F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

The Grand Turk Landfall Theory (Extracted from Marvel’s Point of Contact and relieved of footnotes, © J. Marvel, 2014)

It is our duty to proceed from what is near to what is distant, from what is known to what is less known, to gather the traditions from those who have reported them and to leave the rest as it is, in order to make our work help anyone who seeks truth and loves wisdom.

Ab ‘r-Rayh ni Muh ammad u ‘bn Ah mad i ‘l-Brn of Kath, Khw rizm, Khor sn, S mnid Emirate [Khiva, Uzbekistan]; India; Ghazna, Ghaznavid Empire [Ghazni, Afghanistan] (al-Biruni, Alberonius, 973-1048). Tah qīqu ma lil-hind i min maq ūlat i fī ‘l-caql i ‘am mardh ūlat i [The Verification of What’s India’s from the Reasonable or Depraved ], preface.

… a scholar must be content with the knowledge that what is false in what he says will soon be exposed and, as for what is true, he can count on ultimately seeing it accepted if only he lives long enough.

Ronald Coase of Willesden near London; Buffalo, New York; Charlottesville, Virginia; Chicago (1910-2013), awarded the 1991 Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Crossing the Ocean Sea

The ocean crossing of the voyage of discovery took place between 6 September and 12 October 1492. But for a jog to the west-northwest and northwest on 20 through 23 September, a correction to the southwest on 25 and 26 September and a change of course to the west-southwest and southwest on 8 through 11 October, the helmsmen of the fleet steered due west according to their compasses. After thirty-six days of sailing, Columbus logged his landfall island an estimated seven hundred leagues westward from Gomera in the Canaries. He reckoned it lay on an east-west line from Ferro, its southwestern neighbor. Successive reconstructions of the voyage of discovery between these points have been made with increasing refinement by several investigators. Factors affecting the accuracy of a reconstruction include, in diminishing order of effect, magnetic variation, surface currents, leeway (the drift of a sailing ship to leeward of the true course), steering error, and day lengthening from westward travel. In 1986, Luis Marden published a widely circulated study of the crossing in ‘The First Landfall of Columbus,’ which appeared in National Geographic Magazine ’s Columbus Casebook . Mr. Marden’s study represented an improvement in method over the 1941 reconstruction made by John W. McElroy, Jr., whose results Samuel Eliot Morison incorporated the following year into his famous biography of Columbus. However, Mr. Marden overestimated the effect of the westward oceanic currents. Mr. Marden based his study upon a grid of prevailing current velocities published in the U. S. Navy pilot charts for the North Atlantic. A more reliable method of computing the effect of current across the ocean is to use a grid of current vector averages. A prevailing current velocity is an overestimate of how fast a ship would be set by the ocean currents, while a vector average current is a more accurate estimate of this quantity because it takes into account the movement of surface waters in all directions over time at any given point, resulting in a more probable and lower average figure. The difference between these two methods of computing the effect of current on a month- long voyage across the breadth of the North Atlantic amounts to more than four hundred 2 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s nautical miles. Mr. Marden shortened the length of the Columbian league used by Admiral Morison and Lieutenant McElroy from 3.18 to 2.82 nautical miles. He derived this length from equivalents given for the Spanish league in English sailing manuals for the years 1574 and 1594. This is an anachronism. The manuals of the Elizabethan navigators William Bourne and Thomas Blundeville were compiled long after the great Iberian maritime discoveries (including the circumnavigation of the globe) had fomented an explosive advancement in the science of navigation. English sailing manuals of the late sixteenth century are simply not relevant to Mediterranean sailing customs of the late fifteenth century. Mr. Marden also ignored the metrological research published by d’Albertis in 1893 and Kelley in 1983, 1985, and 1986. As has been shown in chapter 3, these studies contain evidence that Columbus used a Mediterrenean ‘geometric’ league of two and two-thirds nautical miles. But even with his shortened league, Mr. Marden was obliged to reduce Columbus’s daily reckoning of distance sailed by 9 percent, in order to avoid missing the Lucayan Islands. Finally Mr. Marden gave consideration to leeway, which brought his track southward of McElroy-Morison’s, resulting in a landfall at Samana Cay. In October and November 1987, as a test of Mr. Marden’s track, Captain Douglas Peck sailed his yacht Gooney Bird across the Atlantic in accordance with the bearings and distances in the Diario . However, Captain Peck’s terminus was near San Salvador Island. In a paper delivered at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the Society for the History of Discoveries, Captain Peck reported that had he used the Mediterranean ‘geometric’ league of two and two-thirds nautical miles, he would have shortened the track by about three hundred miles, which would have meant a terminus in the open sea. But here, it must be remembered that three hundred miles is very close to the difference in distance between the Gomera/San Salvador route and the Gomera/Grand Turk route. In 1987, Dr. Philip Richardson and Mr. Roger Goldsmith of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution completed a computer study of the Columbus track, using the same 1899 van Bemmelen construct of magnetic variation and length of league as Mr. Marden; however, their oceanographic data resulted in lower factors of drift and leeway, as were observed in actuality by Captain Peck. Their simulation was based on current vector averages and did not require artificially reducing the number of leagues sailed. It produced a track whose terminus occurred near San Salvador, just as Captain Peck had realized at sea. Concluding their article Dr. Richardson and Mr. Goldsmith observed that the effect of magnetic variation across the Atlantic was a much larger determinant of the site of the landfall than either current or leeway. In 1989, Dr. Richardson and Mr. Goldsmith completed a new numerical simulation of Columbus’s Atlantic crossing using the ‘geometric’ league and data for computing a field of documented early sixteenth-century magnetic variation supplied by the author. Their study was published in 1992. In their discussion of the simulation, they conclude that:

Grand Turk is a reasonable candidate landfall if the magnetic variation of the Lucayan Islands was about one point westerly (11.25°W).

They also note that: F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 3

… the use of a ‘geometric’ league equaling 2.67 nautical miles also is consistent with Grand Turk’s being the first landfall.

Yet more importantly, this later Woods Hole study shows how a reconstructed field of magnetic variation across the Atlantic for 1492, conforming with six previously unconsidered contemporary observations, can provide at once a rational model for the voyage of discovery and an explanation of a persistent error in the early charts. Even though the cartographic record is further complicated by the Spanish and very early Portuguese customs of using precalibrated compasses, a comparison with charts made after 1525, drawn with a growing reliance upon astronomical observation of latitudes in the New World, confirms the presence of westerly variation in the western Atlantic at the time of Columbus’s first voyage. Thus, given the premises of about twelve degrees of westerly variation in the western Atlantic, Mediterranean navigation with a true compass and use of the ‘geometric’ league, we have a mathematical basis for concluding that the landfall most probably occurred at the southeastern extremity of the Lucayan Archipelago. Although the landfall research conducted at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has shown that magnetic variation has the greatest effect on the outcome of a voyage across the ocean, it should be noted that, with respect to the relatively short distances Columbus sailed among the Lucayan Islands, magnetic variation has a smaller effect than that of currents. Moreover, since Columbus was navigating among uncharted islands, magnetic variation would affect his perception of their relative positions to one another. Generally, the effect of variation would rotate bearings counterclockwise about twelve degrees and cause a course steered toward the west to set a ship to the south, giving the impression that lands encountered were farther north than in actuality.

