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A Response
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18758 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
1,015 Words |
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John Dyson
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The moment I read the results of Dr. Luis Coin's prolonged and detailed study of the voyage of Columbus I had but one thought--Joe Judge will have fun with this!
Fun in the sense of positive criticism is one thing, brutal mockery and seemingly willful misrepresentation of what a book plainly states are quite another. His sneer at my collaborator in Spain is unworthy. Dr. Coin was indeed a seaman and second mate; he also happens to be a master mariner who for some years has been a university professor of maritime history and navigation. His debt to Juan Manazano Manzano, one of the eminent historians who granted his doctorate, is acknowledged in his own 800-page thesis soon to be published by the University of Cadiz.
In fact, we do not state Columbus landed at Grand Turk, though I see why Judge might infer it from our map on which the dotted line representing the reconstructed route tails off in the direction of Grand Turk, Samana Cay, and San Salvador. Dr. Coin's analysis of the transatlantic track does not set out to contribute to the landfall argument, which is still unresolved, despite Judge's best efforts. While Mayaguana is undoubtedly in the Bahamas, as Judge kindly points out, I must spare my deepest blushes for the matter of pelicans: Like many a researcher working before me in this field, I was misled by a translation of medieval Spanish, and it is I alone who deserve the booby prize.
Even if the birds were blue-faced boobies, however, the premise holds up. The distribution maps of the Royal Society for the protection of Birds, here in England, show neither the many boobies nor the frigate birds Columbus purports to have seen in the mid-Atlantic range across the avian desert of the Sargasso Sea, but they are common near the Caribbean islands.
Of course our illustration of the information that might have been available to Columbus is speculative, and the text makes this clear. The story of the "unknown pilot" is indeed an old chestnut, but the reason scholars have discounted it for centuries has now been convincingly discredited, and this throws the whole thing open to possibility.
A ship sailing from Guinea to Lisbon would tack right out into the Atlantic and could be blown into the Caribbean in a few days. In July 1990 we ourselves arrived just ahead of two hurricanes only three days apart (which explains why we sailed when we did). On his second voyage, Columbus did find the wreckage of a European vessel in Guadeloupe. A
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