Ok, lets say for some reason Christopher Columbus had not “discovered” America.
How long would it have been before someone else had?
With all the groups who had already been here (Vikings, Welsh, Africans, Chinese, others) and the rumor that some fishermen had already been sneaking over here to fish on the outer banks, it doesn’t seem to be that it would have been long. I’m guessing maybe within 20 years?
What do you all think?
The Vikings had already discovered North America long before Columbus arrived. But it’s almost certain that English fishing ships would have found it by following cod shoals within 200 years.
Somebody else from the coast of Iberia. Or Cabot, another Italian adventurer sent out that direction by Henry VII of England, a few years after Columbus hit ground.
Hopefully someone not so cruel that the Spanish revoked his commission — it took quite a lot to horrify 15th century Spaniards.
There’s a theory that the Basque and English cod fishermen already knew about and exploited the Grand Bank and Newfoundland (and Labrador) as amazingly rich fishing grounds. As a result, they kept them secret to prevent competition. Cabot just spilled the beans on a fact known for a decade or two.
Spain decided to sponsor a nut like Columbus because the multiple discoveries made by the rival Portuguese frightened the pants off them. Portugal mostly sailed east along the African coast, a major reason why Spain wanted to go west for an alternate route.
Columbus had to work very hard to convince anybody he was right about his notion that the Indies lay a short distance to west. Since everybody else knew better Spain might have waited a long time, 50, 100 years, for boats to get sufficiently better to be able to sail those ocean distances. Or it might have gotten so desperate that it would take the chance the next time a smooth talker came to town.
Well, that’s what makes OP interesting–representatives of some major power or other would’ve set out for “this” land mass, whatever and wherever it might have been assumed to be.*
*"…assumed to have been"…? I know other languages have a relatively normal tense for past pluperfect subjunctive.
We know exactly how long: Pedro Alvares Cabral, sailing for Portugal en route to the Far East around Africa, accidentally discovered Brazil in 1500, probably independently of any expectation of finding land there.
By the late 1400s Portuguese navigators were taking advantage of the prevailing winds by using the volta do mar by sailing far out to sea when rounding Africa. Given the relatively short distance between Africa and Brazil, it was only a matter of time before some ship was blown a little off course and sighted South America.
It has been alleged that Cabral deliberately sailed so far west because he knew about Columbus’s discoveries, but even if so given the increasing number of ships plying the Atlantic using the volta do mar it was pretty much inevitable that one would reach South America by the early 1500s.
Actually, you asked exactly the same question just a year ago.
Do you plan to ask this question every Columbus Day?:dubious:
Improved navigation technology would have made discovery inevitable within a few decades.
The Welsh??? Good God, are there still people who take seriously the legend of Madoc the Welsh?
Vikings, yes. The others… not generally accepted to have done so.
Here’s an excerpt from what Malthus posted in a similar thread over a year ago quoting the book* Cod- The Fish That Changed The World*:
It’s impossible to dry cod in Greenland? Or in some uninhabited part of Iceland?
Seems like there are other explanations for dried cod other than “it had to have been America”.
The Russians, no question. The Bering strait is, what, four days navigation, tops? And from Alaska, to Canada, to the rest of the continent of Northern New Tartaria and Southern New Tartaria.
It must have been pretty close, too.
It’s 1600km to Iceland, 2500km to Greenland, 3500km to Newfoundland.
And of course, if they’d been fishing and drying code anywhere around Iceland, they’d be noticed. I have trouble imagining the necessary raw materials or climate to dry code in Greenland.
it’s not a definite smoking gun, but the Grand Banks provide plenty of cod, and the nearby land a prime location to dry cod unmolested. (I presume they mean drying over fires, not hung out in the sun to dry…)
the issue was bringing items from one kingdom’s jurisdiction to another. International trade was heavily regulated and taxed in those days. The Icelanders to this day have been willing to fight over people taking “their” cod.
The Russians didn’t own the land all the way to the Pacific until something like 200 years after Columbus. Long before then, someone else from Europe would have discovered the New World, if only by accident. That is, if the Basque fishermen’s secret hadn’t been let out first.
Vitus Bering’s first expedition was in 1725. One of his objectives was to discover if Asia and NA were connected or not.
The Master speaks (saying basically what you just said.)
If we’re into the unlikely, how about Prince Henry Sinclair of Orkney in 1398?
Or Joao Vaz Coretereal in 1473
I hate to break it to you, but they dry plenty of fish in Greenland. Here’s a photo.
Code, I’m not too sure about. Perhaps a Greenlandic programmer will come by to tell us.