Columbus, The Whole Story

About the Book

This book is a story teller’s version in the genre of the historical novel There are some sequences based on what the individual would do or say in common sense and character. I tell the whole Columbus Story in a style that allows reasoned new insights, offering analyzed views where material is lost forever and undocumentable now. However, the whole story as presented is faithful to proven persons and events that are facts in the Columbus history.

History is an exacting discipline, demanding of its professionals the same care for verifiable source and truth that science does. Untold research hours will be spent for proving a name or a date. Using the freedom of the historical novel the whole can be displayed without this, and more interestingly. An anthropologist does it through assembly of bone fragments into a realistic figure. The novelist’s style allows assembling and dramatizing scenes that fit with facts though they may lack rigorous documentation.

The Columbus story is magnificent, gripping and complex. Results of his voyages of discovery were ascendancy for old Spain, a New Spain that included South America (less Brazil), Central America, Mexico and great parts of the present United States. His discoveries were fortuitous. After a long struggle for recognition in which he persisted in a fundamental error about the size of the earth, his project was launched with the backing of Ferdinand and Isabella for a target that he never reached.

Western civilization and the world are different because of Christopher Columbus. Columbus has been described as having the greatest impact on the Western world since Jesus Christ. Samuel Morison in his much read work says “He did more to direct the course of history than any individual since Augustus Caesar.”

Columbus’ glory does not depend on the parts of the world he visited or the extent of coast that he sailed, rather it is in the discovery of a whole new geography. He opened the way to a vast extension of western civilization, against incredible odds and ancient fears and prejudices. He provided a simple formula that anybody could use to go to the new world with a ship and crew capable of an open sea voyage of about a month.

For one insight, Thor Heyerdahl speaks:

“The invisible rivers that flow across all major oceans, stronger and larger than any river ashore are held in constant motion by nothing less than the rotation of the earth itself. They flow from east to west in the tropical belt, and striking continents they turn, each in a wide loop, coming back east in colder latitudes as close as possible to the Arctic and Antarctic regions. …they pull with them any floating thing, while above the sea, the eternal trade winds blow in the same general rotation with full strength, from east to west the year round. “

“Columbus will remain forever unchallenged as the one who came back with ample proof of his discovery. In his wake swarmed an infinite number of large and small craft some so tiny and fragile that they would be ridiculed by the boat builders of the ancient middle east”.

Columbus and his brother Bartholomew were in positions to and did observe the westerlies in latitudes of and south of the Canaries. They also observed the easterlies in the latitudes of and north of the Azores. They knew of foreign objects floated to the Azores and east from the west in the northerly latitudes. Columbus sailed the “Mina” return from Sierra Leone where the Portuguese had learned to go west from Africa to the longitude of the Azores then north until they could lay Lisbon to the east with fair winds. With the inspiration of the first world globe by Martin Behaim the brothers realized the existence of the North Atlantic gyre described above by Heyerdahl, and used this knowledge though they kept it secret.

Columbus’ star reaches a dizzying peak after his return from his first

About the Author

COLUMBUS, THE WHOLE STORY THE AUTHOR Robert Campbell, a lifetime sailor, is eminently familiar with the Caribbean. He navigated a sailing yacht on the same track as Columbus’ second voyage, from which he remembers his night watches with their glorious galaxies of brilliant stars, glinting on the dark seas around. The weather permits carrying a spinnaker continuously. Great swells overtake from astern, lifting the boat in acceleration as they pass through and ahead. Their continuous rhythm is part of existence. He saw and felt what Columbus did, over 500 years ago. He was a professional naval officer for thirty years, and later supervised construction of a 48 foot ketch in Taiwan, with Hood masts, sails and rigging from New Zealand. This craft was sailed for years as a family yacht in California and Mexican waters. Additionally he enjoyed chartering in the Pacific, Alaska, the Caribbean, Mexico and Belize, and navigated a sailing yacht from Hawaii to San Diego. He sailed many summers in Maine and adjacent Canadian waters, as well as round-the-buoy and overnight races at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead. He lives with his wife Dorothy after retirement from a banking second career in La Jolla, California, within sound and sight of the ocean.