Christopher Columbus Essay Example

Columbus was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, of what’s now Italy. In his twenty’s he moved to Lisbon, Portugal, and later stayed in Spain, which remained his home base for the duration of his life. Columbus went to sea as a teenager, participating in several trading voyages in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas. One such voyage, to the island of Khios, in modern-day Greece, brought him the closest he would ever come to Asia.

Columbus' first voyage into the Atlantic Ocean in 1476 almost cost him his life as the commercial fleet he was sailing with was attacked by French privateers off the coast of Portugal. The editors from Biography.com state that “his ship was burned, and Columbus had to swim to the Portuguese shore.”

He went to Lisbon, Portugal, where he settled and married Filipa 

Perestrelo. They had one son, Diego, around 1480. His wife died soon after, and Columbus moved to Spain. He had another son, Fernando, who was born in wedlock in 1488 with Beatriz Enriquez de Arana.

After participating in several other expeditions to Africa, Columbus gained knowledge of the Atlantic currents flowing east and west from the Canary Islands.   

In late August 1492, Columbus left Spain from the port of Palos de la Frontera. Columbus  was leaving with three ships: Columbus in the larger Santa Maria (a type of ship known as a carrack), with the Pinta and the Niña (both Portuguese-style caravels) alongside. 

Fun Facts- According to Robin James “Columbus had promised a reward of gold to whoever saw land first”. A guy named Rodrigo de Triana was the first to see land on October 12, 1492: a small island in the present-day Bahamas Columbus named San Salvador. Poor Rodrigo never got the reward, however: Columbus kept it for himself, telling everyone he had seen a hazy sort of light the night before. He had not spoken up because the light was indistinct. Rodrigo may have gotten hosed, but there is a nice statue of him sighting land in a park in Seville.

On Columbus’ famed 1492 voyage, his flagship the Santa Maria ran aground and sank, causing him to leave 39 men behind at a settlement named La Navidad. He was supposed to return to Spain loaded with spices and other valuable goods and knowledge of an important new trade route. Instead, he returned empty-handed and without the best of the three ships entrusted to him. On his fourth voyage, his ship rotted out from under him and he spent a year with his men marooned on Jamaica.

Columbus Grateful for the new lands he had found for them, the King and Queen of Spain made Columbus governor in the newly established settlement of Santo Domingo. Columbus, who was a good explorer, turned out to be a bad governor. He and his brothers ruled the settlement like kings, taking most of the profits for themselves and antagonizing the other settlers. Although Columbus instructed his settlers to make sure that the Taino’s on Hispaniola be protected, during his frequent absences, the settlers rampaged the villages, robbing, raping, and enslaving. Disciplinary actions by Columbus and his brother were met with open revolt. It got so bad that the Spanish crown sent an investigator, who took over as governor, arrested Columbus, and sent him back to Spain in chains. The new governor was worse.