other goods.
In lieu of the material riches he had promised the Spanish monarchs, he sent some slaves to Queen Isabella. In MayColumbus sailed west across the Atlantic for the third time. Conditions were so bad that Spanish authorities had to send a new governor to take over.
Christopher Columbus was arrested and returned to Spain in chains. Incleared of the most serious charges but stripped of his noble titles, the aging Columbus persuaded the Spanish king to pay for one last trip across the Atlantic.
This time, Columbus made it all the way to Panama—just miles from the Pacific Ocean—where he had to abandon two of his four ships in the face of an attack from hostile natives.
Empty-handed, the elderly explorer returned to Spain, where he died in However, his journey kicked off centuries of exploration and exploitation on the American continents. The consequences of his explorations were severe for the native populations of the areas he and the conquistadores conquered.
Disease and environmental changes resulted in the destruction of the majority of the native population over time, while Europeans continued to extract natural resources from these territories. Today, Columbus has a controversial legacy —he is remembered as a daring and path-breaking explorer who transformed the New World, yet his actions also unleashed changes that would eventually devastate the native populations he and his fellow explorers encountered.May 13, · documentary by WGBH on the life and travels of Christopher Columbus.
His travel journals, published –04, convinced German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to reach the same conclusion, and in —a year after Columbus's death—Waldseemüller published a world map calling the new continent America from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus". Watch video · Christopher Columbus (c.
to May 20, ) was an Italian explorer and navigator. In , he sailed across the Atlantic from Spain in the Santa Maria, with the Pinta and the Niña ships. Christopher Columbus returned to Spain from his fourth and final voyage in November of He was no longer hailed as a hero.
His difficulties as governor of Hispañola, coupled with his inability to find a route to the Indies, made him appear to be a failure in the eyes of the public. His travel journals, published –04, convinced German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to reach the same conclusion, and in —a year after Columbus's death—Waldseemüller published a world map calling the new continent America from Vespucci's Latinized name "Americus".
Throughout his life Columbus was an ambitious learner. He was fluent in Latin, Castilian, and Portuguese. He also studied astronomy, navigation, geography and history which included The Travels of Marco Polo, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville and The Works of Ptolemy.
Each of these works were influential in his life.