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Guanahani was the name the natives gave to the island that Columbus called San Salvador when he arrived at the Americas. Columbus reached the island on 12 October 1492, the first island he sighted and visited in the Americas. Guanahani is one of the islands of the Lucayan archipelago in the Bahamas, but the exact island is a matter of some debate. The question may never be resolved, as Columbus's original log book has been lost for centuries, and the only evidence is in the edited abstract made by Bartolomé de las Casas.
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Candidates
Prominent candidates
- Modern San Salvador Island; it was in fact known as Watling Island before 1925, but renamed after some historians made what was then considered a persuasive case that it was Guanahani. Notable defenders of the theory: Samuel Eliot Morison, James Murdock
- Samana Cay, proposed in 1882 by Gustavus V. Fox, a US Navy captain. Fox's theory was little known until revived in a 1986 issue of National Geographic Magazine
- Plana Cays, proposed by Ramon Juan Didiez Burgos in 1974, Keith A. Pickering in 1994
- Grand Turk Island, proposed by Martín Fernandez de Navarrete in 1824, Robert Power in 1983
Other suggested candidates
- Mayaguana, proposed by Francisco Varnhagen in 1825
- Conception Island, proposed by R.T. Gould in 1943
- East Caicos Island, proposed by Pieter Verhoog in 1947
- Cat Island, widely believed to be Guanahani until Las Casas' abstract of Columbus' log was rediscovered in 1791 and published in 1875-1876, which argued strongly against the identification
[1] Cat Island advocates based their claims on old maps. One of the defenders of Cat Island was Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie.
- Egg Island, proposed by Arne Molander in 1981
- Lignum Vitae Cay, proposed by John Winslow in 1989
Clues
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Trans-Atlantic track
The first way to locate Guanahani is to follow the distances and directions Columbus gave in his log. This procedure is difficult because of the uncertainties in knowing the length of Columbus's league, the speed and direction of ocean currents, and the exact direction his magnetic compass would have pointed in 1492.
John McElroy[2] was one of the first to attempt this in 1941, using a speculative magnetic chart for the year 1500 and currents from pilot charts. His vast overrun in distance was corrected by a fudge factor, leaving his endpoint in the vicinity of Watlings Island. This result was substantially confirmed by Doug Peck's sailing voyage[3] of 1991.
In 1986, Luis Marden[4] of the National Geographic Society applied currents to the first half of the voyage (but not the second half) and determined Samana Cay as the most probable landfall.
In 1992, Goldsmith and Richardson[5] used vector average currents (rather than prevailing currents) along with an updated magnetic field, and found a track that ended in the vicinity of Grand Turk Island.
In 2004, Keith Pickering[6] applied magnetic declinations from a more modern source and found a track that ended in the vicinity of the Plana Cays.
Lights on the evening preceding the discovery
At 10 p.m. on October 11, Columbus noticed lights "like a little wax candle, rising and falling" at the horizon. He pointed them out to other people on board, some of whom were able to see the lights, while others didn't. The actual landfall was about 35 miles from the location Columbus saw the lights, so if taken that the lights were from a ground-based source, then they could not have been from Guanahani, but must have been from another island farther east. For the Plana Cays theory, the light would have been on Mayaguana. For Conception, it could have been on Cat Island, Watling/San Salvador or Rum Cay. For Caicos it could have been on Grand Turk. For Cat Island it could have been Watling/San Salvador and for Lignum Vitae Cay it could have been Eleuthera Island. Other theories have no ready explanation.
Description of Guanahani
Columbus calls the island very flat with many trees. This is true for all of the proposed islands. His next statement is more problematic. He says Guanahani has "muchas aguas y una laguna en medio muy grande" -- many waters and a laguna in the middle (or "in between") very big. The word laguna creates many problems. It is uncertain whether it means lagoon or pond. In any case, most of the proposed islands have either a lagoon or pond; only East Caicos lacks one.
On October 14, Columbus made a boat trip to the eastern part of the island. Therefore he went the length of the island in a North-northeast direction. This is only possible on Plana Cays, Conception and Egg, and to a certain extent on Samana Cay. Columbus noticed a reef that completely surrounded the island. All proposed islands, except Cat, have a reef, but the ones on Cat and Watling don't completely surround the island. Between the reef and the island was a harbor "large enough to store all ships of Christianity." Of course this is an exaggeration, but the harbor on Egg is definitely too small. Columbus went on land and saw "a piece of land, that looked like an island, but actually wasn't one." This is difficult to track, because it may have become a real island in the past 500 years.
Island or islands
Disputed about Guanahani is the question of whether Guanahani was one island or not. Evidence is said to be contradictory. Columbus never says Guanahani consisted of several islands, something which is surely worth noting. But on reproductions of the map of Juan de la Cosa, who was with Columbus, Guanahani looks for some researchers like a string of islands. The map itself - preserved in Madrid - and recent facsimiles show that to be a mistake of the reproductions, though.
See also
References
- ^ The original transcript is a holograph found in 1791 of 67 double-sided folios in the handwriting of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who used it to prepare his "Historia de las Indias". Published in five volumes in 1875-76, it has had many English translations, most notably a combined transcription and translation by Dunn & Kelley. The Diario of Christopher Columbus's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493.. University of Oklahoma Press. 1989.
- ^ McElroy, John W. (1941) The Ocean Navigation of Columbus on His First Voyage. The American Neptune, I 209-240.
- ^ Peck, Douglas T. (1993) Christoforo Colombo, God's Navigator, Columbus, WI: Columbian Publishers.
- ^ Marden, Luis. (1986) The First Landfall of Columbus. National Geographic, 170 (November) 572-577.
- ^ Goldsmith, Roger A. and Philip L. Richardson, (1992). Numerical Simulations of Columbus' Atlantic Crossings. Woods Hole Oceanog. Inst. Tech. Rept., WHOI-92-14, February 1992.
- ^ Pickering, Keith A. The Transatlantic Tracks of Columbus. Society for the History of Discoveries lecture, Cody, Wyoming September 11, 2004
External links
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