He began sailing at the age of 14 and the King of Portugal refused to finance his expedition to the New World .. Christopher Columbus, "Admiral of the Sea and the Ocean"

An Italian traveler and explorer, attributed to him the discovery of the New World (the Americas: the North American continent and the South American continent) 5 centuries ago on his exploratory voyages in which he sailed from Spain towards the West towards Asia.

He is one of the most famous figures in the history of geographical discoveries between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Birth and upbringing

Christopher Columbus, nicknamed "Admiral of the Sea and the Ocean", was born on an unknown day, between August and October 1451, in the city of Genoa in northwestern Italy, which is one of the most ancient navigational societies in Europe.

He was raised - the eldest of 5 siblings - in a simple family. His father, Domenico Colombo, was a middle-class weaver and worked as a wool weaver, while his mother was the daughter of a weaver.

And according to what he himself announced in a letter, he began sailing at the age of 14 when he worked in a merchant ship, and in 1473 he was in the service of Genoese merchants, and he rode the ships used in the large sea trade movement.

Study and profession

Columbus received a little formal study and only learned to read and write when he went to Portugal, and there he studied mathematics, astronomy, navigation and maps in Lisbon, and began his career in 1476 as a sailor in the service of the Portuguese, and they were the best sailors at that time, as the Kingdom of Portugal was the first European country Set out to conquer the oceans.

At that time he was a captain in the Portuguese merchant fleet, and he learned all the basics of navigation that could be gained from doing work on ships, and besides that he was an avid reader of all books of geography and astronomy.

Then he settled in Lisbon, the center of European naval projects at the time.

He was then 24 years old, and worked with his younger brother Bartholomew on designing and printing maps, which were drawn from information and draft drawings that sailors brought back from their voyages.

In 1476 pirates attacked and sank his ship, but he survived the sinking and made landfall on the coast of Portugal on a piece of wood.

The idea of ​​the expedition

Columbus' desire to reach the Indies across the Atlantic grew exponentially, due to several factors including his vision of geographical maps produced by his brother, the stories that reached the Portuguese coasts and the discoveries of artifacts off the Atlantic islands.

His project aimed to reach the Indies, East Asia, by sailing west. From this point of view, he decided to take an adventure based on the latest maps of the scientists of his time, the Italian Paolo Toscani (1492-1397) and the German Martin Bheim (1507/1459) who specialize in mathematics and astronomy. .

In 1484, Columbus presented his proposal to the King of Portugal John II, who refused to finance his expedition, then went to his request to the Catholic Kings of Spain, and after years of failed attempts, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand officially agreed on April 17, 1492 to support his proposal, emphasizing that His commercial objectives (discovery of a shorter and less expensive sea route to exploit the rich markets of China and Japan).

Columbus sailed before dawn on Friday, August 3, from the Spanish port of Palos, with the three famous convoys (Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria) across the Atlantic Ocean, and reached the Caribbean islands on October 12, 1492, while his discovery of the land of the North American continent was on his second voyage. 1498 AD.

After this trip, he was imprisoned, accused of violence against the indigenous people, and then released to take his last trip in 1502 AD, during which he discovered many new islands.

discoverer of the americas

Some historians point out that Columbus died thinking he had reached the Indies, and although he spent 10 years seeking support for his idea, he did not implement it, as a vast continent was standing in his way that he did not know existed.

Little did he know that he "discovered" the Americas by accident.

But the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci later realized that these vast lands were a new continent, not Asia, so the "New World" was named for the first time in Martin Waldsmiller's map in 1507 "America" ​​in honor of this Italian explorer.

Although Columbus is the "discoverer of America", this information is historically wrong, according to some historians, because the first people to reach the American continent were its indigenous peoples who migrated to it and settled it, as it was known to many marine civilizations.

his death

When Columbus returned from his last voyage to Spain on November 7, 1504, he was 53 years old, in poor health, and had spent the last months of his life in grief and in a troubled state of mind.

He died at the age of 55 on May 20, 1506 in his family in Valladolid, Spain, as a result of a heart attack due to what is known as "Reiter's syndrome" (gout or arthritis), which he had been suffering from for several years (according to the hypothesis of Professor Rodriguez Quartero). from the University of Granada).

He was buried in the Carthusian Monastery in Santa Maria de las Cuevas, Seville.