WaybackWire

GOMERA.—The Admiral’s fleet put out from Gomera on the morning of Thursday 6 September, after a caravel from Hierro brought word that three Portuguese caravels lay off that island to take him.

At Gran Canaria the Pinta, after her rudder troubles of August, was repaired very thoroughly by the labour of the Admiral, of Martín Alonso Pinzón and of the rest, and given square sails in place of her lateen rig.

The fleet left Gran Canaria on the afternoon of Saturday 1 September and came to Gomera next day to take in water, wood and meat.

Once out, no wind came. The ships lay becalmed between Gomera and Tenerife until the third hour of Saturday night, when a wind rose from the N.E. and the Admiral shaped his course to the west, the ships taking much sea over the bows.

AT SEA, Sunday.—The Admiral counts a head wind and a rising sea as answers to his men’s fear that no wind in these waters will ever carry them home.

At daybreak on Sunday 9 September, nine leagues west of Hierro, the land passed out of sight. Many men, fearing it would be long before they saw land again, sighed and wept; the Admiral comforted them with great promises of lands and wealth.

He has complained many times, too, that the helmsmen steer badly, letting the ship fall off to the N.E.

He welcomed a contrary wind from the W.N.W. on Saturday 22 September. “This contrary wind was very necessary for me, because my people were much excited at the thought that in these seas no wind ever blew in the direction of Spain,” he writes.

Next day, in a smooth sea, the crew began to murmur that there was no great sea, and the wind would never blow to carry them back to Spain. Then the sea rose high without wind, to their astonishment.

The Admiral finds its like only in Scripture. “Thus the high sea was very necessary to me, such as had not appeared but in the time of the Jews when they went out of Egypt and murmured against Moses who delivered them out of captivity,” he writes.

AT SEA, Sunday.—The fleet’s compass needles have begun to turn from the north star, to the dismay of the mariners.

It was first seen at nightfall on Thursday 13 September, with the currents against the ships: the needles turned half a point of the compass to the north-west, and somewhat more by morning.

On Monday 17 September the pilots took the north and found the needles a full point west of it. The mariners were alarmed and dejected, and would not say why.

The Admiral had the north taken again at dawn, and the needles were found true. “The cause was that the star makes the movement, and not the needles,” he writes.

He marks it again today: at nightfall the needles vary a point westward and at dawn agree exactly with the star, so the north star seems to move like the others. He has marked, too, how the stars called the Guards move round the pole star.

AT SEA, Sunday.—Birds, weed and a live crab tell the Admiral that islands lie near his ships. “I make the main land to be more distant,” he writes.

Tufts of very green grass, seeming fresh torn from land, floated past from 16 September; next day came weed like river herbs, a live crab the Admiral kept as a certain sign of land, and water less salt than since the Canaries.

By Friday 21 September the weed, coming from the west, seemed to cover the sea, and a whale was seen, a creature that always keeps near the shore.

Birds come too: a tern and a boatswain bird, which never go more than 25 leagues from land; a river-bird, no sea-bird, caught by hand on the 20th, and land-birds singing to the ship at dawn; yesterday a man-o’-war bird, which never sleeps on the sea.

On 18 September Martín Alonso Pinzón did not wait, calling from the Pinta that he had seen a great multitude of birds flying west and hoped to see land that night.

The Admiral will not be drawn aside. On 19 September he would not lose time beating to windward to learn whether land was near, for he means to press on to the Indies.

The weather is like April in Andalusia, he says, wanting only the song of nightingales, and on 17 September he wrote that “very soon we shall sight land”.