Christopher Columbus
Christopher
Columbus was born in Genoa (JEN oh uh) ,Italy. He was the oldest of
five children in his family. His
father was a wool weaver. He helped his father with the weaving, but he
always wanted to sail the seas.
He didn't get to go to school
very much, but he learned to read and write
Spanish during his travels. He also taught himself Latin because all
the
geography books were written in Latin.
Some people thought he was
trying to prove the world was round, but
this is not true. Most people already knew the earth was round. He
wanted to find a short way to get to the Indies by ship.
He was a Christian and wanted
to tell the story of Christ to the people
he would find in the far-away lands. He also wanted wealth for himself
and for Spain, and he wanted to be famous.
He tried for eight years to
get King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
to supply him with ships and money. Finally they agreed, but he made
more demands.
He wanted to be made a knight , admiral of the Ocean Sea. He wanted to be
the viceroy
and governor general of all lands he would
discover. Also he
wanted one-tenth of everything he found of value in the new lands.
He even boldly told them he
wanted all of this in writing. This
was rather brave of him because they could have had him killed because
of his demands.
They finally agreed and he got
three ships ready to sail;
the Santa Maria and
two smaller ships, the
Pinta and the Nina.
He took enough food for a year. In four months he was ready to sail.
Columbus not only
discovered a New World, but he led the way for other
explorers.
They left Spain on August 3, 1492. They made one stop, then sailed on
toward the west. After many days, the sailors were ready to turn around
and start back home.
"Just three more days," he
said. "Then if we don't
see land, we'll turn around and go back home."
Two days later they saw land;
an island Columbus named San Salvador. He thought he had found
the Indies
and called the people he saw there "Indians".
When they got to Cuba, he
thought he was in China. The world was a lot
larger than he thought.
On Christmas Eve, the Santa
Maria was wrecked near Haiti. Columbus
built a fort and left 40 men to hunt for gold. Then he returned to
Spain on the Nina. The Pinta also returned.
The people of Spain welcomed him as a hero.
He made three more voyages
across the ocean. His 13-year-old son,
Ferdinand went with him on the fourth voyage.
Columbus did not become rich
as he had hoped. At the end of his life
he only had a pension the king and queen had given him because he
was the first to reach the New World. He spent the last few months of
his life in bed because of the pain of arthritis.
Biography at
gardenofpraise.com