.
Westward, with Columbus
The North Atlantic Ocean was awash
with monsters and leviathans, or so
we fearfully supposed, and thought it tosh
by sailing west, to India we could go.
Then Christopher Columbus raised three crews.
From Spain we sailed. A westward route we took.
For sixty days no terra firma news—
we took our tight-lipped captain for a crook.
Then after spotting dolphins, we gained land,
an archipelago, large islands, too;
and with his glass, Columbus smugly scanned
the Indies—of the West!—but they would do.
We feared aquatic titans. None abound.
And lo, a brand-new continent we’d found.
.
.
Paul A. Freeman is the author of Rumours of Ophir, a crime novel which was taught in Zimbabwean high schools and has been translated into German. In addition to having two novels, a children’s book and an 18,000-word narrative poem (Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers!) commercially published, Paul is the author of hundreds of published short stories, poems and articles.
This reflection of a crewmember on one of the ships of Columbus nicely commemorates Columbus Day.
Thanks, Roy. It must have given you huge bragging rights to have been on Columbus’ first voyage.
Now that the holiday has been degraded to Indigenous Flint-Chippers’ Day, I’m glad someone is still paying attention to the man and the sailors who opened up two huge continents to Western civilization.
I doubt many could have fully realised the consequences of Columbus’ reaching the Americas. It took a lot of courage and determination.
Paul, the publication of your “Westward, with Columbus” poem today is timely, in part because yesterday it was reported by Reuters that “The 15th-century explorer Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe, Spanish scientists said on Saturday, after using DNA analysis to tackle a centuries-old mystery.”
The Times of Israel (October 13th, 2024) – “Study finds Christopher Columbus was a Sephardic Jew from Western Europe”: https://www.timesofisrael.com/study-finds-christopher-columbus-was-a-sephardic-jew-from-western-europe/
In the comments section of that article, username Just D wrote: “Papers I’ve read many years ago show that he delayed the travel to America due to Tisha B’Av, used and speculate his crew where jews he was saving from the inquisition.”
That comment begs the question: Is the speaker in your poem a Jewish sailor who joined the crew of Columbus, in order to escape from the Spanish Inquisition pogroms? For what reason would non-Jewish sailors have been motivated to sail “The North Atlantic Ocean [that] was awash with monsters and leviathans”?
Also in the comments section of that article, username doug.mann wrote: “Let’s remember the purpose of the voyage was to find a trade route to the East circumventing Islamic raider attacks along the Silk Road …..”
That is similar to how in today’s day and age most cargo ships in the Middle East have stopped using the Red Sea route, in order to avoid being attacked by the Muslim supremacist Houthis terrorist organization.
From Lannie.
I submitted the poem a while back, so it is quite serendipitous that Columbus’ remains have been under investigation.
I have now seen multiple tongue-in-cheek references on social media to this day now being considered a Jewish holiday.
You make it look so simple, Paul. Behind what you write is the truth that outcomes of following a leader characterized by determination and foresight, are usually different, and often greater than expected. Columbus is a magnificent example. You present well the fears of the sailors, their simple satisfaction at recovering terra firma, and the achievement of the expedition that no one at the time could evaluate.
Thanks for the homage to this great man, who earned the gratitude of two worlds. As a supplement to Lannie David Brockstein’s information on Columbus as Jewish by ancestry, let me offer the fact that he may, in the future, be recognized as a Catholic saint. The canonization process was started in the 19th century, and during its course, Pope Leo XIII wrote the 1892 encyclical Quarto Abeunte Saeculo in praise of the explorer on the 400th anniversary of the discovery voyage.
https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2020/06/de-mattei-columbus-noster-est.html
The article was written as statues of Columbus were toppled in United States riots of 2020. There is much to overcome before canonization, but slander is being capably refuted.
The genesis of this poem is quite interesting, Margaret.