The Light of 11 October 1492

The light reported seen by Columbus and certain of his companions the night of 11 October is recorded in the Diario , Don Fernando’s Historie , Oviedo’s Historia General , Las Casas’s Historia de las Indias , and the Pleitos Colombinos, the depositions of the Columbus lawsuit. Hernán Pérez Mateos’s testimony in the Pleitos Colombinos implies that the light was seen from La Pinta as well. This evidence makes it difficult to question that the light was real. Bioluminescence on the northeastern rocks of the Mouchoir Bank, 35 miles east-southeast of Grand Turk, might explain the light. Given that the light was sighted four hours before Pinta gave the signal for land, the recorded speed of the ships, and their course, one can deduce that the light was seen about 35 nautical miles from land. The breaking water on the exposed rocks of the northeast point of the Mouchoir Bank is close to this distance from Grand Turk. The first notice recorded in the Diario under 11 October is that the sea was running high. That night, the fleet maintained a high average speed of eight knots so it is evident that the wind did not slacken and was probably still accompanied by the high swells of the day. Based on tidal data for the region of the Turks and Caicos Islands on file at the Hydrography Office in Somerset, England, it is estimated that on this day the tide was low at about six in the evening and high at about midnight. 4 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

According to Admiral Morison, on the night of 11 October, the moon was six days past full and rose after eleven o’clock. With a rising tide, a high swell, and no moon at around ten in the evening, conditions would have been favorable for seeing bioluminescent light reflecting off rising salt water vapor above a reef at sea. As an alternative source of the light, some have suggested a burst of high atmospheric lightning over the mountains of Hispaniola. Although seeing a bolt of lightning at sea is mentioned in the Diario during the night of 15 September. Neither Samana Cay nor Watlings/San Salvador is situated 35 nautical miles west of a potential source of light, unless, as Admiral Morison wryly supposed, it was caused by a Lucayan in a canoe lighting a cigar. The Plana Cays are situated some 35 miles west of the northwest point of Mayaguana.

The Islands of the Landfall

In 1515, Francisco Garcia Vallejo testified that his mate, Juan Rodrigez Bermejo de Triana, saw in the moonlight at about two in the morning a white head of sand . Then, raising his eyes, he sighted land. On Pinta, a cannon was fired. The fleet drew together, keeping to weather about 2 leagues [5 miles] from the land. At two in the morning, the moon, six days past full, would have been about 70º high in the eastern sky. I submit that the white head of sand Juan Rodriguez saw was a reflection of the moonlight off a swirl of sandy bottom bordered by a dark growth of turtle grass visible at a depth of more than seventy feet, fewer than seven miles east of the three largest cays on the east side of the Turks Bank. This is the only logical explanation of seeing a white head of sand before looking up and spotting land. It may also explain why there is no record of the fleet’s taking soundings after land was sighted. There was no need to; the bottom was visible. Of all landfall possibilities, only the Turks Islands occupy a bank whose moonlight-visible bottom extends seven miles eastwards into the Atlantic. The description of the landfall in the Diario is not in Columbus’s own words. It consists of a paraphrase by Las Casas, which reads:

At the second hour after midnight, there appeared the land from which they were about two leagues. They hauled down all the sails and kept on the treo , which is the mainsail without bonnets, and put themselves bow to the wind, marking time until the day, Friday, when they approached an islet of the Lucayo Indians, which was called in Indians’ language Guanahaní.

To this description, Las Casas adds in his Historia de las Indias that the pond water on Guanahani was potable. This appears to be an embellishment, as there is no record in either the Diario or the Historie of the fleet’s taking on water until it reached the third island, even though Columbus mentions that natives on the first island offered water in small quantities. The description of the landfall in Don Fernando’s Historie contains an even more thoroughly reworded abridgement of Columbus’s narrative. After wrestling with an attempt to ascribe spiritual value to the light of 11 October, Don Fernando through his translator, writes:

Being then at that time near land, all the ships put themselves bow to the wind, or jogged on and off, it seeming to them a long space that remained to them until the day, to rejoice of a F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 5

thing so much desired. … Then the day having come, they saw what was an island of 15 leagues in length, flat, and without mountains, full of trees very green, and of very beautiful waters, with a large pond in the middle, populated with many people, who with no less desire gathered together at the shore all astonished and wondering at the sight of the ships, believing they might be some animals; …

After the Diario and the Historie , the most detailed discovery period text describing the landfall is found in Oviedo’s Historia general . Oviedo never tired of revising and improving this work, whose manuscript he represented he had completed in Santo Domingo before 1523. Between publication of the first issue of the first edition in 1535 and the revised and illustrated issue of the first edition in 1547, he made several changes in the text. Even after 1547 up to his death in 1557, he continued to modify his Historia general , which was published in a second edition long afterwards in 1851-55. Between 1535 and 1547, Oviedo inserted a correction in the text which follows an account of the light and opens a description of the landfall. It reads:

On day breaking … the island which the Indians call Guanahaní was seen from the flagship in the direction of the tramontane or north.

The implication is that Oviedo believed this to be a material addition to the “corrected and emended” second issue of his History . Commandante Barreiro-Meiro of the Museo Naval, Madrid, showed how this passage discredits the Samana Cay hypothesis, but, at the same time, neglected to refer his readers to a telling sequel to the passage in the following chapter. Here in Book 2, chapter 6, Oviedo proceeds to identify the landfall island unequivocally in what is at once the most revealing and most ignored account of the landfall. It reads:

…. And as there presently appeared many islets that are next to and around Guanahaní, the Christians commenced to call them the White Islands (because they are so on account of much sand). And the Admiral named them the Princesses because they were first of the sight of these Indies. And he arrived at them, especially that of Guanahaní, and stayed between it and another which is called Caicos; …

Oviedo acknowledged that he received his information from Hernán Pérez Mateos, a first cousin of Martín Alonso Pinzón, and a captain on Columbus’s third voyage. In March of 1493, Mateos happened to be at the port of Bayona in Galicia when Martín Alonso returned from the first voyage in La Pinta . Forty-three years later, in 1536, Mateos testified in Santo Domingo that Martín Alonso had made him a relation of all that had passed. Within a month of reaching home at Palos (a few hours after Columbus), Martín Alonso died, certainly of mortification and a broken heart, some have thought possibly of illness as well. In the preface to book 17 of the Historia general , Oviedo again declares that the first islands seen were called by the crew the White Islands, which the Admiral ordered called the Princesses , “because they were the first of the sighting and discovery of these islands and of all the Indies.” He adds that Guanahaní lay in their midst. Notice how Oviedo twice specifies that the White Islands or Princesses were the first seen in the discovery of the Indies. An important difference between the texts 6 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s of the Diario and of Oviedo is that in Oviedo the first land seen consists of islands other than Guanahaní. The fact that the first dry land was sighted from Martín Alonso’s caravel might explain why there is no mention of the White Islands or the Princesses in the Diario , since Columbus shows a tendency in his writings to elide over matters which were not favorable to him. The best example of this is his Letter to Santángel , in which there is neither an untrue statement nor a mention of the loss of the Santa María . Bearing this in mind, it is pertinent to note the wording of the nineteenth question of the interrogatory of the Pleitos Colombinos conducted at Palos in October 1515, and at Madrid in May of the following year. In this question there appears the phrase:

