A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Cape Bojador still remained a barrier to the south. In 1433, the sailors on a caravel refused to
venture into the Boiling Sea, and turned back. Henry, from his armchair, insisted that they had
nothing to be afraid of; the boiling seas were probably due to shallows, and all they had to do was
to sail out into the ocean and round them. He proved to be correct; the following year, the same
ship sailed beyond Cape Bojador and landed on the other side. The sailors found a pleasant land
with vines and flowering plants and took samples back to Portugal. Soon Henry’s ships were
exploring the coast of Africa and setting up trading posts.
Henry the Navigator died in 1460, his dream of finding the route to India still unrealised. Twentyeight
years later, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope. His successor, Vasco da
Gama, reached the mouth of the Zambesi and discovered that the Arabs had preceded him by the
overland route. But an Arab pilot guided him across to Calicut, in India. When he finally returned
home, he had lost three-quarters of his men from scurvy and several of his ships. The Portuguese
sent warships to deal with the hostile Arabs and built trading posts all round the coast of Africa.
Meanwhile, a Genoese adventurer named Christopher Columbus had also been in Portugal trying to
raise money for his own pet project - finding a way to China and India by sailing west across the
Ocean Sea (as the Atlantic was then called). The Portuguese turned him away and he took his
project to Spain. Here his luck improved when the Spanish queen, Isabella, became his patroness.
Delays were interminable; it was six years before he was ready to start. But on the morning of 3
August 1492, the Santa Maria, the Pinta and the Nina sailed from Palos.
According to the maps of that time, the island of Japan (Zipangn) should be due west of the
Canaries, so Columbus began by turning south, then west. Luck had taken him in the right direction
– into the north-west winds that roared up the coast of Africa. For weeks, these winds carried them
into the Atlantic. The sailors became increasingly nervous - some believed they might fall off the
edge of the world. Columbus kept two log books, one showing the real distance and the other a
greatly reduced distance, to keep his officers quiet. But when the crew threatened mutiny, he had to
promise that if there was no land within three days they would return to Spain.
On the third day - 11 October - a branch with green leaves drifted past the ship. By mid morning of
the following day, the delighted sailors were splashing ashore towards a group of naked human
beings who looked at them curiously. Columbus had landed on one of the Bahamas; he called it
San Salvador. He went on to discover Haiti and Cuba. Then, leaving behind a colony to search for
gold, he sailed back to Spain. The total voyage had taken seven months. Columbus was received
like a hero and loaded with honours and riches. Yet it is typical of him that he also claimed the
large reward that was supposed to go to the first sailor who sighted land. The persistence that
enabled Columbus to discover America was partly the sheer manic obsessiveness of the typical
Right Man. It was to be responsible for most of his later misfortunes.
When the second ship, the Pinta, arrived back in Palos, it brought a rather more dubious gift to the
old world - a sexual disease that the captain, Martin Pinzon, had picked up from a native woman. It
was called syphilis, and within ten years had spread all over the ports of Europe and the near east -
an ironic testimony to how far communications had improved.
Columbus made three more voyages - on the third of which he discovered the mainland of
America, landing at the place now called Colon on the Isthmus of Panama. But the remainder of his
life was something of an anticlimax. His arrogance and stubbornness caused endless trouble, and at
one point he was loaded with chains and sent back to Spain. Totally blind to his own shortcomings,