It seems to me that if you want to reach Asia by sailing west from Europe, and you don’t know that the Americas are there, you would want to take a more northerly route so you can cover more longitude in a shorter distance. Why didn’t Columbus do that?
Was Columbus familiar with Leif Ericson and his voyages? Was such knowledge common among explorers of that era (and/or educated members of the nobility)? At a minimum he must have known about Greenland. Would he have heard of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland?
Remember that Columbus was using sailing ships and 15th century navigational tools. It was pretty hard to get exactly where you were going - you had to take into account the prevailing winds and pray that you won’t drift or be blown too far off course. It wasn’t like today where you can set sail from Liverpool and expect to pull right into Norfolk, VA - you set sail and hopefully you hit somewhere between Nova Scotia and Florida.
Seems unlikely. The stories indicate Chris may have been told by someone else of the western route to China, and Magellan who actually found it may have heard these stories as well. I suspect there were many such stories, and if Erickson’s were in the mix they would have been indistinquishable from legend.
Not when what you really want to find are the Spice Islands, in the tropics. Columbus would not have been anxious to find a route to Kamchatka (even if he had known it existed).
Also, in an age of sail, other things being (as far as you know) equal, you go with the prevailing winds.
IDK what he know about Ericson, but I believe that sailors in those days knew about the Gulf Stream (or the flow of wind in general) which would have prescribed a more clockwise route.
Unlikely that Columbus was familiar with the Norse sagas.
FWIW, Columbus’ expedition was based on the Earth being round of course, but also much smaller than it really is or was even believed to be in his day.
Columbus was almost certainly aware of Lief Ericsson, and his voyages. The reasons for this are:
-Columbus made a voyage to Iceland in 1477 (he picked up a cargo of salted codfish). The sagas the described Ericsson’s voyages were written down about 1350, so certainly mariners he met in Reykjavik knew about Greenland and Vinland
There is evidence that there was contact between Norwegian traders and the last Greenland colonists, as late as the 1450’s, so Columbus may have actually met someone who had been to Greenland.
-despite much misinformation, Columbus was an educated man. He had carried on correspondence with Martin Beheim (Cologne, Germany), who was the most eminent geographer of his time. Beheim probably knew of Vinland, and advised Columbus of the same.
Almost certainly. There was a well-published expedition to Vinland in the 1360s, notes of which were well known for centuries. The Vatican appointed bishops to Greenland, and one made a large survey tip into Vinland.
The Greenlanders went to Vinland for trees, and there is indirect evidence in Denmark for direct trade. Nothing about it would be particularily secret to a man with an interest for the Atlantic.
What Colombus had no way of knowing was the sheer *size *of Vinland. He had no reason to think it more than an island, maybe the size of the UK, or even Spain. Not something that would go all the way down. Basically, he would have heard of it like a fairly big island, with hostile natives. Vinland wasn’t ignored in Europe for being unknown, but for being unimportant. Terrible climate and hardly any products you couldn’t get with much less effort from Russia.
Thats really not true. I could take a crappy plastic protractor, some sticks, and a good eye and determine my LATITUDE (north south) to within a hundred miles give or take a factor of two or three. LONGITUDE (east west) takes some pretty accurate time keeping OTOH.
You let me sail from Europe, tell me what major city on the east coast of America I need to hit and I can get pretty close with stuff from 1492.
Columbus didn’t explicitly say he went to Iceland. He said he went to Ultima Thule, which was usually, not always, associated with Iceland at the time. He said he sailed 100 leagues “beyond” (possibly Iceland) and at one point mentioned tides of 50 feet, which don’t happen in that region. Columbus liked to spin a good tale and might not have actually witnessed the places and things he claimed.
But he was certainly aware of various tales of far off lands and actively sought out information about them.
So, he no doubt knew about Greenland, at the very least, and knowledge of lands beyond Greenland (e.g., Vinland) wouldn’t have been too hard to come by for someone like Columbus. But the name of someone dead for centuries like Erikson would have not been nearly so common a factoid.
Weren’t the Basques, among others, already fishing the Grand Banks by the time Columbus voyaged? He has to have known about the presence of land to the East, if that were the case.
I’ve heard that about the Basques, and also that sailors from Bristol visited America.
Columbus’s son also said that when his father was in Ireland, he saw two exotic-looking bodies, who had washing ashore in a canoe-like boat. Inuits, maybe? Columbus’s theory was that they were Chinese.
Columbus was fortunate that the new world got in his was. His estimate for the distance to China was something like two-thirds the distance he traveled to get to the Bahamas. Had they know the reality of the situation, it never would have been tried in the first place. Crossing 12000 miles of uncharted ocean is not even considered feasible today, and when you believe it is less than a fifth that distance, you should be in a world of hurt.