… and that the said Martín Alonso betook himself on one side and discovered the Island Española with [i.e. besides] seven other islands of the Babueca Banks …

It is clear from the early sixteenth-century cartography, the Babueca Banks refer to the Turks Bank and would appear to include the three landmarks figured on the 1513 Piri Re’is chart from Spanish documents declared captured in 1501. I’m persuaded that Martín Alonso’s seven islands refer to Salt, Cotton, Pinzón, Pear, Long, Round, and Gibbs Cays, south, southeast and east of Grand Turk Island and are an enumeration of the White Islands or Princesses recorded by Oviedo. I’m equally persuaded that Long, Pear, and Pinzón Cays are the three landmarks on the Piri Re’is chart, remembered in subsequent Lucayan cartography as Triango or Triangulo . That the sighting of the first land was important to the family and heirs of Martín Alonso and Vicente Yáñez is evidenced in the family’s elevation to the dignity of knighthood and in the blazon of the Pinzón arms, granted at Barcelona on 23 September 1519. This reads in part:

… and to bear as your recognized arms three caravels al natural at sea, and from each one of them there may issue a hand showing the first land which thus they found and discovered …

Finally, in the last chapter of the first issue of the first edition of the Historia general , Oviedo alters the Lucayan geography given in Book 2, chapter 6, and places the islands of Guanahaní, and the Princesses or White Islands between those of Manigua and Huno , that is Samana Cay and Long Island where there is open sea. The fact that Oviedo places this Guanahaní to the northwest of Manigua suggests that he gained this information from the official cartography in the archive of the Casa de la Contratación at Seville. Because this radical and contradictory change occurs at the very end of the book, I infer that Oviedo, who published the Historia general in Seville, added the last chapter (in which he suppressed the name Caicos ), when he discovered that the crown-sponsered geography of the New World differed from his earlier description. We have seen in chapter 3 how the opinion of Ponce de León, which had a precedent in the representation of the Lucayan Islands on the chart of Juan de La Cosa, appears to have been a reflection of the official government- maintained records, descriptions, and navigations of and to the New World. Assuredly with both geographies incorporated into his work, Fernández de Oviedo, the courtier- author, could be confident that his Historia contained the truth, or at least was above censure for want of it. F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 7

Cartographic evidence sustains Oviedo’s first location of Guanahaní . It also indicates that there existed an early difference of opinion over the correct placement of this island between the veteran Spanish pilots and mariners living on Hispaniola and the government chartmakers in Seville. One is tempted to suggest that Juan de La Cosa, who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage as well, and had an idea of the quantity of gold that abounded (and still abounds) in Hispaniola, after returning from his own voyage of discovery in 1500, may well have misplaced the islands of Saometo and Guanahaní (which latter island appears to have ceased even to be cited in Columbus’s papers after 1494) on his celebrated chart. Recall that the only native island names that Columbus records on board the flagship are Guanahaní and Saometo . One notes also that the name Caicos is not figured on the La Cosa chart. It is probable that Martín Alonso learned the name Caicos from the three Guanahaní captives placed on board Pinta , and passed it on to his cousin Hernán Pérez at Bayona in 1493, who later communicated it to Oviedo, his employer. Thus, despite the bewildering ambiguity of the cartographic record, it is certain that Oviedo’s first Guanahaní is Grand Turk, and that his is the oldest landfall account that can be matched to modern geography.

The Turks Islands as the Islands of the Landfall

The Turks Islands occupy a small oblong bank which marks the southeastern extremity of the Lucayan Archipelago. Grand Turk is the largest island on the bank and is situated at its northern tip. Shaped like a pea pod, Grand Turk is about six miles long and a bit more than a mile wide. It lies on a north-south axis. Excluding Grand Turk, the bank contains a total of eight cays, two rocks and one dry sand bank. To the southeast of Grand Turk, a string of five cays and one high rock extend toward the south-southeast. To the south of Grand Turk lie two cays and one long rock. Fourteen miles to the south-southwest of Grand Turk, a sandy cay marks the southernmost land on the Turks Bank. Twenty miles to the west of Grand Turk lie the Caicos Islands. In Oviedo’s first description of the White Islands or Princesses , emended between 1535 and 1547, the island of Guanahaní was situated in their midst and lay to the north of the flagship. This is precisely how Grand Turk appears when approached from the southeast. No other presumed landfall is situated north of a group of cays. An overlooked point of evidence favoring Grand Turk is found in the Venetian text of the Historie of Don Fernando and the Castilian of the Historia of Las Casas. Both texts indicate that the landfall island had a length of fifteen leagues, a dimension nowhere to be found in the Diario . It is therefore noteworthy that the earliest geographic description of the Lucayan Islands, the c.1530 Espejo de navegantes of Alonso de Chaves, ascribes a length of fifteen leagues to los Baxos de Babueca , the Turks Bank, and to no other island or island group in the archipelago. In all probability, Las Casas took this dimension from the manuscript of Don Fernando, and possibly, Don Fernando, who had access to all the official geographic knowledge of the Indies, but had never seen his father’s landfall island, mistook the reported length of the Turks Bank for the length of Grand Turk.

8 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

When approached from the east, the Turks Bank presents a reef running roughly north-south bordering the bank’s shallows punctuated with rocks and cays. Although there is a navigable cut between Long and Pear Cays, it is unthinkable that a cautious mariner far from home arriving at the islands for the first time would consider risking such an approach to a windward shore. Mindful of Oviedo’s noting that the island the Indians called Guanahaní was seen to the north of the flagship, I infer that the fleet, having sighted islands at mid-bank off Pinzón Cay about five miles to windward of the reef, followed the line of the reef northward at a safe remove. F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 9

The Cays lying south, southeast, and east of Grand Turk

10 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

An ancient safety measure in the age of sail was casting the sounding lead as soon as land was sighted. This gave an indication of depth, a sense of the contour of the bottom, and an idea of what material the bottom was composed. It is therefore curious that in the Diario there is no record of taking soundings on the approach to the landfall island. However, as we have seen above, Francisco Vallejo’s testimony indicates that Rodrigo Bermejo saw the bottom before he sighted land. This, no soundings were necessary. Additionally, in the account of the landfall published by Antonio de Herrera in 1601, there is a notice that the flagship found soundings on 11 October. This was reiterated by the Abbé Reynal in 1770 and by George Gibbs in 1846, but the source of this information remains a mystery. Perhaps it is a transposition from the 1571 edition of Don Fernando’s noting an attempt to find soundings on 19 September. Rounding the Turks Bank counterclockwise from the southeast would require time-consuming maneuvers to windward to steer clear of the north-northeast reef which juts into the Atlantic with great display of breaking surf. Any mariner would tend to mark so prominent a danger as a point of reference. One reckons that as many as nine hours may have been occupied with hoisting sail at daybreak, sailing north, navigating to windward of the reef, rounding the northern end of the island, heading south and arriving at the first secure anchorage presenting itself to the impatient seamen. This is consistent with evidence that the disembarkment occurred late in the day. Circling westward round the northern end of Grand Turk, the reef falls away towards a sandy coast protected from the prevailing easterly winds. This first break in the reef occurs at the northern part of the Island’s west coast. Just off shore there is a clear sandy bottom in deep water which in good weather affords an excellent anchorage. The anchorage is opposite a broad sand beach. There is risky exposure at this anchorage in bad weather, but it was evidently calm on the day of disembarkment, as Columbus relates that the natives swam out to the departing ships’ boats with items to trade.

