PROFESSOR (British, Female): We’ve all heard plenty of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World on behalf of the Spanish crown. But oddly missing in the textbooks and articles is a detailed account of who this man was before his journeys across the Atlantic. I’m going to spend a good part of our class today filling in that gap. We’re going to learn about Columbus the man, and what led him to serve the Spanish monarchy as an explorer to the New World.
Now, Christopher Columbus was born on October 31st, in the year of 1451. His birthplace was the Republic of Genoa in Italy. I’ve been there and it’s truly a lovely place. Um, anyway, he was the son of a wool weaver, Domenico Colombo, who worked during his lifetime in both Genoa and Savona. Well, we at least know that the family moved to Savona in 1470 because the father took over a tavern there. Unfortunately we don’t know much about his mother, but records indicate that Christopher Columbus had four brothers and one sister.
Columbus knew from a pretty young age that sailing was his life’s calling. Multiple reports tell us that he first went to sea at the age of 10. Hard to imagine, right? He participated in Mediterranean and Aegean sea trading voyages, and this is really where he got his feet wet, so to speak. Uh, one of the trips even brought him to Khios. That’s in Greece, by the way. Then, starting in 1472, Columbus began his apprenticeship as a business agent for the Centurione, Di Negro, and Spinola families of Genoa. These were very influential and wealthy families who did extensive trading not just locally, but worldwide. From accounts I’ve read, Columbus’s prior sailing experience throughout the region is how he landed such a prestigious job.
So, moving ahead a few years, it was in 1476 that Columbus made his first of many voyages into the Atlantic, and that first one nearly cost him his life. The ship he was sailing with was attacked by French privateers and burned, forcing Columbus to swim to shore. Being that the ship was off the coast of Portugal at the time, he ended up settling in that country after making his way to Lisbon. And this is really where his adult life started. He married a local woman named Felipa Perestrello, with whom he had one son named Diego in 1480. Sadly, his wife died only a few years later in 1485, and Columbus moved with his son to Spain. There he had a second son, Fernando, in 1488. He never remarried, though. The second son was born out of wedlock with a 20-year-old orphan named Beatriz.
The next phase of his life consisted of longer journeys. He went on many trading expeditions along the coast of West Africa. These trips helped him to learn about the Atlantic current flows, at least those around the Canary Islands. Also, being at sea for such extended periods of time afforded him the opportunity to partake in his favourite hobby…reading. He was known to love astronomy, geography, and history. Some of the books of his they found years after had notes all over the margins. I guess they prove what a scholastic chap he was indeed!
Right, So, it was around the mid-1480s, then, that the idea to cross the Atlantic Ocean to get to Asia came to his mind. He and his brothers together conceived of the plan, even estimating the number of nautical miles the journey would entail. He took the idea to many influential people, including royalty, but was rejected continuously. Portugal, Genoa, Venice…they all thought the plan was unrealistic. But finally he found a sponsor in the Spanish monarchy of Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon. This was in, uh, 1486. He eventually set sail in 1492, landing not in Asia, but in the New World.