The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library. Edward Wilson-Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ was no way to be completely sure how far west they were at any time: variable wind speeds and ocean currents made estimates of speed untrustworthy, and the hourglasses were not only often faulty but also relied on fallible human hands to turn them over at the right times. To make matters worse, even the compasses failed to work consistently during Atlantic crossings. Whereas Columbus and other European sailors would have been used to the compass needle pointing slightly to the east of the North Star, Polaris, the Admiral had noticed with alarm on the First Voyage that, after crossing a line approximately 100 leagues west of the Azores, the needle suddenly jumped a whole point, now falling to the west of Polaris. This phenomenon, incomprehensible without understanding magnetic variation and the difference between magnetic north and true north, deeply challenged contemporary understandings of how the world worked. While some evidence points towards knowledge of this magnetic variation before Columbus, scholars generally agree he was the first to record the phenomenon directly and to posit a cause, namely that the compass needle pointed not to the North Pole but to some other invisible point close to it. This explanation, the first to propose the concept of a magnetic north, is not, however, found in Columbus’ writings, but in Hernando’s biography of his father: indeed, as we have seen, Columbus believed at least as late as the Third Voyage that the variation of the compasses was caused by the bulging of a pear-shaped earth, and his theories hardly became less eccentric from that point on. As shall become clear, there may be good reasons to think this theory was first arrived at by Hernando – not Columbus – and only attributed to his father, one of the many revisions to Columbus’ ideas that later developments necessitated. Either way, the world as Hernando knew it tilted sideways as he crossed the Atlantic.4

      Like the drawn-out process of leaving Europe, arriving on the western edge of the Atlantic may not have felt like the threshold crossing it was supposed to. Ocean faring was not an exact science, and once land was sighted the pilots had the complex task of orienting themselves before they could proceed to a known port. When the fleet spotted land on 15 June, they eventually recognised the island as one Columbus had sighted on the Second Voyage in 1493 but had not stopped at or named. They took the opportunity to name it now – ‘La Matinino’ or Martinica (modern-day Martinique) – and Hernando was witness to the strange transformation of the unknown to the familiar by the act of naming. From there they were able to follow the same dribble of islands that Columbus had on the Second Voyage, curving north and west like the side of a basin – Dominica, Guadeloupe, the Carib islands, Puerto Rico – up to Hispaniola.5

      The tension must have been considerable when the Admiral’s four ships anchored off Santo Domingo on 29 June. On the one hand, Columbus was for the first time showing the chief town in the New World he had discovered to one of his sons, a place moreover named after the young boy’s grandfather. On the other hand, Hernando would probably have been aware the Monarchs, while encouraging Columbus to cross the ocean once more, had forbidden him to land on Hispaniola, fearing his presence there would reignite unrest among settlers for whom opposition to the Columbus brothers was still a rallying cry. Columbus had nevertheless decided the problems with the Bermuda, still not able to run under full sail without drawing dangerously low in the water, absolved him of this injunction and made it necessary for him to land at Santo Domingo to exchange the ship for a fitter one. While it is true that a fleet is held back by its weakest craft, and the Bermuda would certainly have struggled on the circumnavigation Columbus was planning if he found the passage to China, one suspects he could not resist the dramatic climax of seeking entry to Santo Domingo, either as triumphant founder or to be spurned by his own creation. In the event, the new governor Nicolás de Ovando – whom Hernando would have known from his days at the court of the Infante Juan, where Ovando was one of the Ten Choice Companions – refused to oblige Columbus in any way, and was even deaf to his pleas to be let into the harbour to shelter from the vast storm that was collecting over the Caribbean Sea. Even Job, Columbus would later write, would have pitied his state when the land for which he had sweated blood had closed its doors to him. Yet the local news was far more dire than even this: the Admiral would learn they had just missed another fleet of 28 ships departing on the return crossing, including a ship that carried Francisco de Bobadilla (who had unseated Columbus as governor), the leader of the 1498 rebellion Francisco Roldán, and a great many other settlers who had participated in the revolt against Columbus and his brothers. While the removal of Bobadilla by Ovando may have seemed a triumph, it may have given way to a greater catastrophe by allowing Columbus’ enemies to return in great numbers to the court and tell their side of the story in his absence, spurred on no doubt by the President of the Council of the Indies, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, who was an implacable foe to Columbus. Ovando further ignored Columbus’ urgings to call this fleet back before the storm hit, though he might reasonably have suspected the motives for the Admiral’s advice. The hurricane – from the Taíno word for ‘storm’ – reached Hispaniola on Wednesday, 30 June.6

      Hernando’s description of that night records how, in the immense darkness, their fleet was forced to separate, with each ship taking the measures its captain thought best, and each convinced the others had gone down in the storm. While the Capitana lay in close to shore to shelter in the lee of the island, the Bermuda ran out into the open sea to ride out the storm there. The captain of the Santo, returning from begging the obdurate Ovando to change his mind, was forced to cut loose the ship’s boat to prevent the swell from sending it like a battering ram into the hull. The crew of the Capitana gathered in the driving wind and rain to curse the Admiral, whom they blamed for their being turned away from Santo Domingo when even complete strangers would have been given merciful shelter. And at this moment Hernando presumes to record, in a move unusual not only for his biography but for the very practice of life-writing at the time, his father’s unspoken experience of these events, saying that in his insides Columbus felt the misery of his crewmates, and indeed felt it worse than them, as the ingratitude and insult were thrown at him in a place he had given to Spain as an addition to its honour and splendour, and moreover at such a fatal time. In the panic and confusion of the storm Hernando had begun, perhaps without thinking, to speak on his father’s behalf.7

      Columbus’ fleet finally began to reassemble four days later, on Sunday, at the port of Azúa further down the coast of Hispaniola, but a series of reports would transform relief into a rather different feeling. It suggested the nautical mastery of Columbus’ crew that all four of his ships had survived the storm without significant damage, even the Bermuda, the crippled ship that Bartholomew Columbus had brought safely through the hurricane to the great admiration of the other sailors. This began to seem like something more than skill, however, when it was discovered that the fleet heading east had been almost entirely destroyed, with the loss of nearly all of the 28 ships, including the flagship carrying Bobadilla and Roldán and 200,000 gold ducats on its way to Spain. Columbus may have turned with satisfaction to a passage in the Book of Prophecies, which predicted that God would ‘force a commander to cease his insolent conduct’ (Daniel 11). Columbus’ luck was almost too perfect: rumours began to circulate that he had caused the storm by sorcery to wreak revenge on his enemies, and they seemed to receive confirmation when reports emerged that the only ship to reach Castile, and the least seaworthy craft at that, was the one carrying 4,000 gold ducats belonging to Columbus. Even Hernando, who usually resisted unworldly explanations for worldly events, saw the hand of God in preventing his father’s enemies from exchanging their false witness for a heroes’ welcome at court.8

      Native Americans ride on a Manatee, 1621.

      The fleet spent two weeks after the hurricane anchored in the port of Azúa, days given over to repairing damage to the ships and restoring the morale of the men, allowing them time to rest and to fish. But Hernando’s mind showed itself restless to interpret the new world in which he had found himself, and he records from this СКАЧАТЬ