Christopher Columbus
Wherever we seem to go in the Caribbean, Columbus
has been before us, so here is a history of the man himself. Christopher Columbus Known as 'the man who discovered
America', Columbus was in fact trying to find a westward sea passage to the
Orient when he landed in the New World in 1492. This unintentional discovery was
to change the course of world history.
Potted History. Christopher
Columbus was born in Genoa between August and October 1451. His father was a
weaver and small-time merchant. As a teenager, Christopher went to sea,
travelled extensively and eventually made Portugal his base. It was here that he
initially attempted to gain royal patronage for a westward voyage to the Orient
- his 'Enterprise of the Indies'. When this failed, and
appeals to the French and English courts were also rejected, Columbus found
himself in Spain, still struggling to win backing for his project. Finally, King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella agreed to sponsor the expedition, and on the 3rd
August 1492, Columbus and his fleet of three ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta
and the Niña, set sail across the Atlantic.
Ten weeks later, land was sighted. On the 12th
October, Columbus and a group of his men set foot on an island in what later
became known as the Bahamas. Believing that they had reached the Indies, the
newcomers dubbed the natives 'Indians'. Initial encounters were friendly, but
indigenous populations all over the New World were soon to be devastated by
their contact with Europeans. Columbus landed on a number of other islands in
the Caribbean, including Cuba and Hispanola, and returned to Spain in triumph.
He was made 'Admiral of the Seven Seas' and Viceroy of the Indies, and within a
few months, set off on a second and larger voyage. More territory was covered,
but the Asian lands that Columbus was aiming for remained elusive. Indeed,
others began to dispute whether this was in fact the Orient or a completely
'new' world.
He married Filipa Moniz Perestrello, daughter
of the Porto Santo governor, the
Portuguese nobleman of Genoese origin Bartolomeu
Perestrello. In 1479 or 1480, his
son Diego was
born.
Columbus made two further voyages to the newfound territories,
but suffered defeat and humiliation along the way. A great navigator, Columbus
was less successful as an administrator and was accused of mismanagement. He
died on 20th May 1506 a wealthy but disappointed man.
Voyages / Navigation plans. In more
detail.
The "Colombus map" was
drawn circa 1490 in the workshop of Bartolomeo and Christopher Columbus in
Lisbon . Columbus's geographical conceptions.
Columbus believed the (incorrect) calculations of
Marinus of Tyre,
putting the landmass at 225 degrees, leaving only 135 degrees of water.
Moreover, Columbus believed that one degree represented a shorter distance on
the Earth's surface than was actually the case. Finally, he read maps as if the
distances were calculated in Italian miles (1,238 metres). Accepting the length of a degree to be
56⅔ miles, from the writings of Alfraganus, he therefore calculated the circumference of the Earth
as 25,255 kilometers at most, and the distance from the Canary
Islands to Japan as 3,000
Italian miles (3,700 km, or 2,300 statute miles). Columbus did not realize
Al-Farghani used the much longer Arabic mile (about 1,830 m).
Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on the Latin edition of Marco Polo's
Le livre des
merveilles.
The true circumference of the Earth is about
40,000 km (25,000 sm), a figure established by Eratosthenes in the second
century BC, and the distance from the Canary Islands to Japan 19,600 km (12,200
sm). No ship that was readily available in the 15th century could carry enough
food and fresh water for such a journey. Most European sailors and navigators
concluded, probably correctly, that sailors undertaking a westward voyage from
Europe to Asia non-stop would die of thirst or starvation long before reaching
their destination. Spain, however, having completed an expensive
war, was desperate
for a competitive edge over other European countries in trade with the East
Indies. Columbus promised such an advantage. While
Columbus's calculations underestimated the circumference of the Earth and the
distance from the Canary Islands to Japan, Europeans also generally assumed that
the aquatic expanse between Europe and Asia was
uninterrupted.
Arms of Columbus. Columbus and Queen
Isabella. Detail of the Columbus Monument in Madrid
(1885).
Map of the first voyage of
Columbus. Replica of the Santa Maria.