Grand Turk, the Island of San Salvador and the Disembarkment

For more than two full days from 12 to 14 October, Columbus remained at the landfall island he named San Salvador . He noted that it had green trees, fruits, a beach (on a protected shore) off which he anchored and two days later reconnoitered with the ships’ boats. The island had many places of water, a sizeable pond in the middle, a reef surrounding it and a large reef-protected anchorage near a peninsula where there were very green trees and much water. The peninsula had six houses on it and might be separated into an island with two days of work. Columbus noted a total of three or four settlements on the island. He also understood that the island people were indicating:

that there was land to the south and to the southwest and to the northwest, and that these [people] of the northwest came to combat them many times.

Even though the fleet remained at this island for two full days and nights, Columbus did not record taking on fresh water until he reached the third island. F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 11

One finds a striking agreement between the geography of Grand Turk and what Columbus apprehends from the natives of Guanahaní on 13 October. The natives indicated that:

going to the south, or rounding the island for the south…there was a king who had…very much [gold].

This fits with the reality of gold-rich Hispaniola to the south of Grand Turk. The statement makes little geographic sense when applied to Watlings/San Salvador or to West Plana Cay which are too far north and west, and none when applied to Samana Cay, which has no west coast to round. Considering that a significant percentage of the aboriginal pottery excavated to date on Grand Turk was made in Hispaniola, there appears to have existed a direct communication between the inhabitants of Grand Turk and the Macorís people of the north shore of Hispaniola. The same statement indicates that Columbus’s disembarkment occurred at a place from which direct access to the south was obstructed by part of the island.

During 13 October, Columbus remarks a large pond, a laguna , in the middle of the landfall island. Much effort has been spent on ascertaining the meaning of Columbus’s term, laguna . A laguna, or pond, is simply a diminutive of the term lago, or lake, which can either be salt or fresh. Columbus himself defines the term lago in his letter to the sovereigns on the third voyage simply as a place of water . In the middle of the northern half of Grand Turk, inland from the deduced site of disembarkment, lies North Creek, a large salt pond about a mile and a half long, a half a mile wide, and four fathoms deep. It fits Columbus’s observation well, as it would be eminently visible from the poopdeck of a nao anchored off the northwest coast of Grand Turk. On Watlings/San Salvador there is an extensive interior system of lakes, which might fit this description also, except that Columbus only speaks of one lake. There is no evidence, however, of there ever having been an interior body of water on Samana Cay. Mr. Pickering’s photo of West Plana Cay shows that it possesses at least three interior bodies of water. Columbus did not note seeing native settlements until the second day after disembarking. When the Lucayan site was discovered on Grand Turk in 1989, its location conformed precisely with the description in Columbus’s Diario. On Watlings/San Salvador, Charles Hoffman excavated a substantial Lucayan settlement, contemporaneous with the landfall, close to the coast of Long Bay, where advocates of this landfall suppose Columbus landed. Dr. Hoffman describes the Long Bay site as lying “between 100 and 200 meters from the beach of Long Bay.” The site is suspected to “cover quite a few hectares” and may “involve a linear distance of some 7km.” By Columbus’s account, it was not until the second day after he anchored that he first saw a native village. In view of the apparent size and proximity to Long Bay of the San Salvador settlement, it does not fit Columbus’s description. Only with an island as small as Grand Turk is it possible to account for Columbus’s description of the shallow ridge of rocks that rings all that island to the back . The text of the Diario implies that Columbus’s circuit of his discovery island was made in two parts; half by the fleet on 12 October and half by the ships’ boats on 12 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

14 October. Both the length and width of San Salvador are three times greater than those of Grand Turk. It is too big to conform with Columbus’s description. Sailing outside the reef southward from the site of the Lucayan settlement on Grand Turk, one soon reaches the nearest of four narrow cuts in the reef leading to Hawks Nest Anchorage. Hawks Nest Anchorage is bounded by Grand Turk to the northwest, the eastern reef and lesser Turks Islands to the east and the western reef to the west. Columbus describes the area between his landfall island and the surrounding reefs:

And in between it remains deep and a port for as many ships as there are in all Christendom.

Hawks Nest is approximately fifteen square miles in size. This is ample room for a large number of sailing vessels of Columbus’s day. Columbus gives an account of a peninsula near the reef-protected anchorage he entered. He writes:

I might be able to make a fort and I saw one piece of land that is made like an Island though it is not one… This piece one might be able to cut off as an Island in two days… And then joined with said Islet there were gardens of trees, the most beautiful that I have seen and so green with their leaves…and much water.

The greenery in Columbus’s description can be interpreted as red mangroves bordering the inland side of the peninsula. The mangrove is a tropical tree that grows in salt water elevated on a remarkable tangle of roots. The red mangrove always grows in salt water, the black mangrove grows on land that is sometimes inundated by the sea and the white mangrove grows on dry land with its roots in salt water. Red mangroves bloom perennially, but most noticeably in May and October. Their leaves are a rich tender green that contrasts distinctly with the terrestrial vegetation of the Lucayan Islands. There are two possible sites of Columbus’s peninsula on Grand Turk. Both border the tidal estuary known as South Creek. South Creek abounds in mangroves. The northern site, known as Eve’s Hill, is separated from the eastern ridge on Grand Turk by a deep swale, making it a logical choice for situating a fort and an acceptable match with Columbus’s description. However, there have been no Lucayan artifacts found on Eve’s Hill. The other possibility is Gun Hill, across South Creek from Eve’s Hill. There is no evidence to date of Lucayan settlements on Gun Hill either, but there is a sandy swale in the ridge that could be cut away in a matter of days, converting part of the ridge into an island. The lower part of Gun hill next the red mangroves has been disturbed by a road and yet may harbor buried evidence of six houses. Graham’s Harbor on the north side of San Salvador has an area of approximately five square miles. In terms of area, it could contain a third as many ships as Hawks Nest, but, except in an emergency, it is not recommended as a harbor by mariners today because of the coral heads which dot its interior just below the surface. There is no secure, large anchorage near Samana Cay or near West Plana Cay. Both Grand Turk and Watlings/San Salvador have geographical features that could fit Columbus’s description of the port and peninsula. Small islands can be seen from both. While Lucayan artifacts have been found on the Watlings/San Salvador F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 13 peninsula, there is no vegetation near it that suggests “a garden of trees.” The sandy peninsula on Samana Cay does not qualify, however, as it is not more than three hundred years old. There is nothing resembling a peninsula on West Plana Cay. The last detail Columbus records on 13 October is particularly fascinating. Here, Columbus expressed impatience to strike upon the Island of Cipango (Japan). Could something the natives offered for barter have provoked Columbus to write this? The Lucayan settlement on Grand Turk discovered in 1989 is distinguished by a profusion of minute torus-shaped shell beads. These beads, white and rose pink in color, were fashioned largely out of jewelbox (chama) and spiny oyster (spondylus) shells. With respect to other Lucayan settlements, the site appears to have been unique; no other Lucayan site has ever been found to contain such an abundance of shell beads. One of Columbus’s own books, still preserved in the Biblioteca Colombina, is a 1485 imprint of a Latin edition of Marco Polo’s travels. In the second chapter of the third book, which describes the island of Japan, Columbus marked the paragraph containing a reference to the red pearls said to abound there. It may be that Columbus’s impatience to “strike upon the Island of Japan” was provoked by his receiving a string of pink shell beads or a pink conch pearl from the natives of Grand Turk. Perhaps Columbus’s Diario tells us as much about the landfall island by what it does not record than by what it does. There is no mention of fresh water, with which the men would have certainly wished to fill their casks after thirty-six days at sea. But for spun cotton, neither agriculture nor water in quantity is mentioned in the Diario until 16-17 October on the third island, La Fernandina . Grand Turk has been consistently known as a dry island, famous in the nineteenth century for the quality of the salt raked in its salinas. This is not the case on Watlings/San Salvador, where instances of standing fresh water have been noted during the October rainy season.

