Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus, the son of a wool merchant, was born in Genoa in about 1451. (History.com, 2013) When he was still a teenager, he got a job on a merchant ship. Until 1470 Christopher Columbus remained on the see, when French merchant ships that were owned and officered by private individuals using government permission for use in war attacked his ship as it sailed north along the coast of Portuguese. The boat sank, but the young Columbus floating on a scrap of wood from the sunken ship made his way to Lisbon, where he studied four subjects which were mathematics, astronomy, cartography and navigation.

During two centuries which were the 15th and 16th centuries, several leaders of European nations were sponsoring expeditions abroad in the hope that explorers would find great wealth and very great extent of undiscovered lands. In the so called “Age of Discovery” the Portuguese were the first people to participate in it. About 1420 was when it started of small Portuguese ships known as caravels zipped along the African coast and which were carrying spices, gold, slaves and other goods from Asia and Africa to Europe.

At the end of the first of the two centuries which was the 15th century, it was nearly no way to Europe on land. The only route was long and arduous, which you could have encounters with hostile armies who were very difficult to avoid. Explorers from Portugal solved the land round and hostile army problems by taking to the sea which they ended up sailing to the south along the West African coast also around the Cape of Good Hope.

A different idea which Columbus had was to sail west through the Atlantic instead of around the African continent which was massive. Christopher Columbus’s young logic was good and smar...

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...he had to abandon two of his four ships when he was attacked by hostile natives. Empty-handed, the elderly explorer returned to Spain, where he died in 1506.

Columbus got the title of Admiral of the Ocean Sea and further royal patronage from a widely published report of his voyage of 1492 which made him famous. Columbus led three more expeditions to the Caribbean and never abandoned the belief he had reached Asia, but curiosity and the failure of his own leadership brought a lot of disappointment and political unimportance to his final years.

Works Cited

http://www.history.com/topics/christopher-columbus

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/c/columbus.shtml

http://geography.about.com/od/christophercolumbus/a/columbus.htm

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/127070/Christopher-Columbus