First Voyage. On the evening of
the 3rd of August 1492, Columbus departed from Palos de la
Frontera with three ships;
one larger carrack,
Santa Maria, nicknamed Gallega (the Galician), and two smaller
caravels,
Pinta (the Painted)
and Santa Clara, nicknamed Nina after her owner Juan Niño of Moguer. They were the
property of Juan de la Cosa
and the Pinzon brothers (Martin Alonso
and Vicente Yanez), but the monarchs forced the Palos inhabitants to contribute to the expedition. Columbus
first sailed to the Canary Islands, which were owned by Castile, where he
restocked the provisions and made repairs. On the 6th of September, he departed
San Sebastian de la Gomera for what
turned out to be a five-week voyage across the ocean. Land
was sighted at 02:00 on the 12th of
October 1492, by a sailor named Rodrigo de Triana (also known as Juan Rodríguez Bermejo) aboard Pinta.
Columbus called the island San Salvador now The Bahamas; the natives called it Guanahani. Exactly which island in the Bahamas this corresponds
to is an unresolved topic; prime candidates are Samana Cay, lana Cay or San
Salvador Island (named San Salvador
in 1925 in the belief that it was Columbus's San Salvador). The indigenous
people he encountered,
the Lucayan, Taino or
Arawak, were peaceful and friendly.
From the 12th of October 1492, entry in his journal he wrote of them, "Many
of the men I have seen have scars on their bodies, and when I made signs to them
to find out how this happened, they indicated that people from other nearby
islands come to San Salvador to capture them; they defend themselves the best
they can. I believe that people from the mainland come here to take them as
slaves. They ought to make good and skilled servants, for they repeat very
quickly whatever we say to them. I think they can very easily be made
Christians, for they seem to have no religion. If it pleases our Lord, I will
take six of them to Your Highnesses when I depart, in order that they may learn
our language. "Lacking modern weaponry and even metal-forged swords or pikes, he
remarked upon their tactical vulnerability, writing, "I could conquer the whole
of them with 50 men, and govern them as I pleased."
Captain's Ensign of Columbus's
Ships. A depiction of Columbus claiming possession of the New
World in a
Chromolithograph
made by the Prang Education Company in 1893
Columbus also explored the northeast coast of
Cuba (landed on the 28th
of October) and the northern coast of Hispaniola, by the 5th of December. Here, the Santa
Maria ran aground on
Christmas morning 1492 and had to be
abandoned. He was received by the native cacique Guacanagari, who gave him permission to leave some of his men
behind. Columbus left thirty nine men and founded the settlement of La
Navidad in what is now present-day
Haiti. Before returning to Spain, Columbus also kidnapped some
ten to twenty-five natives and took them back with him. Only seven or eight of
the native Indians arrived in Spain alive, but they made quite an impression on
Seville. Columbus headed for Spain, but another storm forced
him into Lisbon. He anchored next to
the King's harbour patrol ship on the 4th of March 1493. After spending more
than one week in Portugal, he set sail. He reached Spain on the 15th of March
15. Word of his finding new lands rapidly spread through
Europe. There is
increasing modern scientific evidence that this voyage also brought
syphillis back from the New World.
Many of the crew members who served on this voyage later joined the army of King
Charles VIII in his invasion of
Italy in 1495 resulting in the spreading of the disease across Europe and as
many as five million deaths.
Second voyage
The map of the second voyage
undertaken by Columbus
Columbus left Cadiz , Spain, on the 24th of September 1493 to find new
territories, with 17 ships carrying supplies, and about 1,200 men to colonize
the region. On the 13th of October, the ships left the Canary Islands as they
had on the first voyage, following a more southerly course. On the 3rd of November 1493, Columbus sighted a rugged island that
he named Dominica - Latin for
Sunday; later that day, he landed at Marie Galante, which he named Santa Maria la Galante. After sailing
past Iles des Sanites, he arrived
at Santa Maria de Guadeloupe de
Extremadura - after the image of the Virgin Mary venerated at the Spanish
monastery of Villuercas, in
Guadalupe, Spain, which he explored between the 4th and the 10th of November
1493. Michele da Cuneo, Columbus’s childhood friend from
Savona, sailed with Columbus during the second voyage and wrote: "In my opinion,
since Genoa was Genoa, there was never born a man so well equipped and expert in
the art of navigation as the said lord Admiral." Columbus named the small island
of "Saona ... to honor Michele da
Cuneo, his friend from Savona."