The Caicos Islands, the Islands of Santa María de la Concepción

When Columbus sets sail from the landfall island, the Diario describes an island or group of islands approximately 7 leagues (19 miles) west of San Salvador , with a 5 league (13 mile) north-south coast facing it and more than 20 leagues (53 miles) of coast running east-west. The Caicos Islands lie 20 miles west of Grand Turk, have a 14 mile north-south coast facing it and about a 62 mile coast running northwest by west and then west by south. Mr. Pickering has generously opined that this geography only agrees with the respective landfall island possibilities of Grand Turk and West Plana Cay. Neither the Watlings/San Salvador hypothesis with a second island of Rum Cay, nor that of Samana Cay with a second island of Acklins-Crooked Islands matches up so well geographically with the Diario . Many islands are visible to the west of Grand Turk. Advocates of San Salvador either postulate a route sufficiently westward of that island to allow sighting Cat and Conception Islands and Rum Cay, or suppose that the hills on Rum Cay gave the illusion of being many islands. Advocates of the Samana and West Plana Cays hypotheses presume that the hills of Acklins Island gave the same effect. In the Grand Turk theory it is proposed that Columbus set sail late in the day 14 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s on 14 October from his anchorage by the first break in the reef off the northwest shore of Grand Turk on a southwest course. Proceeding across the Turks Island Passage, he was carried north by the current and near mid-gulf saw the hills possibly of Ambergris Cay which has an elevation of 90 feet, certainly of South Caicos. Next day, having spent the night hove-to and having probably drifted farther north, he noted that the tide impeded his approach presumably to the east side of South and East Caicos. He remarked these two coasts together to be a 5 league (13 miles) coastline running north-south and facing San Salvador at a distance or 7 leagues (19 miles). The current generally runs north-northeast up through the Turks Island Passage. Depending on the wind, tide, moon, and season this current can attain a rate of 3 knots. The same factors have also been known to cause the current to reverse itself. With the rise and fall of the tide, the sea flows onto and off of the Caicos Bank into the Turks Island Passage through channels between the islands and in the reef. An ebbing tide can be felt for a short distance out at sea and is a potential danger to a becalmed sailing vessel. I propose that it may have been to this phenomenon that Columbus referred when he observed the tide detained me . There is no known comparable tidal phenomenon off Rum Cay or in the direction of Samana or West Plana Cay off Acklins Island. Tidal projections for Turks and Caicos by the Hydrographic Office in Taunton Somerset, England, indicate that at dawn, and for two hours after, the tide was ebbing. Therefore, if suitably positioned, the fleet would experience the greatest effect of the flow of water off the Bank through three deep channels scoured between South and East Caicos. This would tend to impede entry into what may be taken for a navigable channel. At the same time, the fleet would be subject to the northeast drift of the current. This phenomenon might explain why the fleet was detained by the tide . Following this delay the Grand Turk theory posits that Columbus rounded the northeast reef of East Caicos and followed the coast towards the west. Here wind and current worked in his favor. By midday, he noted that the north coast extended more than 10 leagues (27 miles). Not long after, having rounded the northern bend of North Caicos, he saw the heights of Blue Hills on Providenciales and, charging all his sails , steered towards the west point of the island to seek a protected anchorage before nightfall. Off this island he anchored and named it Santa María de la Concepción . A few miles south of Northwest Point on Providenciales is Malcolm Roads, an excellent anchorage in good weather with a clear sandy bottom; one which, however, is vulnerable to a northwest wind (as Columbus noted). Here it should be remarked that the Grand Turk theory exhibits a navigationally sound pattern regarding Columbus’s choice of places to anchor. It will be seen that the pattern is consistent throughout every anchorage believed used by the fleet of discovery between Grand Turk and the Ragged Islands. Along this route, the anchorages uniformly follow the three necessary criteria: they offer protection from the prevailing wind, they are open roadsteads, and they have clear sandy bottoms.

Mayaguana, the Eastern Part of Fernandina

In the course of exploring Santa María, Columbus and his captains scramble to man the fleet threatened by a change of wind blowing toward shore. While readying the F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 15 ships to stand off to sea, Columbus writes that he sees an island to the west. The fleet weighs anchors and departs to seek this new island, which may have been a cloud like that seen from the three ships on September 25 th . The southeast point of Mayaguana is 35 nautical miles northwest of the northwest point of Providenciales. Columbus describes the second island,

And it was from this island of Santa maria to this other one nine leagues east west, and all this part of the Island runs northwest southeast. And it appears that there were in this coast well more than about twenty-eight leagues on this face. And it is very flat without any mountains… And all beaches without rocks.

From this text it is clear that Columbus put the third island, Fernandina , to the west of Santa María . Local magnetic variation would have made steering west by his compass west by south. Moreover, given a seven-hour passage between the two islands, the effect of a surface current in the Caicos Passage as strong as that reported in the Turks Island Passage would give a navigator the false impression that Mayaguana lay due west of Providenciales. In this connection, it is worth noting that the 24-mile horizontal component of the distance between Providenciales and Mayguana accords with Columbus’s reckoning of 8 to 9 leagues (21 to 24 miles). Columbus notes that the wind, initially from the northwest, subsided to a calm, but does not describe when. In any event, seeking to navigate west with a northwest wind would have required a series of maneuvers, which possibly explains how Columbus encountered a single native in a dugout at mid-gulf between the islands. Watlings/San Salvador advocates posit a 16-mile westward sail from the southwest cape of Rum Cay to the rocky northeast coast of Long Island. It has been shown that Columbus lands at the sandy southern end of the third island. West Plana and Samana Cay advocates require a 27-mile sail west from the northwest cape of Crooked Island, where there is a prominent feature, bird rock, unmentioned in the text, to the rocky ironshore weather coast of Long Island. In the Grand Turk theory, an imagined composite of Mayaguana and Acklins Islands is postulated to include the east and west parts of Fernandina . Only the eastern part is explored on 17 October. Columbus remarks on sighting the third island before nightfall on 16 October that it “appears” to have 28 leagues (75 miles) of coast. It is certain, however, from the text that Columbus never sailed anything near 28 leagues along the third island. One must conclude that he inferred the length of this coast from some other source, presumably the natives he carried from San Salvador or treated with off Fernandina . Mayaguana’s coast, on the Providenciales side, is about 23 miles long. There is no physical placement of Columbus’s first anchorage on Fernandina in the Diario. However, reckoning backwards, one can make a reasonable estimation of where he was. Columbus found his second anchorage on Fernandina by sailing northwest from his first. Tracing his path backwards to the southeast, one finds a suitable anchorage on Mayaguana on the southeast coast just off of a sandy beach. At this first anchorage Columbus and his men took on water. Just behind this beach on Mayaguana there used to be a well where conch fishermen from Providenciales could count on finding fresh water 70 years ago, which is still shown on the royal survey charts. Columbus writes of his second anchorage: 16 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

…I found a very wonderful port with one mouth though one can say of it two mouths because it has a chain of islets in the middle and both are very narrow and inside very wide for a hundred ships if it were clear and deep at the entrance.

