While I question some of some of the things Conrad says, I think it is a
mistake to call Columbus a "bumbling, but lucky fool." From everything
I have read, Columbus was a skilled navigator using the tools of his
day. While he may have used the compass (I don't remember reading
that), he was able to plot a course across the Atlantic with some
accuracy. One example of this, is one leg of one of his trip where he
left the coast of South America headed to Cuba. His point of arrival
was exact off set by the current which he did not realize existed.

While text books state he sailed off into the unknown, he set sail with
1000 years of knowledge of the seas to the west of Europe. It is known
that this knowledge extended to the coast of America where European
fishermen had been fishing off of the coast of Newfoundland prior to
Columbus. He may have actually had knowledge of the American coast, as
his point of arrival in American was south of the tip of Florida.

With our current instruments we forget what our ancestors could do with
the things that nature provided them; wind, current, stars, moon, sun,
and an internal sense of time. By Columbus's time they had tools for
determining latitude, and other tools, while primitive by our standard,
for navigation.

You can check these statement by reading the many books in the library
where this information was derived.


jlrogers±³© wrote:
Read his journals. He was a bumbling, but lucky fool.