The exact course of his voyage through the Lesser
Antilles is debated, but it
seems likely that he turned north, sighting and naming several islands,
including Montserrat
(for Santa Maria de Montserrate, after the Blessed Virgin of the Monastery of
Montserrat, Mountain of Montserrat, Catalonia, Spain),
Antigua (after a church
in Seville, Spain, called Santa Maria la Antigua, meaning "Old St. Mary's"),
Redonda (for Santa Maria
la Redonda, Spanish for "round", owing to the island's shape),
Nevis (derived from the
Spanish, Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, meaning "Our Lady of the Snows", because
Columbus thought the clouds over Nevis Peak made the island resemble a
snow-capped mountain), Saint Kitts (for St. Christopher, patron of sailors and travelers), Sint
Eustatius (for the early
Roman martyr),
Saba (also for St. Christopher?),
Saint Martin (San Martin), and
Saint Croix (from the Spanish
Santa Cruz, meaning "Holy Cross"). He also sighted the island chain of the Virgin
Islands (and named them
Islas de Santa Ursula y las Once Mil Virgenes, Saint Ursula and the 11,000
Virgins, a cumbersome name that was usually shortened, both on maps of the time
and in common parlance, to Islas Virgenes), and he also named the islands of
Virgin Gorda (the fat virgin),
Tortola, and Peter
Island (San Pedro).
He continued to the Greater Antilles, and landed at
Puerto Rico (originally San
Juan Bautista, in honor of Saint John the Baptist, a name that was later
supplanted by Puerto Rico (English: Rich Port) while the capital retained the
name, San Juan) on the 19th of November 1493. One of the first
skirmishes between native Americans and Europeans since the time of the Vikings
took place when Columbus's men rescued two boys who had just been castrated by
their captors.
On the 22nd of November, Columbus
returned to Hispaniola, where he intended to visit Fuerte de la
Navidad (Christmas Fort),
built during his first voyage, and located on the northern coast of
Haiti; Fuerte de la
Navidad was found in ruins, destroyed by the native Taino people, whereupon, Columbus moved more than 100
kilometres eastwards, establishing a new settlement, which he called La
Isabela, likewise on the
northern coast of Hispaniola, in the
present-day Dominican Republic.
However, La Isabela
proved to be a poorly chosen location, and the settlement was short-lived.
He left Hispaniola on the 24th of April 1494,
arrived at Cuba
(naming it Juana) on the 30th of April. He explored the southern
coast of Cuba, which he believed to be a peninsula rather than an island, and
several nearby islands, including the Isle of Pines (Isla de las
Pinas, later known as La Evangelista, The Evangelist). He reached
Jamaica on the
5th of May. He retraced his route to Hispaniola, arriving on
20th of August , before he finally returned to Spain. During his second voyage, Columbus and his men instituted a policy in
Hispaniola which has been referred to by numerous historians as genocide. The
native Taino people of the island were systematically enslaved and murdered.
Hundreds were rounded up and shipped to Europe to be sold; many died en route.
For the rest of the population, Columbus demanded that all Taino under his
control should bring the Spaniards gold. Those that didn't were to have their
hands cut off. Since there was, in fact, little gold to be had, the Taino fled,
and the Spaniards hunted them down and killed them. The Taino tried to mount a
resistance, but the Spanish weaponry was superior, and European diseases ravaged
their population. In despair, the Taino engaged in mass suicide, even killing
their own children to save them from the Spaniards. Within two years, half of
what may have been 250,000 Taino were dead. The remainder were taken as slaves
and set to work on plantations, where the mortality rate was very high. By 1550,
60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred Taino were left on their
island. In another hundred years, perhaps only a handful
remained.
Third voyage
Map of Columbus's Third
Voyage
On the 30th of May 1498, Columbus left
with six ships from Sanlucar, Spain , for his third trip to the New World. He was
accompanied by the young Bartolome de Las Casas, who would later provide partial transcripts of
Columbus's logs. Columbus led the fleet to the Portuguese
island of Porto Santo,
his wife's native land. He then sailed to Madeira and spent some time there with the Portuguese captain
João Gonçalves da Camara before sailing to the Canary Islands and Cape
Verde. Columbus landed
on the south coast of the island of Trinidad on the 31st of July. From the 4th
of August through to the 12th of August, he explored the Gulf of
Paria which separates
Trinidad from
Venezuela. He explored the
mainland of South America, including the Orinoco River. He also sailed to the islands of
Chacachacare and Margarita
Island and sighted and named
Tobago (Bella Forma) and
Grenada (Concepcion). Columbus returned to Hispaniola on the 19th of August to find that many of the
Spanish settlers of the new colony were discontented, having been misled by
Columbus about the supposedly bountiful riches of the new world. An entry in his
journal from September 1498 reads, "From here one might send, in the name of the
Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold..." Indeed, as a fierce supporter
of slavery, Columbus ultimately refused to baptize the native people of
Hispaniola, since Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians.