Abrahams Bay, on the south coast of Mayaguana, conforms geographically with Columbus’s route. It is about five square miles, much smaller than Hawks Nest Anchorage, and large enough to hold a hundred fifteenth-century ships. Columbus relates that the two mouths of the harbor were separated by an isleo . One of the two meanings of this term signifies a train or chain of rocky islets. These islets may be explained by the reef that shelters the harbor. The tidal projections of the British Hydrographic Office indicate a low tide at Abrahams Bay at eleven in the morning. If Columbus reached his second anchorage in the afternoon, the tide would be low enough to expose much of the reef, which has openings to the south and the north.

On 17 October, in the course of his first visit to Fernandina , Columbus notes that the natives of the third island appear slightly different in dress and customs from those of the first two islands. Archæology has shown that the Lucayan Archipelago was peopled from the east end of Cuba and/or the west end of Hispaniola via Great Inagua sometime around the year 700. By the time of contact there were people on Grand Turk who were not Taíno, as has been evidenced by several excavated sites in the Island’s coral soil. However, according to Dr. William Keegan, they imported 90% of their pottery of largely volcanic material from Hispaniola. This suggests that they were commercially allied with the Macorís and may well have had blood ties with them. At contact, the Macorís occupied a strip of the northern shore of Hispaniola between the Rio Yaqui del Norte in the west and Samaná peninsula in the east. Macorís is a Taino name that means ‘unfriendly.’ To judge from this and the Taino extension into the Caicos Islands, the Taino and Macorís peoples were antagonistic. On Middle Caicos, part of the proposed second island to the northwest of Grand Turk, Dr. Sullivan excavated a Taino settlement containing the unique ceremonial court in all the Lucayan Islands. The San Salvador and Samana Cay theories are not supported by anthropological evidence as there is a consistency of pottery over the centuries, giving no indication that there were dissimilar cultures in this region. Archæological evidence shows that the people of the modern Bahamas islands used different pottery from those of the Turks and Caicos. The Grand Turk theory incorporates the evidence that the people of the first island were sporadically attacked by people from islands to the northwest. This can be explained by a Macorís presence on Grand Turk and a Taíno presence in the Caicos Islands, and the fact that the Taíno had displaced the Macorís from their lands on Hispaniola. It also includes the evidence that there were cultural differences between the peoples of the Turks and Caicos Islands and those of Mayaguana. In contrast, the San Salvador hypothesis requires nonidentical cultures on it and Rum Cay, both different from that of Long Island. The Samana and West Plana Cay hypotheses require nonidentical cultures on each of them and Crooked-Acklins, both dissimilar to that of Long Island. There is no evidence to support these differences. Only the Grand Turk theory accords with a pattern of pre-Columbian settlement in the Lucayan Islands evidenced by archæology. F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 17

18 October, in Quest of Saometo

The first time Columbus sails at night among the islands occurs the evening of 17 October. He reverses his intended course and endeavors to backtrack to the southeast. He does this because the San Salvador natives aboard his ship redirect him in his quest for gold.

…All these indians said again that this Island was smaller than the Island Samoet [Saometo], and that it would be well to turn back to be on it more quickly.

The fact that Columbus is willing to sail at night implies that the coast of Fernandina is a protected and not a weather shore. Because the protected western coasts of the Lucayan Islands are generally more sandy than rocky, this is consistent with Columbus’s description of the sandy coast of the third island. The only Lucayan Island possessing a protected predominantly sandy shore leading to a noteworthy harbor and a coast curving towards the west is Mayaguana. Later, after standing to sea, he navigates with the purpose of keeping himself at a distance from the land. He records his intent to go to the southeast cape of the island, where he hopes to anchor. He knows this spot because he was there the same morning. South of Mayaguana, the prevailing current runs towards the northwest. The farther south one goes the more the current sets towards the west and south. Possibly because of such a current, during the night of the 17 th and also the following day, Columbus may have been carried much farther west and south than he reckoned, and by sunset on the 18 th hastens to anchor on the southwest side of the Hogsty Reef, where there is a protected holding ground in good weather with a clear, white sand bottom. He does not go ashore because the only land is two barren sandy cays. Next morning, he sets out to find his objective, Saometo . Watlings/San Salvador advocates believe that Columbus sailed southeast along the weather shore of Long Island to the southeast point he never reaches in the Diario . West Plana and Samana Cay advocates posit that Columbus sailed at night along the eastern weather shore of Long Island which he had presumably already explored on the 17 th . When examined closely, it would seem that neither interpretation accords with Columbus’s choice of words. Columbus writes specifically: en derredor dla Isla , “on from the back of the island.” By choosing this phrase Columbus implies that he was out of sight of the coast of Fernandina on 18 October.

Great and Little Inagua, Isabela and the Isleo

The morning of the 19 th , Columbus deployes his fleet in a strategic formation to find Saometo . When he sights the fourth island and its smaller rocky neighbor before noon, he relates that the fleet:

… approached it, all three ships before midday at the northern point whereat there is an isleo and a shallow ridge of rock outside it to the north, and another [ridge] between it and the large Island, which these men of San Salvador whom I bring denominated la Isla Saomete , to which island I gave the name la Islabela [sic ]. 18 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

The Grand Turk theory identifies Great and Little Inagua as Isabela and the Isleo . The north point of Great Inagua lies east-southeast of Hogsty Reef at a distance of 50 miles. This is a reasonable distance to have sailed in some six hours considering the fleet would have had to average about 8 knots and Columbus recorded the wind as being from the north, good for sailing southeast. Rocky Little Inagua, which lies about five miles north of Great Inagua, fits the desciption of the Isleo . On the 1500 Juan de La Cosa planisphere, there is an island near Guanahani named Someto . What is interesting about Someto is that one can make out a smaller island to its north, similar to how Little and Great Inagua are situated in actuality. Since there is no pair of islands like this to be found in the central Bahamas, one is impelled to think that La Cosa misplaced the islands of Someto and Guanahani on his chart. Isabela was the most beautiful of the Islands that Columbus found. He described it thus:

All this coast and the part of the Island that I have seen, it is almost all beach…and on it some hillock, not that one may call it a mountain, more a thing that embellishes… Thither at mid- Island from this part to the northeast it makes a great bight…

