A double review with The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, and a Lost History of Discovery
by Douglas Hunter
Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver, 2012
287 pp., $34.95 hardcover
During the fifteenth century, the notion that you could reach the east by sailing west was a laughable idea for most people. Persuading people of influence to risk large sums of money to prove the point was about as challenging as actually demonstrating that the world was round. What kind of explorer could do both?
In Race to the New World, Douglas Hunter presents Christopher Columbus and John Cabot as cut from the same cloth — both were ambitious, brilliant, determined, ruthless, not above bending the truth when it suited them, and always one step ahead of the debt collectors. Both raised themselves out of humble origins to come before kings and queens with the same fabulous idea for obtaining wealth — to sail west over the “Ocean Sea” and discover a quick trade route to the riches of China and India.
The outcome is well-established history: Columbus found an enthusiastic backer in Queen Isabella of Spain and landed in the present-day Caribbean (which he thought was the Orient) in 1492, and Cabot, supported by England’s Henry VII, made landfall in the “new founde land” of North America in 1497. Neither explorer came through on their promise of a quick route to riches; both disappointed their royal patrons.
Hunter’s book is not a straightforward adventure tale; it’s more of an analysis of how Columbus and Cabot pulled the strings necessary to get their plans in motion. It’s a complex story with many characters and much political intrigue, made even more dense by the fact that there are many competing versions of what took place. For instance, there was a whole movement to discredit Columbus by the friends of Martín Alonso Pinzón, captain of the Pinta. Pinzón’s champions held that it was Pinzón’s skill, not Columbus’s, that got the three exploration ships across the ocean and that it was Pinzón who saw land first. Pinzón never got to tell his side of the story; he died of a tropical illness shortly after returning to Spain.
When Hunter focuses on Columbus and Cabot, the reading is easy. The explorers are presented as not having the most sterling of characters — Cabot, a self-taught engineer, took the money and ran after a bridge-building project he proposed proved beyond his capacity; Columbus kidnapped hundreds of slaves in the hope that their sale would dig him out of debt. The author builds a compelling case not only that the two mariners knew each other but also that Cabot had sailed on Columbus’s second voyage.
The writer follows the many, many threads — including wars, the interconnections among the royal families of Europe, new developments in map-making and navigation, and a huge cast of characters — that connect to each explorer. These can be difficult to follow. All in all, it’s a well-researched story, fascinating in some places, slow going in others, but rewarding in the end.
Barry Gough’s poetically named Juan de Fuca’s Strait: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams is a short history of the search for the fabled Northwest Passage from the Pacific side. The title refers to explorer Juan de Fuca’s tale of sailing up the west coast of North America in 1592 and discovering a strait that, he claimed, led to a great inland sea. That sea, it was hoped, would take ships east through the continent to emerge on the Atlantic side. Juan de Fuca never had a chance to prove his story in a follow-up voyage, but his tale fuelled exploration for centuries to come.
Mariners such as Captain James Cook doubted the story, but it was an idea that simply would not die. In fact, the entrance to the strait described by de Fuca was rediscovered in 1787 by English Captain Charles Barkley, who named it after its original discoverer. Barkley was unable to make much headway through the strait because of unfriendly Natives who killed six crew members who went ashore for supplies. Even when not under attack, the strait to this day proves difficult to navigate because of strong currents and tricky tides.
Nonetheless, word of Barkley’s rediscovery reinvigorated the search for the elusive passage via the strait. Captain George Vancouver’s voyages finally put the search to rest in 1792 when he definitively proved that the strait did not lead to the Atlantic.
Readers with a strong interest in marine history will appreciate Gough’s detailed knowledge of the subject — he’s a veteran naval and maritime historian who has written more than a dozen books. The general reader will learn a lot more about the back story of that body of water between Vancouver Island and the state of Washington.
— Nelle Oosterom (Read bio)
Nelle Oosterom is the Senior Editor of Canada's History magazine.