The Salesman

A weaver's son

The man we call Christopher Columbus never used that name. He was born in Genoa, a busy port city in what is now Italy, in 1451. In Italian his name was Cristoforo Colombo. In Spain he became Cristóbal Colón. "Christopher Columbus" is the Latin form, Christophorus Columbus, later carried into English. [1]

His father, Domenico Colombo, was a weaver who also dealt in wool. Over the years Domenico also worked as a cheesemaker, a tavern keeper and a wine dealer. [2] His son chose the sea.

Fire at sea

On August 13, 1476, a French fleet attacked the convoy Columbus was sailing with off the coast of Portugal. His ship caught fire. He jumped overboard and reached land, though the ship had been about six miles from shore. He then made his way to Lisbon. [3]

The idea

Columbus proposed a different route: sail west across the Atlantic, and you will reach Asia from the other side.

Educated Europeans of the time already knew the earth was round. [11] The question was how far Asia lay to the west. Columbus relied on the ideas of a Florentine scholar, Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, and on small estimates of the earth's size. He also mixed up different units of measurement. By his math, Japan lay about 2,500 nautical miles west of the Canary Islands. [4]

The real distance is more than 10,000 nautical miles. [4] Columbus was not slightly off. He was off by a factor of four.

The answer from Portugal

In 1484, Columbus presented his plan to King João II of Portugal. The king sent it to a commission of experts. They recommended rejecting it. [3]

The experts did not think the earth was flat. They thought the ocean was too wide: ships would run out of food and water long before reaching Asia. They also judged the voyage too expensive. They called his idea vain, "simply founded on imagination." [3]

Six years of waiting

Columbus took his plan to Spain. Around 1486, Queen Isabella of Castile asked Hernando de Talavera to set up a commission to study it. The commission met on and off for years. In 1490, it too recommended against the plan. [5]

His brother Bartholomew tried England, setting out for the court of King Henry VII. Pirates captured him on the way. [1]

Stop here for a moment. Two panels of experts, in two kingdoms, had studied Columbus's numbers and said no. They were right. Columbus had no new evidence. What he had was persistence, and timing.

The last kingdom falls

Ferdinand and Isabella had been at war with the Emirate of Granada, the last Muslim-ruled kingdom in Spain. On January 2, 1492, its ruler, known as Boabdil, surrendered. The war was over. [6]

The monarchs had camped through the siege at Santa Fe, a fortified town built outside Granada. There, on April 17, 1492, they signed an agreement with Columbus, overriding their own experts. [5][7]

The deal

The agreement, called the Capitulations of Santa Fe, gave Columbus everything he asked for. He would be Admiral of the Ocean Sea, viceroy and governor-general of any lands he found, with the honorific "don." He would also receive one tenth of all the riches the voyage produced. [7]

The money came together in pieces. Luis de Santángel, a royal treasurer, had persuaded Isabella to accept the plan. He arranged most of the funding without interest, partly from his own pocket and partly with borrowed money; the Crown repaid him later. [8] The town of Palos owed the Crown a debt and paid it by providing two of the ships. Italian financiers covered part of the cost. [9]

The famous story that Isabella sold her jewels to pay for the voyage is a myth. [9]