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Christopher
Columbus
History
- His
Voyages
- Columbus
Announces His
Discovery
- Columbus
Death
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Columbus,
Christopher (Italian, Cristoforo
Colombo, Spanish,
Cristóbal Colón)
(1451-1506), Italian-Spanish
navigator who sailed west across
the Atlantic Ocean in search of a
route to Asia but achieved fame
by making landfall, instead, in
the Caribbean Sea. Columbus was
born in Genoa, Italy. His father
was a weaver, and it is believed
that Christopher entered this
trade as a young man. Information
about the beginning of his
seafaring career is uncertain,
but the independent city-state of
Genoa had a busy port, and he may
have sailed as a commercial agent
in his youth. In the mid-1470s he
made his first trading voyage to
the island of Khíos, in
the Aegean Sea. In 1476 he sailed
with a convoy bound for England.
Legend has it that the fleet was
attacked by pirates off the coast
of Portugal, where Columbus's
ship was sunk, but he swam to
shore and took refuge
in
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Lisbon. Settling there, where his
brother Bartholomew Columbus was working
as a cartographer, he was married in 1479
to the daughter of the governor of the
island of Porto Santo. Diego Columbus, the
only child of this marriage, was born in
1480.
Based
on information acquired during his
travels, and by reading and studying
charts and maps, Christopher concluded
that the Earth was 25 per cent smaller
than was previously thought, and composed
mostly of land. On the basis of these
faulty beliefs, he decided that Asia could
be reached quickly by sailing west. In
1484 he submitted his theories to John II,
king of Portugal, petitioning him to
finance a westward crossing of the
Atlantic Ocean. His proposal was rejected
by a royal maritime commission because of
his miscalculations and because Portuguese
ships were on the point of finding a sea
route to Asia around Africa.
Soon
after, Columbus moved to Spain, where his
plans won the support of several
influential people, and he secured an
introduction, in 1486, to Isabella I,
queen of Castile. About this time,
Columbus, then a widower, met Beatriz
Enriquez, who became his mistress and the
mother of his second son, Ferdinand
Columbus. In Spain, as in Portugal, a
royal commission rejected his plan.
Columbus continued to seek support,
however, and in April 1492 his persistence
was rewarded: Ferdinand V, king of
Castile, and Queen Isabella agreed to
sponsor the expedition. The signed
contract stipulated that Columbus was to
become viceroy of all territories he
located; other rewards included a
hereditary peerage and one-tenth of all
precious metals found within his
jurisdiction.
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