2013, Pages 25–44
Summary
Christopher
Columbus fabricated a complete plan for his “enterprise of the Indies,”
a voyage west from the Canary Islands to Japan, which was deeply flawed
by a series of assumptions seriously underestimating the sailing
distance. Remarkably, his projected distance to Japan corresponded
closely to the distance he actually sailed to make his first landfall in
San Salvador. In his series of four voyages of exploration, Columbus
obsessively tried to prove that he had arrived in the East Indies rather
than accommodating himself to his real achievement of discovering a new
world. His failure to modify his initial hypothesis allowed the credit
for his discoveries to be claimed for many years by Amerigo Vespucci.
Keywords
Columbus, discovery of America, caravel, Santa Maria, Navidad, San Salvador
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