Great Inagua’s beachy coast follows the incuse curve of Ocean Bight. Towards the western end of Ocean Bight, James Hill, a prominent landmark 90 feet high, is crowned with a green thicket of trees, setting it off from the rest of the coppice. The topographical and geographical similarities between Columbus’s Isabela and Great Inagua are striking. Of the three islands proposed as Columbus’s Isabela, Crooked, Fortune, and Great Inagua, only the north shore of Great Inagua actually possesses a single prominent hillock. The protected anchorage under Northwest Point, Cabo Hermoso , offers a clear sandy bottom and deep water up to shore, a satisfactory anchorage for the fleet. Next day Columbus desires to sail counterclockwise around Isabela, but is thwarted by unfavorable wind and a shallow and foul bottom along the island’s south shore. In his description of Isabela he states that he gave the southwest cape the name, Cabo de la Laguna , ‘Cape of the Pond.’ Close to the southwest point of Great Inagua is a salt pond. Advocates of the Watlings/San Salvador, West Plana, and Samana Cay hypotheses identify the southern end of Fortune Island as the southwest cape of the fourth island. At the south end of Fortune Island there is a small lake, but it is on the eastern or weather side of a southern point and Fortune Island has no southern coast to navigate past. Columbus also indicates that there was abundance of fresh water on the fourth island because on 22 October he and his men fill water casks in one of the ponds near the Cape of the Isleo . The northern end of Great Inagua has fresh water ponds. These still serve as the habitat of a unique species of freshwater turtle, Chrysemys malonei , discovered some years before the outbreak of the Second World War. The ‘serpents’ that members of the crew and Martín Alonso kill by the ponds are most certainly freshwater crocodilians related to the present-day freshwater Haitian and Dominican cayman. Retracing his route, Columbus spends the night of 20 October hove-to, the F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 19 faster caravels having reached shore to anchor. Next morning, the flagship anchors near the Cape of the Isleo and the fleet remains there until midnight, 23 October. Just to the west of the northern part of Great Inagua there is a protected anchorage with a clear sand bottom not far from shore. According to the Grand Turk theory, this is the last of Columbus’s anchorages in the Lucayan Islands, other than near the Ragged Islands.

Acklins Island, the Western Part of Fernandina

At midnight on 23 October, Columbus breaks for the second time his prohibition against sailing at night within sight of land. This second instance during the early morning of 24 October is very similar to the first night sail of 17 October. Columbus gives his intended course as west-southwestward from the Cape of the Isleo. He knows from his deployment of the 19 th , that there are six hours safe sailing west-northwestward. Thus he is safe to sail for the remainder of the night. He relates that on day breaking the wind calmed and it rained. He adds that it rained almost all night. From dawn until midday, he was with little wind. Past midday, it recommenced to blow very loving , but no course is given. He orders all sails hoisted and goes on the way until dark at which time he remarks:

I was lying off the green cape of the island Fernandina… I was lying off to the northwest and it made from me to it seven leagues.

Notice that Columbus remarks on the color of the cape. It is impossible to discern color at a distance of 7 leagues (19 miles). However, it is possible that earlier that day Columbus sailed past a green cape of what he believed was the southern end of the west part of Fernandina close enough to perceive its color and then, with approaching nightfall, withdrew from it to the northwest. Castle Island, which punctuates the southern tip of Acklins Island, conforms with Columbus’s description. Critics of the Grand Turk theory have argued that it would have been impossible to sail from the north point of Great Inagua to a point 7 leagues northwest of Castle Island between midnight of the 23 rd and sunset of the 24 th . This requires sailing about 120 miles in eighteen and a half hours under the conditions described in the Diario . Now, according to the Diario, Columbus navigated towards the west- southwest for about five and one-half hours with sufficient wind accompanied with rain to make headway, then navigated about six and one-half hours on an unspecified course with little wind and rain and finally went on the way for about six and one-half hours carrying all his sails. With a favorable current running towards the northwest, Columbus could have averaged around five and a half knots between midnight and noon of 24 October and then sailed with a rising wind towards the northwest with all sails charged, averaging eight knots until dark. This interpretation accounts for an average speed of six and a half knots over eighteen and one-half hours. It also permits a reconstruction of Columbus’s route which is consistent with the experience of sailors navigating the lower Bahamas in the fall. Normally, when a front passes through the islands, there is a period of calm 20 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s followed by rain accompanied by stiff gusts of wind. Following the rain, the wind normally blows from the southwest and clocks gradually round during the next day or so until it blows out of the east. If Columbus’s fleet experienced the passage of such a weather front, it could not have held a course toward the southwest after the rain stopped. I propose that Columbus chose to head toward the northwest to avoid the risk of steering back toward Isabela , and described it as going on the way . Finally, if Long Island be Fernandina , as advocates of Watlings/San Salvador, and West Plana and Samana Cays assert, then its western part cannot lie other than north of its eastern part. This geometric fact invalidates both central Bahamas landfall hypotheses. Moreover, the southern extremity of Long Island is distinguished by a broad flange of grey rock separating sea and scrubweed, whereas Castle Island is covered with green trees.

The Sand Islands

The night of 24 October, Columbus lay to under bare poles. He estimated that he went not two leagues. I propose that he drifted northwest in the direction of the Diana Bank, about 55 nautical miles east-northeast of the Ragged Islands. It was these islands that Columbus reached and anchored near the next day, the only point of his track among the Lucayan Islands that has escaped dispute.

Christopher Columbus’s Testimony on the Location of San Salvador

We have seen that, on 13 October 1492, Columbus noted in his logbook that the island at which he had arrived the day before lay on the same parallel as the Island of Ferro in the Canaries. We have also seen that at the end of the fifteenth century the north latitude of Ferro was deemed to be 27½ °. On 15 February 1493, on board the caravel Niña off the Azores, Columbus dated his report to the Spanish Court, known today as his Letter to Santángel . It consists of a summary of his discovery and the wonderful things he had seen. Following a description of La Española , where gold had been found and where he had planted a settlement of some forty men, Columbus remarked on the intensity of the sun’s heat, noting that the settlement was twenty and six degrees from the equinoctial line [the equator] . These two latitudes, recorded in the undisputed writings of Columbus, allow one to deduce the distance he believed lay between the north shore of Hispaniola and the landfall island. As a result of Columbus’s reckoning, this distance of one and one-half degrees or 90 nautical miles is almost exactly the distance between Grand Turk and the north coast of Hispaniola. Any presumed landfall island in the central Bahamas is simply too far distant from Hispaniola. We therefore have Christopher Columbus’s own testimony that his landfall island is Grand Turk.

F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 21

ENVOI

We’ve now reached the terminus of our historic navigation. The conformation of textual evidence with physical reality sustains the premise that the landfall island at which we’ve arrived is Grand Turk. Columbus’s own testimony is presented above. The shallow Turks Bank extending seven miles eastward into the Atlantic from the three largest cays of the bank is the only place in the Lucayan Islands where Juan Rodriguez Bermejo could have seen the bottom before sighting land. Only the Turks Islands satisfy the criteria in Columbus’s Diario and Oviedo’s Historia general . They include the White Islands or Princessas which were “the first seen of the Indies,” and lay south of Guanahaní . Their sighting and the blazon of the Pinzón arms substantiate Oviedo’s statement that the fleet “stayed between it and another which is called Caicos .” Grand Turk conforms with Columbus’s description of the landfall island.

