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If you were like most people during the Age of Sail, you rarely traveled any farther than the nearest market town. That meant the news that someone on a boat had just gone entirely around the world would probably seem about as real to most people as the news that they had stopped off at Pluto on the way back.
The explorers you're about to read about were not like most people-not just because of the distances they traveled but because of the courage, intelligence, and seamanship that allowed them to travel incredible distances, survive appalling conditions, and eat new and fascinating animals.
CRISTOFORO "CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS" COLOMBO
Or Cristóbal Colón, or Cristóvão Colombo, depending what language you're speaking when you're saying his name-he was Genoese, so probably the Italian version is most accurate. First off, let's deal with a simple but popular misconception: pretty much anyone in the 15th century who was halfway-educated (especially sailors and merchants) knew that the world was round.
In fact, the ancient scholar Eratosthenes had managed to correctly calculate the circumference of world nearly 1800 years ago-the only problem was that nobody could definitively figure out what unit of measurement he used when he did it, given that at the time a "mile" could mean anything from one to eleven kilometers. Columbus actually was wrong in several major ways (how far east Asia extended, how big Japan was, whether or not there happened to be one or two gigantic continents in between him and India) but his true great accomplishment was his mastery of the trade winds.
While sailing west to the Bahamas on the semi-permanent winds called the "easterlies" was simple enough, Columbus drew on his years of experience as a sailor and assumed that the "westerlies" that blew on to the coast of northwest Europe would get their start on the new continent's northeastern shore. Not to spoil the surprise or anything, but his assumption proved correct, and became the basis for trans-Atlantic trade for centuries to come.
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GEORGE ANSON
Commodore George Anson, a wealthy nobleman and skilled commander, was given an assignment that even today would sound a little tricky: sail to the other side of the world to the western coast of South America, capture the capital of Peru, rally Peruvian natives against the Spanish Empire, capture Panama, steal all the treasure there, capture the Acapulco Galleon as it made its way across the trackless ocean with all the riches of the Orient, and oh yeah, the Royal Navy doesn't really have very good maps for the area so if you could go ahead and chart that for us it would be awesome.
To accomplish this, Anson was provided with six warships, two supply vessels, and a crew that was supposed to include five hundred soldiers but instead comprised 259 wounded and diseased veterans (some of whom literally had to be carried aboard on stretchers) and a complement of Marines so inexperienced that few of them even knew how to fire a gun.
Nonetheless, Anson was determined to accomplish his mission as best as he was able, and despite the shocking loss of most of his fleet and 1,666 of his original 1,854 crew he managed to not only survey the region but caught the Acapulco Galleon on its way back to Manila, laden with an astonishing amount of hard cash. Anson's surviving crew retired with more money than they had ever dreamed of, while the Commodore himself went on to serve with distinction against the French.
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CHARLES WILKES
American naval officer Charles Wilkes was a good example of an important role within the British and American navies: the sailing scientist, skilled in both combat and careful observation and capable of organizing a team of researchers as ably and efficiently as a platoon of marines.
After command of the newly-minted United States Exploring Expedition was rejected by a number of senior naval officers, responsibility for the fleet of six armed ships and hundreds of scientists and seaman was given to Wilkes (at the time, only a lieutenant) for his scientific acumen and demonstrated ability to work with civilian scientists.
Over the course of the next four years, the USEE (or "Wilkes Expedition" as it soon came to be known) visited the Antarctic coast, performed gravity experiments at the peak of Mauna Loa, mapped and surveyed the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Northwest coastline, and fixed latitudes and longitudes for hundreds of small islands across the Pacific before circumnavigating the world (the last sail-driven expedition to do so) and sailing into New York Harbor.
Wilkes' maps became an invaluable aid for American merchant and naval shipping in the Pacific, and the findings of his science team (derisively nicknamed "clam-diggers" by the regular seamen) provided years of data for American science, as well as the foundation for the Smithsonian Institution's collection.
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ZUAN "JOHN CABOT" CHABOTTO
Another Italian explorer with a dozen different variations on his name, John Cabot is most popularly known under his English name for his service under an English king, Henry "Not The Fat One" VII. Pursued by a swarm of angry Spanish and Italian creditors, John wound up in Bristol seeking supporters for a simple but novel idea: reach the New World by sailing west from a more northerly latitude, where longitudes (and presumably landmasses) would be closer together.
