Say that there was a big enough gap between the two continents that Columbus somehow missed land, and proceeded across the Pacific.
Would he have made it to Asia? Or would everyone have starved?
His crews were already starving and preparing to mutiny when land was miraculously discovered. If they had been just a degree south, Central America was a thousand miles away. They’d never have made that, let alone the many thousands to get anywhere near Asia.
IIRC, Columbus believed the circumference of the Earth to be much smaller than it is in reality, and assumed he had landed somewhere to the southeast of Japan.
As has already been pointed out, he did miss both continents.
Personally I think many (if not most) would have starved, but some of the crew might have made it to Asia. After all, at that point I’m sure the crew was certain that Asia was closer than turning around and going all the way back. After all, they were trusting in the massively incorrect calculations that Chris had done. If they had known the true circumference of the Earth they probably would have turned around. But then if they knew the true circumference of the Earth they probably wouldn’t have left port in the first place.
The surviving crew would have landed in Asia and said absolutely nothing about eating other members of the crew. Nope, didn’t happen. We didn’t resort to cannibalism. They must have, uh, fallen overboard, or something (mumble mumble).
I’m basing this on how long the crew of the Essex survived after being sunk by a pissed off whale (the real-life inspiration behind Moby Dick). There were something like 15 or 20 or so crew members on the Essex, and all of them made it into lifeboats before the ship sank. Most starved to death, but a few (maybe 4 or 5?) managed to survive. The story of Moby Dick conveniently left out the mass starvation and cannibalism part, along with the bit about the survivors in one of the boats drawing straws to see which sailor they would shoot and eat so that the others could live.
If the Americas didn’t exist, I would expect a small crew, weak and delirious from starvation, to wash up on some Asian shore.
IIRC, one of the survivors (which surprisingly enough included the ship’s captain, who never went to sea again afterward) was literally chewing on a thigh bone when they were found.
Fortunately, it was portrayed in this documentary recreation.
Stranger
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10 [, 1492].
He sailed to the west-south-west and they went at the rate of 10 miles per hour and at times 12, and sometimes 7, and during the day and night they made 59 leagues. He told the people 44 leagues and no more. Here the people could no longer suffer the journey. They complained of the long voyage: but the Admiral encouraged them as well as he was able, giving them good hope of the benefits they would receive, and adding that for the rest it was useless to complain since he had come in search of the Indies, and thus he must pursue his journey until he found them, with the aid of our Lord.
Landfall was shortly after midnight October 12, but at this point Columbus had been lying to his crew for months about the distance travelled, going so far as to keep a second, secret journal for accurate dead reckoning. The sovereigns of Spain offered a hefty bounty for the first sailor to spot land, which along with constant signs of land (birds, floating grass) apparently played a major role in keeping morale up.
If they had drifted into the Pacific, those signs of land would disappear and morale would become a major problem.
~Max
Do we know who that was?
Yes, it was reported as Rodrigo de Traina in the journal entry for October 11, 1492. But Columbus claimed to have seen a light earlier and got the reward.
~Max
Hard to lie for months by October 12, when they left the Canary Islands on September 6.
The two sets of logs were because there were two sets of units used;
As described in the abstract of his journal made by Bartolomé de las Casas, on the outward bound voyage Columbus recorded two sets of distances: one was in measurements he normally used, the other in the Portuguese maritime leagues used by his crew. Las Casas originally interpreted that he reported the shorter distances to his crew so they would not worry about sailing too far from Spain, but Oliver Dunn and James Kelley state that this was a misunderstanding.[39]
I don’t think cannibalism would help with scurvy.
Longpig l’orange with Ladyfingers for dessert.
Tasty.
Wouldn’t that require having ladies on board?
Wouldn’t be the first time the chef lied.
Interesting, I didn’t know about that. But now I do.
http://columbuslandfall.com/ccnav/shd973.shtml
~Max
As seen in THIS amazing piece of archival footage, shot at the time.
Raw meat does have vitamin C. You can survive indefinitely on a diet of nothing but raw meat.
Fresh water might have been a bigger problem.
Sure, but most animals make their own vitamin C. Humans don’t, and these particular humans were themselves vitamin C deficient.