Columbus was one of the luckiest sons of guns who ever lived. First he trusted his own calculations of the planet’s circumference over those of Eratosthenes. Plus be believed the earth was pear-shaped, and considerably smaller in the northern hemisphere than at the equator. And he trusted in the accuracy of the maps of Asia that had been based on the accounts of Marco Polo. Except Polo had greatly exaggerated the size of Asia to make his exploits seem all the more heroic. Taken together, Columbus underestimated the distance from Europe to Asia (when sailing to the west) by on the order of 12,000 miles.
A Spanish Caravelle could sail about 3500 miles on a full ration of food an water so the typical exploratory tactic was to sail outbound on the order of 1750 miles, and if you hadn’t made landfall by that point, you’d turn around and come home. Except it was 3100 miles before Columbus reached the Bahamas (which was barely a quarter of the way to his intended destination of Asia).
And contrary to popular myth, his crew were not condemned convicts or derelict sailors who couldn’t get real work. They were among the most experienced and accomplished sailors at Ferdinand and Isabella’s disposal. The sort of men who’d have had a pretty finely-honed sense for when they’d reached (and passed) that point of no return. And they’d have known they were weeks beyond it before they reached the Bahamas.
So somewhere before they made landfall, they probably had a staff meeting with Chris to voice their concerns. Whether they were brandishing knives (and whether Chris was standing or prostrate) when this conversation took place isn’t known, but what is known is Columbus must have been one heck of a salesman, else they’d probably have slit his throat, tossed his body into the ocean, and sworn to God that he’d died of scurvy.
Instead he stumbled onto a 63 square mile island he had no reason to know was there in a 41 million square mile ocean and earned a permanent spot in the history of the world. He might have been Italian but he had the luck of the Irish.
Well, Columbus may have visited Ireland at one point...so maybe some of the luck of the Irish rubbed off on him.
Bow that’s the way in which history should be taught!
“but he had the luck of the Irish.”
Who got here *long* before Columbus and the Vikings did.
:)