His first expedition was apparently such a disappointment that the only evidence of it is a letter from a Bristol merchant to Columbus, stating that Cabot had to turn back because everything sucked, but in 1497 the explorer successfully made landfall in Newfoundland, only visiting the shore long enough to claim the country in the name of the King of England and officially declare it Roman Catholic, two events the local Canadian natives were not to be made aware of for quite some time.
Cabot returned to a hero's welcome, personal congratulations from the King, and the then-stunning prize of ten pounds sterling (roughly two years salary at the time). Cabot soon fitted out a fleet of five ships loaded with trade goods and colonial supplies and set off again for the North American coast, where (due to a bizarre and controversial lack of almost any historical records) he and his entire fleet were lost at sea or he successfully charted much of Canada and even established a small missionary outpost before returning to England in 1500.
Whatever happened to Cabot (and I'm sure his creditors were at least as curious as we are today), England now had knowledge of and a route to its own little chunk of the New World.
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VASCO DA GAMA
First European to sail direct from Europe to India, Vasco da Gama was the Age of Discovery's superstar, a Portuguese explorer so famous that his homeland's national epic poem was written in his honor (and yeah, that may sound a bit weak now, but think of it as like him getting his own Super Bowl halftime special multiplied by a breakout American Idol performance and you'll start to appreciate his star power).
Before da Gama, trade with India and Asia meant first sailing through the dozen overlapping territorial waters and pirate kingdoms that made up the Mediterranean, then trudging across Arabia either bribing or fighting your way past another collection of pesky little nation-states; afterwards it meant a relatively safe and reliable journey by ship, touching at a few friendly or neutral ports, and arriving at Calicut (now Kozhikode) to stuff the boats to the gunwales with pepper, cinnamon, and a vast assortment of other exotic spices that Portugal now had an incredibly lucrative monopoly upon.
Da Gama's route skirted North Africa before veering out almost to South America to take advantage of the westerlies, which blew him back to the southern tip of Africa (the Cape of Good Hope) and back up between Madagascar before finally departing Mombasa for a straight-line dash east to Calicut, but later expeditions simplified the route and cut down on the number of stops as sailing technology and experience improved. His initial route-particularly the long detour southeast-was at the time the longest anyone had ever spent at sea.
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FERDINAND MAGELLAN
Known popularly as the first man to circumnavigate the world, Ferdinand Magellan himself only survived the first half of it before dying of a combination of poor diplomacy and bamboo spears.
The first sailor to cross from the Atlantic ocean to the Pacific (a term he himself coined), Magellan pioneered the official Portuguese route to Asia that later became widely adopted: run south-south-west along the coasts of Spain, Africa, and South America, cut through the tricky Strait of Magellan if you've got the stones for it (elsewise freeze your ass off rounding Cape Horn), and then a long slog west-north-west through the open ocean, hoping to come across the occasional island to replenish fresh water, fruits and vegetables, and possibly some delicious turtles.
If you don't die, which was in no way guaranteed, you will likely bump into the Philippines or Indonesia, two island chains populated by generally friendly people. At this point, having already successfully sailed a greater distance than any other human being alive, Magellan may have been feeling a bit cocky, and volunteered his arms and men to assist a newly-baptized Christian rajah in a territorial dispute, where he very soon discovered that even with guns and crossbows, fighting an enemy some thirty times your size while slogging through wet sand was a fatally bad idea.
Somewhat sheepishly, the expedition left the Philippines with their remaining ships to further explore the Indonesian archipelago before another open-ocean jaunt to the Cape of Good Hope and then back to Spain.
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PEDRO CABRAL
Another Portuguese from the brief period of history when Portugal was really knocking it out of the park exploration-wise, Pedro Alvares Cabral was given the task of following in Vasco da Gama's footsteps and leading the Second Portuguese Indian Armada to Calicut to expand on the existing trade and diplomatic missions there, but his real achievement was his almost accidental discovery of Brazil.
Cabral used many veterans and charts from da Gama's expedition and ended up following roughly the same course, except his initial arc away from North Africa wandered just a bit further west-far enough for his ships to encounter driftwood, birds, and other signs of land and life.
Eager to collect water and claim land, Cabral ordered the fleet to continue west, anchoring at the mouth of the Frade river where a group of curious Tupinquim natives had assembled to figure out what the hell was going on.
