Columbus Day Information
A sailor on board the Pinta sighted land early
in the morning of October 12, 1492, and a new era of European exploration
and  expansion
began. The next day, the 90 crew members of Christopher Columbus's three-ship
fleet ventured onto the Bahamian island of Guanahaní, ending a voyage
begun nearly ten weeks earlier in Palos, Spain.
As a reward for his valuable discovery, the
Spanish crown granted Columbus the right to bear arms.  His
new Coat of Arms added the royal charges of Castile and Leon and an image
of islands to his traditional family arms. Columbus further modified the
design to include a continent beside the pictured islands.
Before his final voyage, the Spanish monarchs
prepared a Book of Privileges, a collection of agreements showing how Columbus
was remunerated for his explorations. In 1502, four copies of the book
were known to exist. The Library of Congress's precious copy of this work
is considered one of the "Top Treasures" included in the online exhibition
American Treasures of the Library of Congress.
The first recorded celebration of Columbus
Day in the United States took place on October 12, 1792. Organized by The
Society of St. Tammany, also known as the Columbian Order, it commemorated
the 300th anniversary of Columbus's landing.
The 400th anniversary of the event, however,
inspired the first official Columbus Day holiday in the United States.
In 1892, President Benjamin Harrison issued a proclamation urging Americans
to mark the day. The public responded enthusiastically, organizing school
programs, plays, and community festivities across the country. Columbus
and the Discovery of America, Imre Kiralfy's "grand dramatic, operatic,
and ballet spectacle," is among the more elaborate tributes created for
this commemoration. The World's Columbian Exposition, by far the most ambitious
event planned for the celebration, opened in Chicago the summer of 1893.
Over the following decades, the Knights of
Columbus, an international Roman Catholic fraternal benefit society, lobbied
state legislatures to declare October 12 a legal holiday. Colorado was
the first state to do so on April 1, 1907. New York declared Columbus Day
a holiday in 1909 and on October 12, 1909, New York Governor Charles Evans
Hughes led a parade that included the crews of two Italian ships, several
Italian-American societies, and legions of the Knights of Columbus. Since
1971 Columbus Day, designated as the second Monday in October, has been
celebrated as a federal holiday. In many locations across the country Americans
parade in commemoration of the day.
Columbus and Dead Reckoning (DR)
navigation
At the end of the fifteenth century, celestial
navigation was just being developed in Europe, primarily by the Portuguese.
Prior to the development of celestial navigation, sailors navigated by
"deduced" (or "dead") reckoning, hereafter called DR. This was the method
used by Columbus and most other sailors of his era. In DR, the navigator
finds his position by measuring the course and distance he has sailed from
some known point. Starting from a known point, such as a port, the navigator
measures out his course and distance from that point on a chart, pricking
the chart with a pin to mark the new position. Each day's ending position
would be the starting point for the next day's course-and-distance measurement.
In order for this method to work, the navigator
needs a way to measure his course, and a way to measure the distance sailed.
Course was measured by a magnetic compass, which had been known in Europe
since at least 1183. Distance was determined by a time and speed calculation:
the navigator multiplied the speed of the vessel (in miles per hour) by
the time traveled to get the distance.
In Columbus's day, the ship's speed was measured
by throwing a piece of flotsam over the side of the ship. There were two
marks on the ship's rail a measured distance apart. When the flotsam passed
the forward mark, the pilot would start a quick chant, and when it passed
the aft mark, the pilot would stop chanting. (The exact words to such a
chant are part of a lost oral tradition of medieval navigation). The pilot
would note the last syllable reached in the chant, and he had a mnemonic
that would convert that syllable into a speed in miles per hour. This method
would not work when the ship was moving very slowly, since the chant would
run to the end before the flotsam had reached the aft mark.
A traverse-board
Speed (and distance) was measured every hour.
The officer of the watch would keep track of the speed and course sailed
every hour by using a toleta, or traverse board. This was a peg-board with
holes radiating from the center along every point of the compass. The peg
was moved from the center along the course traveled, for the distance made
during that hour. After four hours, another peg was used to represent the
distance made good in leagues during the whole watch. At the end of the
day, the total distance and course for the day was transferred to the chart.
Columbus was the first sailor (that we know
of) who kept a detailed log of his voyages, but only the log of the first
voyage survives in any detail. It is by these records that we know how
Columbus navigated, and how we know that he was primarily a DR navigator.
Since DR is dependent upon continuous measurements
of course and distance sailed, we should expect that any log kept by a
DR navigator would have these records; and this is exactly what Columbus's
log looks like. If Columbus had been a celestial navigator, we would expect
to see continuous records of celestial observations; but Columbus's log
does not show such records during either of the transatlantic portions
of the first voyage. |