Rediscovery

The night before sighting land the Admiral knew it was near (as the best experienced seamen do) by the look of the sea, the gathering of clouds, and the flight of birds. He ordered sail to be shortened lest they overrun in the night. . . . It was a nervous night . . . with the dipsey lead hove every quarter-hour; . . .the young and inexperienced imagining that they saw lights and heard breakers, the officers testy and irritable, and the Admiral calmly keeping vigil. . . .

So wrote Samuel Eliot Morison, last year, of the magnificent second voyage of Christopher Columbus. Of that passage from the shores of the old world to the shores of the new, there is not much known; it had little of the romance of the first, and not much of its terror and hardship. It came at a time when the Admiral was at the height of his fortunes: his fleet was big and well-equipped (although his flagship La Capitana, nicknamed La Galante by the sailors, was so slow that it held up the others) and the weather was fine, the northwest trades strong, and the reckonings true.

Samuel Eliot Morison, 52, is a Harvard professor of history, Boston-born, an authority on clipper ships and Yankee seamen, author of an eloquent tribute to seafarers in The Maritime History of Massachusetts, an amateur yachtsman who for 40 years has been sailing small boats along the New England coast.

No debunker of great men and great legends is Historian Morison. Nor does he believe that the sweep and play of economic forces determine the major course of history. He was profoundly skeptical of biographies that presented Columbus as a fraud, a promoter, an exploiter of the achievements of others--especially, when he learned that the authors of such books, no matter how skillfully they could find their way around the archives, had no knowledge of the sea. Last fall Professor Morison set out to test his own generous and idealistic picture of the great Discoverer, by sailing a 147-ft. barkentine, La Capitana, eastward over the route Columbus followed on his return voyages; by sailing westward from Palos, whence Columbus set out, to the Canary Islands, thence to Trinidad, Columbus' landfall on his third voyage.

Last week Professor Morison & party were safe in Manhattan after a five-month, 10,000-mile cruise that vindicated the Admiral all the way, and delivered a hard blow at the debunkers' view of history. And at each point they found that Columbus' account rang true. Columbus had noted that as he approached the Azores the seaweed turned brown, disappeared a day before he reached port. So found Professor Morison & party 447 years later. They saw on Corvo Island in the Azores the fantastic rock formation that Columbus had seen through fog and mist and which seemed to him to point west. Twenty days from the Canaries to Trinidad--it had taken Columbus 26--convinced the seafaring Professor that Columbus was a very fine seaman, who "could get to a place and then come back and find it again when he wished," who was good at dead reckoning, and who, like the old Yankee skippers, "was good by guess and by God." Greatest triumph of the rediscoverers came when Capitana made the same landfall Columbus had made. After 26 days Columbus took his bearings, sighted three hills in the distance and called the place Trinidad (trinity). Thus had Professor Morison imagined the scene before he followed in the Admiral's wake: "About five on Sunday morning . . . when the faintest grey of dawn appears in the east, an ancient pilot stationed in the forechains of La Galante sees a black cone on the horizon pricking up into the dome of paling stars. He climbs cautiously to the foretop to make certain, and sings out Albricias! Que tenemos tierra!"*

When Capitana, after 20 days, reached the approximate position where Columbus said he had seen Trinidad, Professor Morison sent young, square-jawed Seaman Malcolm Armstrong aloft. Seaman Armstrong climbed to the royal yard, called back laconically, "There's them three hills."

Last week in Manhattan Professor Morison, who is not given to understatement, exulted at the rediscovery of the great discoverer's honesty, rejoiced at his victory over those who had tried to prove that Columbus was a "louse, a liar, and good for nothing except getting money out of Ferdinand and Isabella." Vindicated was his theory of history. Vindicated also was his moving account, written before his cruise, of Columbus' triumph at his second voyage:

"Columbus must have derived great satisfaction from this voyage. . . . Over the biggest fleet that had yet crossed deep water, manned by twelve to fifteen hundred seamen ... he had kept discipline during a voyage that lasted fourteen weeks . . . and lost but a single man.

"In the years to come, when suffering in mind and body from the evil nature of man, the ingratitude of princes, and the frowns of Providence, Columbus may have sought consolation in the memory of those bright November days of 1493, the fleet gaily coasting along the lofty verdure-clad Antilles with trade-wind clouds piling up over their summits and rainbows bridging their deep-cleft valleys; of the nights when he lay quietly at anchor in the lee of the land with his gallant fleet all about, stars of incredible brightness overhead, and hearty voices joining in the evening hymn to the Blessed Mother of God."

* Pay me! Here's land! Albricias means a tip given to the bearer of good tidings.

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