Stalking Columbus

We've followed him from Genoa, to Madeira, to the Azores, to Cadiz and to Seville. But did he really go to all those places?

Almost by mistake Donne and I have followed Christopher Columbus around. Not to America, but there are plenty of signs of the man on the east side of the Atlantic. It has also given me an excuse to learn more about him: I realised I knew shockingly little about someone so famous.

Sebastiano del Piombo, 1519. Metropolitan Museum of Art

We were wandering around Genoa. It has none of the beauty of Florence or Venice, though that is more a sign of success than failure: its glory days as a maritime republic were replaced by glory days as a giant port, with mediæval beauty swept aside for 19^th century grandeur. So it’s quite a surprise to find an ancient little house tucked away in the centre, with a plaque in Latin saying that this was where Christopher Columbus lived as a boy. A notice inside assures us that although it was destroyed in the late 17^th century, probably by a French bombardment, it has been rebuilt and is ‘undoubtedly the same as it was back in 1400’. In other words, it’s a reconstruction, but an old one.

We read that Domenico Colombo, his dad, set up shop as a wool weaver on the ground floor, jamming his family into the upper floors. Christopher had been born in Genoa, maybe in Genoa, maybe on the coast nearby, and moved to this house when was four, in 1455. His family stayed in it until 1470, by which time he had left to go to sea.

He worked as a merchant and travelled all over the place, getting as far as Ireland, England, and possibly Iceland. He was based in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485, where he worked with his brother Bartholomew. In 1478 he came to Funchal in Madeira to buy sugar for Genovese merchants, and found not only sugar but a wife. They set up home on Porto Santo, Madeira’s little sister island: their house is now a museum.

Their first son was born there in 1482, and it was around this time that Columbus wrote his first letters suggesting that the best way to get to the east was to go west. It was a problem European merchants had been struggling with for 30 years – ever since the land route to China had been closed by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. You might go east – which is what the Portuguese managed to do in 1488, getting round the bottom of Africa. Or, as most people were by now convinced the world was round, you might go west. Some good guesses of distances had been made, but although Columbus was a fine navigator, he got his units wrong and wildly underestimated how far it was to east Asia. Nevertheless he finally got the go-ahead for a voyage from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and set off in 1492. As we know, he discovered not China but America – or rather the Caribbean islands.

On his way back in February 1493, he found himself ashore in one of my favourite archipelagos, the Azores. The wind, as I’ve explained before, swept eastbound ships near the islands, but he had no intention of landing. Relations between the Portuguese and his Spanish bosses were not too sunny.

The academic Rebecca Catz tells the story. He was on the Niña, the tiny caravel that with the Pinta had sailed from the Caribbean (his third ship, the Santa Maria, has been lost). Then a storm blew up. ‘In winter the Azores area can be one of the most unpleasant in the Atlantic Ocean’ Catz says. ‘The two caravels ran before the wind under bare poles. There was nothing else they could do’. They spent the gale making all sorts of promises to God if they were spared.

‘Shortly after sunrise on Friday 15^th Feb, a seaman name Ruy Garcia sighted land dead ahead. Columbus alone insisted it was one of the Azores, and as usual he was right.’ It was Santa Maria, the southernmost of the nine islands.

Although Columbus did not want to land, Catz says, he decided to take the chance in the hope of obtaining provisions and a bit of rest.

At first the islanders seemed friendly and half his crew went ashore to do the praying they had promised during the gale. They went into the small Anjos chapel, while Columbus stayed on the Niña. But it seems that João da Castanheira, an officer on the island, had decided the visitors were a menace, and told the villagers to storm the chapel and seize the sailors at prayer. Then they set out in boats to arrest Columbus, but he made sure they could not get close, and it turned into a slanging match. ‘He lost his temper and swore that he would not leave until he had depopulated Santa Maria and captured 100 Portuguese to carry home as slaves.’ He sailed off to the next island but was driven back by another storm by which time, luckily for him, da Castanheira had done another U-turn.

‘He had apparently repented of his rashness, and perhaps had failed to extract any evidence of wrongdoing after putting his prisoners through some sort of cross-examination,’ Catz says. A boat came alongside the Niña holding five of the captured sailors, two priests and a notary. ‘After such evening’s entertainment aboard as the Admiral could offer, and passing the night, the priests and the scribe scrutinised his credentials and, expressed themselves satisfied.’

Columbus and his crew then sailed, leaving a 500 year old mystery. Why did da Castanheira capture a group of unarmed sailors, and why did he then change his mind? Most theories revolve round the poor relations between Castile/Spain and Portugal, but no-one really knows. One thing that is certain is that Columbus’s visit has not been forgotten on Santa Maria. There have been many fêtes and the Anjos chapel is still preserved as a monument:

We went for a walk around Cadiz, guided by Victor. We started in the Plaza de San Juan de Dios, which has grand buildings on three sides and the sea behind us. It was built in the early 1500s but when Columbus came, it was part of the port. There’s a plaque on a wall that told us that this was where Columbus set off from on his second trans-Atlantic voyage, on 25^th September 1493. It might also have mentioned that it was where he started his fourth voyage, in May 1502.

This was the start of Cadiz’s special connection with the New World. As I have noted before the city is effectively an island, with a natural harbour and direct access to the Atlantic. It was an obvious place to leave from (Portugal had most of the Atlantic-facing ports, to the chagrin of the Spanish, but Cadiz was the handiest one they had).

Columbus survived being arrested on his third voyage – many accusations were made against him, some probably justified, and in May 1502 he was back in Cadiz ready to set off on his fourth voyage. He spent two months exploring central America before being stranded on Jamaica. He finally got back to Spain at the end of 1504.

We went to Seville, up the river Guadalquivir from Cadiz. It is much larger than Cadiz, and was then. Its glorious architecture reflects the century or so - the 16th - when it had a monopoly of trade with the New World. Merchants had to start there, sailing down the river and out to sea past Cadiz. But then the river silted up, the monopoly passed to Cadiz – and its days of glittering wealth arrived.

Seville was the end of the journey for Columbus – sort of. He arrived in the city when he got back from this last voyage, but by then he had another quest: to extract the money he believed the Spanish crown had diddled him out of. But he was also becoming increasingly weak from an illness – possibly a form of arthritis – that had dogged him for years. And it was when he followed the court to Valladolid that his body finally gave up. He died in May 1506, aged 54.

That though was not the end of his travels. His body was moved first to Seville, and then in 1530 to the cathedral in Santo Domingo, now the capital of the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola. That was where he said he wanted to be buried, and it was there his remains remained until 1795 and the French invaded. Then part of him at least was moved to Cuba, where it stayed until the island got independence from Spain – at which point his bones were returned to Seville. We went to visit his tomb in the immense cathedral – it’s a catafalque, or suspended tomb, and is ‘carried’ by statues of the kings of Spain: Castile, Leon, Aragon and Navarra. Like the cathedral, it is impressive, if not pretty.

But is it really Columbus? There’s been much debate about what really happened to him – not surprising given his post mortem travels. Finally DNA tests 20 years ago provided proof: the remains in Seville were compared with those of his brother and son - and it is indeed him. Though it is possible that bits of him are still in Santo Domingo.

Further analysis of the DNA in 2024 confirmed that this was Columbus. But it raised an even greater mystery, declaring that he was Spanish, and a Sephardic Jew. So what about the little house in Genoa, and the family story we learnt there? Stand by for a fightback from Italy. This story will surely run and run.

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