Attempts at first contact were tricky (an attempt was made to row out and trade a European hat for a feathered headdress, but was beaten back by strong waves) but eventually two locals in a canoe were kidnapped as nicely as possible and given clothes, food, and trinkets in exchange for demonstrating how to get ashore.For a week, the Tupinquim and the Portuguese attempted to figure each other out, trading nails for parrots and crucifixes for monkeys (a pretty good deal if you think about it) aided by Cabral ordering a few degredados (exiles who were typically placed on Portuguese expeditionary fleets as convict labor or cannon fodder) to spend the night in the local village to see if they would get killed.
Satisfied with his discovery, Cabral dispatched a supply ship back to Lisbon to inform the King that he now owned a new and monkey-filled part of the world before continuing on with the rest of the armada to Calicut-making sure to leave a few degredados behind in Brazil as a sort of long-term version of the "figure out if you can hang out with these guys without being killed" experiment.
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ROBERT FITZROY
Child prodigy and child soldier Robert FitzRoy first put to sea when he was only fourteen years old after two years at the Portsmouth Royal Naval College. Born with the great advantages of wealth and nobility, FitzRoy still dedicated himself to the science of sailing with profound determination, earning his lieutenant's commission at the age of nineteen with the rare distinction of passing his exams with a score of 100%.
His skill earned him the position of flag-lieutenant at the RN's South American station at Rio de Janeiro, where he was granted acting command of the brig HMS Beagle after its previous commander blew his brains out rather than suffer the horrific tedium of performing hydrographical surveys of the Brazilian coast. FitzRoy's detailed charts and admirable refusal to commit suicide earned him further praise among the Admiralty, and after a failed Parliamentary campaign FitzRoy was given official and permanent command of the Beagle, with the implied expectation that he would accomplish even greater things with an independent command.
At this point FitzRoy was a little bit scared. Independent command could be desperately lonely and depressing and he had known too many men who had been driven to suicide because of it. Making use of his noble and military connections, Robert requested that on his next voyage he should be accompanied by a civilian scientist that he could talk to as an intellectual equal; he ended up with a brilliant young naturalist named Charles Darwin, a man who would become a close friend and confidante for the rest of their lives.
While the liberal Darwin and the conservative FitzRoy often had heated arguments (particularly regarding the morality of slavery), both men had an enduring respect for each other and for advancing knowledge. This friendship and mutual commitment to scientific research ultimately resulted in Darwin's legendary survey of the Galapagos Islands and the development of the Origin of Species. Robert FitzRoy's contributions to science, exploration, and sailing continued even after the end of his career in the Royal Navy: with the support of his old friend Darwin, FitzRoy was elected to the prestigious Royal Society, where he pioneered the infant science of meteorology.
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MA / ZHENG HE
We only know a few concrete facts about legendary Chinese sailor Zheng He: he was born Ma He into the Hui community (a widely-spread Muslim Chinese/Mongolian ethnicity left over from the Yuan Dynasty), he was caught up in the revolution against the Ming Dynasty between the ages of eleven and fifteen and punished by castration (a polite way of saying he had his balls chopped the hell off), and after years of intrigues in the courts of a bakers dozen of Chinese princes he finagled his way into the command of an expeditionary fleet that ranged farther than any Chinese ship had ever dared.
Zheng He's armada made seven voyages from 1405 to 1433, touching at ports all over the Indonesian Archipelago, ancient Vietnam, dozens of Indian states, Persian remnants at Hormuz, Islamic metropolises at Jeddah and Mecca, and the East African cities of Mogadishu and Malindi. While Zheng He undeniably benefitted from earlier Chinese sailors and cartographers as well as the amazingly durable qualities of Chinese ship design (namely waterproof bulkheads and rigid junk-rigged sails), his leadership and diplomatic skills were what made his voyages a success.
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LEIF ERICSON
For centuries, the story of Leif Ericson was regarded as little more than a myth. Norse sailors were known for their skill and prowess (in part due to their use of the "sunstone," a polarized crystal that could detect sunlight even through heavy cloud) but the thought that one of them not only reached America but began a small settlement there was too much for most people to believe.
That all changed in the 60s, when Norwegian archeologists successfully identified the remnants of an ancient Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows on the coast of Newfoundland. This village may have been the capital of a group of settlements collectively called Vinland or "land of wine" for the grapevines that grew south of the Saint Lawrence River. The fate of the colony was ultimately unknown, but it was unique among European settlements in that from what anyone can tell, it didn't try and screw over the locals.
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