Columbus repeatedly had to deal with rebellious settlers and
natives. He had some of his crew hanged for disobeying him. A number of
returning settlers and sailors lobbied against Columbus at the Spanish court,
accusing him and his brothers of gross mismanagement. On his return he was
arrested for a period (see Governorship and arrest section
below).
Fourth voyage. Columbus made a fourth voyage nominally in search of the Strait of
Malacca to the Indian
Ocean. Accompanied by
his brother Bartolomeo
and his 13-year-old son Fernando, he left Cádiz, Spain, on the 11th of May
1502, with the ships Capitana, Gallega, Vizcaína and Santiago de Palos. He
sailed to Arzila
on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers whom he had heard were under siege by the
Moors. On the 15th of
June, they landed at Carbet on the island of Martinique. A hurricane was brewing, so he continued on, hoping to find shelter on
Hispaniola. He arrived at Santo
Domingo on the 29th of
June, but was denied port, and the new governor refused to listen to his storm
prediction. Instead, while Columbus's ships sheltered at the mouth of the Rio
Jaina, the first Spanish treasure
fleet sailed into the hurricane. Columbus's ships survived with only minor
damage, while twenty-nine of the thirty ships in the governor's fleet were lost
to 1st of July storm. In addition to
the ships, 500 lives (including that of the governor, Fransisco
de Bobadilla)
and an immense cargo of gold were lost to the sea. After a
brief stop at Jamaica,
Columbus sailed to Central America, arriving at Guanaja (Isla de Pinos) in the Bay
Islands off the coast of
Honduras on the
30th of July. Here Bartolomeo found native merchants and a large
canoe, which was described as "long as a galley" and was filled with cargo. On
the 14th of August, he landed on the American mainland at Puerto
Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras,
Nicaragua and Costa
Rica, before arriving
in Almirante Bay, Panama
on the 16th of October.
On the 5th of December 1502, Columbus and his crew
found themselves in a storm unlike any they had ever experienced. In his journal
Columbus writes,
For nine days I was as one lost, without hope of
life. Eyes never beheld the sea so angry, so high, so covered with foam. The
wind not only prevented our progress, but offered no opportunity to run behind
any headland for shelter; hence we were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean,
seething like a pot on a hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one
whole day and night it blazed like a furnace, and the lightning broke with such
violence that each time I wondered if it had carried off my spars and sails; the
flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought that the ship
would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky; I
do not say it rained, for it was like another deluge. The men were so worn out
that they longed for death to end their dreadful suffering.
In Panama, Columbus learned from the natives of
gold and a strait to another ocean. After much exploration, in January 1503 he
established a garrison at the mouth of the Rio Belen. On the
6th of April one of the ships became stranded in the river. At the
same time, the garrison was attacked, and the other ships were damaged
(Shipworms also damaged the ships in tropical waters.). Columbus left for
Hispaniola on the 16th of April, heading north. On the
10th of May he sighted the Cayman Islands, naming them
"Las Tortugas" after the numerous sea turtles there. His ships
next sustained more damage in a storm off the coast of Cuba. Unable to travel
farther, on the 25th of June 1503, they were beached in St. Ann's
Bay, Jamaica.
Columbus intimidates natives by
predicting the lunar eclipse
For a year Columbus and his men remained stranded
on Jamaica. A Spaniard, Diego Mendez, and some natives paddled a
canoe to get help from
Hispaniola. That island's
governor, Nicolas de Ovando y Caceres, detested Columbus and obstructed all efforts to rescue
him and his men. In the meantime Columbus, in a desperate effort to induce the
natives to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, successfully
intimidated the natives by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse for the
29th of February 1504, using the Ephemeris of the German
astronomer Regiomontanus.
