Columbus: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504 by Laurence Bergreen Read Free Book Online Page A

quest. He met with stiff resistance, until Martín Alonso Pinzón urged them to join with these words: “Friends, come away with us on this voyage. You are living here in misery. Come with us on this voyage, and to my certain knowledge we shall find houses roofed with gold and all of you will return prosperous and happy.” Pinzón’s words and reputation and example won the seamen over to Columbus’s side. “It was because of this assurance of prosperity and the general trust in him that so many agreed to go with him,” said one of his listeners.
    Actually, he had done even more than that for Columbus. According to his son, Arias Pérez Pinzón, his father happened to have a friend, a cosmographer, or celestial mapmaker, who worked in the Vatican Library and who passed on a copy of a chart showing that one could sail westward across the Atlantic to Japan. (Without knowledge of the New World and the Pacific Ocean, such speculation ran rampant.) Martín Alonso, his son said, decided to mount a voyage of his own, but met with rebuffs in Portugal and Spain. In search of safe haven, spiritual support, and scholarly advice, Columbus retreated to the Monasterio de Santa María de la Rábida, a dramatically situated Franciscan friary in the town of Palos de la Frontera. There he encountered Martín Alonso Pinzón, who displayed a copy of the chart. Columbus was on the verge of abandoning Spain for France in his search for backing, but once equipped with this crucial document, he was finally able to win the support of the Spanish Sovereigns.
    So the sudden, unexplained disappearance of Martín Alonso Pinzón on November 22 signified more than an ordinary act of insubordination. And because Pinzón was a part owner of the fleet, Columbus could not treat him as he might an ordinary seaman and punish him for disloyalty; the most he could do was outwait and outwit him, and eventually prove him wrong. Yet there was reason for hope. It might be expected that Pinzón’s two brothers would follow suit, but they remained loyal to Columbus rather than to their brother. Columbus could not guess what their behavior implied about the fitness of Martín Alonso Pinzón, but he was bolstered by their loyalty; in fact, he expected no less.
    For his part, Martín Alonso Pinzón believed he was just as responsible for the voyage as Columbus. Yet it was Columbus, not Pinzón, who had negotiated the terms of the voyage with Ferdinand and Isabella, including the detailed and explicit series of capitulations, or agreements, about his obligations and entitlements. Lacking comparable credentials, Pinzón behaved as though he had been forced into a partnership with a hotheaded Genoese mystic named Christopher Columbus who was out to claim the glory for himself, if he did not get them all killed in encounters with storms, sea monsters, reefs, or starvation.
    So far, he had managed an unprecedented feat in the history of exploration, sailing across the Atlantic without loss of life. In contrast, Martín Alonso Pinzón became ever more erratic.
     
    “T his night Martín Alonso followed the course to the East,” Columbus recorded on November 22 as he headed toward an island called Vaneque, lured by the promise of gold, or so the Indians said. Columbus passed the night sailing toward the island, and then, to his surprise, it seemed that Pinzón had changed course and was “coming toward him; and the night was very clear and the light wind favorable for coming to him, had he so wished.” Through weary eyes, the Admiral gradually realized that he had been mistaken; perhaps Pinzón had maneuvered toward the flagship but had changed his mind. The mystery of his motives and plans bedeviled Columbus as he shaped a course for the island he called Bohío, about which the Indians conveyed a familiar set of rumors concerning “people who had one eye in the forehead” and fearsome cannibals. When the Indians realized the course chosen by Columbus would lead to