There is a debate among historians as to the identity of Guanahani, the island where Columbus first stepped on American soil on 12 October 1492; but the predominant view is that it is an island formerly known as Watling, in modern times renamed to San Salvador, which now belongs to the Bahamas. There is, nowadays, a little area on a San Salvador beach named Landfall Park, which supposedly marks the spot of the arrival and which features a few small monuments. See this Google Maps link.
The interesting thing about it is that Landfall Park actually lies on the West coast of San Salvador island. How does that square with the fact that Columbus came from a generally North-Easterly direction? Is it plausible that his ships, after clearing the island coming from North-East, would make a turn to approach the beach from the West? Or are Bahamian tourism promoters taking us in, having picked some random spot for a memoprial and now selling it as the authentic place?
The winds at those latitudes usually blow from the east to the west. They may have wanted to anchor on the leeward side of the island so that seas would be calmer and the ship would be protected from the weather.
The real question to ask is - when did someone decide this was the landfall?
Trying to get the correct location a century or more afterwards would simply mean someone pulled the answer out of their posterior, more than anything. If it was something Columbus himself mentions or pinpoints, then more likely correct. What information of his do we have to go on?
There was a National Geographic article on this – I think they looked at 4 possible locations – all had issues. They based the analysis it on log entries and ocean currents
This website looks like an interesting source of information. It contains the studies of Keith A. Pickering, a computer systems consultant and historian who began studying the matter in 1991. He died in 2017 and the site is now maintained by his family.
There was news last month about DNA studies underway to determine Columbus’ identity. I’ve read that they had been waiting for the technology to improve (it used to be too destructive) and that there’s a lot of expectation regarding the results, which are to be released later this year. I’m mentioning this because I haven’t seen anything about it here on the SDMB.
Very little. His shipboard diary doesn’t even say by what bearing from the ship were the early sightings or the confirmatory one: nothing about whether dead ahead or off-bearing to starboard or port, even. The diary is lacking in information on latitude, and there was no measuring of longitude in his time; the reports on speed and course are of the sort of “for the daylight, kept Southwest by West at times at 10miles to the hour, but as fast as 12 and as slow as 7 at times, for there were changing winds, and sailing as many as 59 leagues by nightfall”.
What kind of log is that? How were they ever going to get back if that’s all the precision they had? Did they keep a separate, more useful record somewhere else?
From what I’m reading, the “official” designation of San Salvador only happened in the 1940’s. Considering the Bahamas would have been a bit of a backwater, and Columbus and followers-on concentrated on the much bigger islands and the mainland, odds are that the actual spot was not something greatly commemorated in the lore of the day.
Usually, when some spot is presented as the exact spot where some historic event happened, the answer to the question how we would know that is “local tradition”. But in this case, there can’t be any local tradition about the exact location of the landfall on San Salvador: Even the island isn’t known with certainty, so the exact spot on the island can’t be known with certainty either. In fact, the former Watling Island wasn’t considered the prime candidate for Guanahani until the 1920s, and that is also when the name San Salvador (which Columbus notes as the name he had given to his first island) was transferred to Watling - previously, it was used for another Bahamian island, now known as Cat Island, and there are several other candidates as well. So I suppose the spot for Landfall Park on San Salvador/Watling was made up in very recent times.
Thanks for that link. I knew that the identity of Guanahani was disputed, but it is, in a way, fascinating to see that for any given mystery, there is a community of enthusiasts out there who dedicate their lives to it.
Sure, but Columbus founded a settlement in the New World on his first voyage - La Navidad, in what is now Haiti. When he came back to America on his second voyage, about a year later, he returned to La Navidad. The settlement had meanwhile been destroyed in fights between the Spanish colonists and the indigenous Taíno, but Columbus did find its location. So wouldn’t his navigation have been more precise than “Let’s sail West and see where it carries us”?
One can imagine Colombo and Pinzón having more detailed logs with useful navigation information somewhere, but keeping them well hidden so as to slow down the competition, and we don’t have them. (Plus I get the feeling at that time quite a bit of knowledge would have been kept in the masters’ and mates’ heads anyway.)
Yes, I think Schnitte has a good point about the second voyage. That wasn’t luck to make landfall at about the same point as the former settlement. Ol’ Chris must have kept something in reserve.