Help finally arrived, no thanks to the governor, on the 29th of June 1504, and
Columbus and his men arrived in Sanlucar Spain, on the 7th of November.
Governorship and arrest
During Columbus's stint as governor and viceroy,
he had been accused of governing tyrannically. Columbus was physically and
mentally exhausted; his body was wracked by arthritis and his eyes by
ophthalmia. In October 1499,
he sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal
commissioner to help him govern. The Court appointed
Fransisco de Bobadilla,
a member of the Order of Calatrava; however, his authority stretched far beyond what
Columbus had requested. Bobadilla was given total control as governor from 1500
until his death in 1502. Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away,
Bobadilla was immediately peppered with complaints about all three Columbus
brothers: Christopher, Bartolomé, and Diego. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish
historian, states: "Even those who loved him (Columbus) had to admit the
atrocities that had taken place."
As a result of these testimonies and without being allowed a
word in his own defence, Columbus upon his return, had manacles placed on his
arms and chains on his feet and was cast into prison to await return to Spain.
He was 53 years old. On the 1st of October 1500,
Columbus and his two brothers, likewise in chains, were sent back to Spain. Once
in Cádiz, a grieving Columbus wrote to a friend at court:
It is now seventeen years since I came to serve
these princes with the Enterprise of the Indies. They made me pass eight of them
in discussion, and at the end rejected it as a thing of jest. Nevertheless I
persisted therein... Over there I have placed under their sovereignty more land
than there is in Africa and Europe, and more than 1,700 islands... In seven
years I, by the divine will, made that conquest. At a time when I was entitled
to expect rewards and retirement, I was incontinently arrested and sent home
loaded with chains... The accusation was brought out of malice on the basis of
charges made by civilians who had revolted and wished to take possession on the
land.... I beg your graces, with the zeal of faithful Christians in whom their
Highnesses have confidence, to read all my papers, and to consider how I, who
came from so far to serve these princes... now at the end of my days have been
despoiled of my honor and my property without cause, wherein is neither justice
nor mercy.
According to testimony of twenty three witnesses during his
trial, Columbus regularly used barbaric acts of torture to govern Hispaniola.
Columbus and his brothers lingered in jail for six weeks
before the busy King Ferdinand ordered their release. Not long thereafter, the
king and queen summoned the Columbus brothers to their presence at the
Alhambra Palace in
Granada. There the royal couple
heard the brothers' pleas; restored their freedom and their wealth; and, after
much persuasion, agreed to fund Columbus's fourth voyage. But the door was
firmly shut on Christopher Columbus's role as governor. From that point forward,
Nicolas de Ovando y Caceres was to
be the new governor of the West Indies.
A Statue of the Santa Maria, Columbus's
Flagship of his first voyage. The statue is at the
house of Columbus in Valladolid,
Spain, the city where Columbus died. Columbus's Tomb in
Seville Cathedral. It is borne by four
statues of kings representing the Kingdoms of Castile, Leon, Aragon and
Navarre.
Later life.
While Columbus had always given the conversion of
non-believers as one reason for his explorations, he grew increasingly religious
in his later years. He claimed to hear divine voices, lobbied for a new
crusade to capture
Jerusalem, often wore
Fransiscan habit, and
described his explorations to the "paradise" as part of God's plan which would
soon result in the Last Judgment and the end of the world. In his
later years, Columbus demanded that the Spanish Crown give him 10% of all
profits made in the new lands, pursuant to earlier agreements. Because he had
been relieved of his duties as governor, the crown did not feel bound by these
contracts, and his demands were rejected. After his death his family later sued
for part of the profits from trade with America in the pleitos colombinos.
On the 20th of May 1506,
at about the age of 55, Columbus died in Valladolid, fairly wealthy
from the gold his men had accumulated in Hispaniola. When he died he was still
convinced that his journeys had been along the east coast of Asia. According to
a study, published in February 2007, by Antonio Rodriguez Cuartero, Department
of Internal Medicine of the University of Granada, he died of a heart attack caused by Reiter's
Syndrome (also called
reactive arthritis). According to his personal diaries and notes by
contemporaries, the symptoms of this illness (burning pain during urination,
pain and swelling of the knees, and conjunctivitis of the eyes) were clearly visible in his last three
years.
