Columbus, the sailor
Column appears every Tuesday
letters tothe Times
a letter tothe Times
Discovery or not, Columbus's feat was enough to inspire any seaman.
IF EVER there were a historian a Cape Codder could appreciate, it would be Samuel Eliot Morison, who looked at the past through a sailor's eye.
Because he loved the sea, Morison (1887-1976) was particularly taken with the lives of the early explorers, including Christopher Columbus. Columbus, he wrote, was the greatest navigator of his age: "The ease with which he dissipated the unknown terrors of the ocean, the skill with which he found his way out and home, again and again, led thousands of men from every western European nation into maritime adventure and exploration." For his own satisfaction, Morison spent more than 35 years on and off retracing -under sail - Columbus's discoveries.
Morison's defense that Columbus did, indeed, "discover" America was based on his belief that the explorer's journeys changed history's course in a way that earlier migrations or voyages had not. Columbus bridged the ocean and enabled Western civilization to move even farther west. Morison, given his Boston Brahmin upbringing, no doubt considered this a turn for the better. But no matter which side of that argument you are on, it's difficult not to be caught up in Morison's descriptions of the accomplishments of Columbus and other explorers in the 15th and 16th century era of sail.
"Please remember, too," he wrote, "that these early seamen had no storm warnings, no 'law of storms' enabling them to evade the eye and that even sailing in a fleet gave little protection. Under certain conditions, a ship that foundered ... or crashed on a lee shore, could expect no help even from another ship within sight." Comparing these feats with the landing on the moon in 1969, he adds, 'The astronauts' epochal voyage into space, a triumph of the human spirit, was long prepared, rehearsed, and conducted with precision to an accurately plotted heavenly body. Their feat might be slightly comparable ... if the moon were always dark and they knew not exactly where to find it."
The European discovery of America stemmed from two motives, according to Morison: the search for a route to the Indies and the quest for paradise. Columbus left the sea for at least 10 years to sell his plan to find a route to Japan that avoided the trip around Africa. He finally succeeded and sailed from the Canary Islands on Sept. 6, 1492. His three ships were out of charted ocean within three days and were out of sight of land for a month (bringing the crews almost to mutiny), before bumping into the Bahamas in the early hours of Oct. 12.
Although Columbus certainly had reason enough for this adventure - Isabel and Ferdinand promised him power and gold - Morison knows him as a sailor, not just an adventurer. It saddens Morison that the explorer's later life did not bring him deserved recognition. But as a sailor he appreciates the moments that transcended material reward: the extraordinary coastlines Columbus explored, his "artist's sense" of natural beauty, his sense of wonder.
"As with other mariners, a month at sea healed the wounds of a year ashore, and a fair wind blew away the memory of foul weather," he wrote about Columbus. "Command of a tall and gallant ship speeding over blue water before a fresh trade wind, shaping her course for some new and marvelous land where gold is abundant and the women are kind, is a mariner's dream of the good life. ...
"Waste no pity on the Admiral of the Sea! He enjoyed long stretches of pure delight as only a seaman may know, and moments of high, proud exultation that only a discoverer can experience."
169 1998 Cape Cod Times. All rights reserved.