In 1992, I was working in a rural high school, on a gold mine in Zimbabwe. The regional Ministry of Education sent out a flyer to all secondary schools in the province, informing us about a competition, sponsored by the postal service. To celebrate the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus reaching the Americas, schools were urged to get their students to pretend they were sailors on the first voyage and write a letter home describing the adventure.
I got a group of interested students together, we discussed the voyage, brainstormed, and they went away and wrote up their competition entries.
When I took their work to the regional ministry, it was ‘discovered’ that no other school had bothered to send any work in, to which I said, in that case my students win the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes.
Alas, since the people running the show thought the optics would be bad (i.e. they hadn’t followed up), they decided not to recognise my students’ work, nor carry their entries forward to the national competition. Can you imagine the message this sent to my students?
Anyhow, I decided to write something myself along the lines of those letters all those years back, dedicated to the four students who put all that effort in and learned that the world isn’t fair.
This is a very clever poem, Paul, with an intriguing tone and a speaker who has been transported out of time into a higher plane where he can address not just the circumstances of the voyage itself but its consequences — an anachronistic awareness that they had not reached the East Indies and that they had discovered a new continent (or two!) I read this poem with enjoyment but puzzle at your intent behind the phrase “smugly scanned” when Columbus views his discovery. Is Columbus smug because he has proven that he was right? Or is there more?
Hi, Brian. Thanks for commenting.
I imagine Christopher Columbus would have been smug at being proved right when so many doubted him (though he did think himself in the vicinity of India. He did grossly underestimate the circumference of the Earth, and there were reports that a lookout was the first to spot land and that Columbus too credit for that. But then these are small things considering how monumental his First Voyage proved to be.
Wow! Very well constructed sonnet on a worthy subject. The comments have my head spinning. Is it really possible that this worthy gentleman was a Jew helping other Jews to escape the Inquisition? Could he also be under consideration for Sainthood?
Truth really is stranger than fiction.
Perhaps some time traveler may land on the deck of the Santa María face to face with our hero and remark, “Non preoccuparti, Capitano, un giorno sarai conosciuto come San Cristoforo Colombo!”
(Thanks, Google Translate)
Because we live in a shrunken world, it’s difficult for the present-day mindset to fully grasp the magnitude of what Columbus discovered. He returned to Europe, the Old World, not only with knowledge of new lands, but also of navigation. Imagine those men, dressed in their woolens, experiencing a climate of tropical flora and fauna for the first time! He opened both worlds to the Columbian Exchange–fruits, vegetables, animal life, you name it.
As I mentioned in one of the comments, on the 500th anniversary of Columbus reaching the Americas, I researched the First Voyage.
Perhaps the main reason sailors never ventured West, was fear of the monsters inhabiting the vast and mysterious Atlantic Ocean. What a surprise was in store for those first explorers.
Most people do not know this, but in 1477 Columbus had sailed to Iceland (in addition to earlier trips to England). In Iceland he is sure to have heard stories about lands far to the west, since the Icelanders would have memories of the voyages to Greenland and to Vinland by their Scandinavian forebears. In fact, the Scandinavian settlements in Greenland were only just about dying out at that time.
Interesting! I never knew that.
This is a wonderful poem, with so much to like. The focus on Columbus is refreshing and timely, and I especially appreciate the image of spotting dolphins and gaining land, as well as the memorable line, “the Indies—of the West!—but they would do.” Bravo!
Thanks for your positive take on a poem I hoped would circumvent controversy and look primarily at Columbus’s great achievements.
It’s sad that such bitterness pervades that no one seems to celebrate the excitement of a bunch of Europeans voyaging into the unknown and discovering a continent (two continents these days) previously unknown to the ‘Old World’.
As for the recent revelation from scientists and experts that Christopher Columbus was Jewish, I’m left wondering why the great man was known as ‘Christopher’. But then that’s not what the poem was about. Nor was it about cleansed native populations, or ‘Indigenous Flint-Chippers’ as one poet referred to the First Nation people of the Americas in this thread.