His remains were first buried in Valladolid and
then at the monastery of La Cartuja in Seville (southern Spain), by the will of his son
Diego, who had been governor of
Hispaniola. Then in 1542, his remains were transferred to Santo
Domingo, in eastern Hispaniola. In
1795, the French took over Hispaniola, and his remains were moved to
Havana, Cuba. After Cuba became
independent following the Spanish-American War in 1898, his remains were moved back to the Cathedral
of Seville in Spain, where they were
placed on an elaborate catafalque.
However, a lead box bearing an inscription identifying "Don Christopher
Columbus" and containing fragments of bone and a bullet was discovered at Santo
Domingo in 1877. To lay to rest claims that the wrong relics
were moved to Havana and that the remains of Columbus were left buried in the
cathedral of Santo Domingo, DNA
samples were taken in June 2003 (History Today August 2003). The results are not
conclusive. Initial observations suggested that the bones did not appear to
belong to somebody with the physique or age at death associated with Columbus.
DNA extraction proved difficult; only a few limited fragments of mitochondrial
DNA could be isolated. However, such
as they are, these do appear to match corresponding DNA from Columbus's brother,
giving support to the idea that the two had the same mother and that the body
therefore may be that of Columbus. The authorities in Santo Domingo have not
allowed the remains there to be exhumed, so it is unknown if any of those
remains could be from Columbus's body. The location of the Dominican remains is
in the "Columbus Lighthouse" or Faro A Colon which is in Santo Domingo,
Dominican Republic.
Replicas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria
sailed
from Spain to the Chicago Columbian Exposition . Columbus Circle in New York
City. Italian sculptor
Gartano Russo's
central monument was dedicated in 1892, 400 years after Columbus arrived in
America.
Physical appearance: Although an abundance of artwork involving Christopher Columbus exists,
no authentic contemporary
portrait has been found. There is
a portrait painted by Alejo Fernandez, between 1505 and 1536, titled Virgen de los Navegantes in the Royal
Alcazar in Seville. At the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, 71 alleged portraits of Columbus were displayed, most
did not match contemporary descriptions. These writings describe him as having
reddish hair, which turned to white early in his life, light colored eyes, as
well as being a lighter skinned person with too much sun exposure turning his
face red. In keeping with descriptions of Columbus having
had auburn hair or (later) white hair, textbooks use the Sebastiano del Piombo
painting (which in its normal-sized resolution shows Columbus's hair as auburn)
so often that it has become the iconic image of Columbus accepted by popular
culture. Accounts consistently
describe Columbus as a large and physically strong man of some six feet or more
in height, easily taller than the average European of his day.
In popular culture: Columbus is a significant historical figure and has been depicted in
fiction and in popular films and television. In 1991, author
Salman Rushdie published a fictional
representation of Columbus in The New Yorker, "Christopher Columbus and Queen Isabella of Spain Consummate Their
Relationship, Santa Fe, January, 1492," (The New Yorker, June 17, 1991, p. 32).
In Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996) science fiction novelist Orson Scott Card
focuses on Columbus's life and activities, but the novel's action also deals
with a group of scientists from the future who travel back to the 15th century
with the goal of changing the pattern of European contact with the
Americas. British author Stephen
Baxter includes Columbus's
quest for royal sponsorship as a crucial historical event in his 2007 science
fiction novel Navigator (ISBN 978-0-441-01559-7), the third entry in the author's Time's Tapestry Series. American
author Mark Twain based the time
traveller's trick in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court on Columbus's successful prediction of a lunar eclipse
on his fourth voyage to the new world. Columbus has also
been portrayed in cinema and television, including mini-series, films and
cartoons. Most notably he was portrayed by Gerard Depardieu in 1992 film by Ridley Scott 1492: Conquest of
Paradise. Scott presented Columbus as a forward thinking
idealist as opposed to the view that he was ruthless and responsible for the
misfortune of Native Americans. Other more recent
productions include TV mini-series Christopher Columbus (1985)
with Gabriel Byrne as Columbus, Christopher
Columbus: The Discovery, a 1992
biopic film by Alexander
Salkind, Christopher
Columbus, a 1949 film starring
Fredric Marsh as Columbus, and comedy
Carry On Columbus (1992).
ALL IN ALL a great navigator, accidental hero or just plain
pirate. Even his remains have had a bit of a
journey.
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