The Caicos Islands accord with the description of Santa María de la Concepción . The beachy south shore of Mayaguana matches the coasted south shore of Fernandina . Great Inagua satisfies remarkably the long description of Isabela . The assumptions in thus plotting Columbus’s inter-island track are plausibly limited to four: that Columbus believed that the south coast of Mayaguana continued to join the east coast of Acklins Island, that he followed the wind toward the northwest during the latter part of 24 October, that currents were responsible for Columbus’s belief that Mayaguana [Fernandina ] lay west of Providenciales [ Santa María de la Concepción ], and that his anchorage of the night of 18 October [by Hogsty Atoll] lay south of Mayaguana. Only on the inter-island track of the Grand Turk landfall theory are all Columbus’s anchorages in open roadsteads off protected shores with clear sand bottoms. All central Bahamas’ tracks require at least one anchorage off a weather shore with a rocky bottom. Because putative central Bahamas landfall islands fail to conform with the physiography of Columbus’s San Salvador , or because they present mismatches to his second, third, or fourth islands, there remains only one satisfactory solution to the landfall island puzzle.

May Grand Turk regain its rightful historic distinction as the first recorded point of contact between a stone-age offshoot of Asia and a relatively modern one of Europe, between a world without iron and the world of the Renaissance, where Christopher Columbus joined the hemispheres and where America began.

22 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 23

APPENDIX I: Table of Aboriginal Lucayan Island Names, 1492-1550 gathered from the early cartography and explorers’records.

Modern______Lucayan______

Silver and Mouchoir Banks Baxos de Abreos Olhos [Portuguese]

Turks Bank Babueca/ Baburca/ Babura/ Barbura Grand Turk Guanahaní/ Uenaua/ Amuana/ Amaguana [conjectured] Salt Cay Canamanani/ Canamani/ Cacumani/ Caiocman/ Caiceman/ Caxamani/ Caizimani/ Cagninama Cotton Cay Macariey/ Macareque/ Macarisi Great Sand Cay Cacenu/ Cacina/ Caycenie/ Carcerus/ Carcenie

Caicos Bank Jucayo/Lucaya/ Caicos South Caicos Caciba East Caicos Quana/ Gueni Middle Caicos Aniana/ Boniana/ Buiana North Caicos Caicos Providenciales Yucanacan/ Yucanican/ Iuconacan/ Ianucanaca/ Incanacau/ Iamicanaia/ Anioinaca/ Ianicana West Caicos Macubiza [?]

Mayaguana Mayauana/ Mayaguana East Plana Cay Amaguayo/ Amagayo West Plana Cay Mayaguain/ Mayaguon

Aklins Island Yabaque/ Haiti/ Ity Crooked Island Xumeto/ Jumeto/ Sumeto

Little Inagua Guanahaní Great Inagua Inagua/ Baoruco

Samana Cay Manigua/ Manegua/ Managua/ Samana Rum Cay Samana/ Samaiza Watlings Island Guanahani/ Gunahani/ Guanahayni Conception Island Paley’ [?] Cat Island Guanima Little San Salvador Guateo/ Cutaceo/ Goataoa Long Island Yuma/ Zuma/ Yumay/ Huna/ Juma/ Hiuma Great Exuma Guaratia/ Curatheo/ Curateo/ Curano Great Guana Airabo/ Airaba Ragged Island Utiaquia/ Hutia Eleuthera Ciguateo/ Ziguateo/ Ocigateo Nassau Neiua/ Nema/ Yabaque [?] Great Abaco Lucayoneque Grand Bahama Bahama Bimini Bimini Andros Habacoa/ Babucca Williams Island [?] Canimizi South Riding Rocks [?] El Nirda Grand Cays [?] Roques Cay Sal Cay Sal [Spanish]

24 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 25

APPENDIX 2: Columbus’s geography of 20 November 1492

Under Tuesday 20 November, Las Casas records the following paraphrase of Columbus’s log :

Baneque, or the Islands of Baneque, were lying to the east-southeast of him whence the wind, which was contrary, was coming: and seeing it was not changing and the sea was rising: he determined to set course to Puerto del Principe, whence he had gone out, which was lying 25 leagues from him. He wished not to go to the Islet that he called Isabela which from him was 12 leagues, to which he might have gone to anchor that day, for two reasons: the one: because he saw two islands to the south that he was wishing to see; the other: lest the Indians he was carrying whom he had taken on Guanahaní (which he called San Salvador), which was eight leagues from that Isabela, might flee him; of these he has necessity, he says, and has to take them to Castile, etc. …1

Baneque or the Islands of Baneque is a place Columbus never found. Attempts to identify it as Great Inagua are as warrantable as identifying Hispaniola as Japan. The eight league (21 mile) distance between Isabela and Guanahaní which Las Casas transcribes from Columbus’s log is incompatible with any attempt to reconstruct Columbs’s track among the Lucayan Islands. At the same time, it’s interesting to note that the distance between Isabela and Guanahaní is a written number and not a numeral. This passage has frustrated every investigator of the landfall question. Perhaps Commander Gould expressed it best: Columbus

there states that , being in a position E. S. E. of Babeque [ sic pro Baneque ], he was at the same time 12 leagues from Isabela (the fourth island), adding the exasperating note that Isabela is 8 leagues from Guanahani, or San Salvador. It seems quite impossible to reconcile the courses, distances and bearings given in the journal between October 12 and 20 with the statement that the landfall and the fourth island, or any part of them, are only some 24 miles apart. The minimum distance between Watlings Island and Crooked Island is about 67 miles. We must, I think, take refuge in the last resort of the baffled investigator, and declare that the passage is corrupt.

The geometry that Las Casas has transcribed gives a point of intersection between a line 67 miles from Puerto del Principe on Cuba and a locus 32 miles off the coast of the Island of Isabela . Now, according to the principal landfall hypotheses, Isabela is either Fortune Island or Great Inagua. Fortune is farther away from Cuba than Inagua, and I believe that if we accept Great Inagua as Isabela , it becomes possible to make more sense of this exasperating part of the Diario . Consider Columbus’s own perception of the islands he visited. Island II lay 5 to 7 leagues (19 miles) west of Island I. It had about a 20-league (53-mile) east-west coast. The southeast point of Island III lay 8 or 9 leagues (21-24 miles) in a westerly direction from the west point of Island II. But now there is a discontinuity. The bearing from island III to the anchorage of 18 October is not given. I infer from an entry under 19 October that Columbus believed that his anchorage of 18 October lat south of the southeast point of Island III. From the anchorage of 18 October, the north point of Island IV lay roughly to the southeast. In all cases, this implies that Columbus believed that Island IV lay south of Island II. This being the case, it can be shown that Columbus reckoned that Island IV was roughly 38 leagues (100 miles) from Island I. Now, one must decide whether, in the course of copying the logbook twice, it is likely that treintaiocho were mistranscribed as ocho , or, more likely, that a line has been dropped indicating that the Guanahani natives on the flagship (like the two who dove off Niña on 15-16 October) might escape to the Island of Santa María which was misreckoned to lie only eight leagues from Isabela .

26 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

Notes to appendix 2

1. Las Casas paraphrase, Diario , 20 November, 25v26-39:

quedavãle el baneque o las islas dl baneque al lesueste de donde salia el vi ẽto q lle vava contrario y viendo q no se mudava y la mar se alterava : determino de dar la buel ta al pue rto dl p rncipe de donde avia salido q le quedava .xxv. leguas/. No quiso yr a la isleta q llamo Isabela q le estava .12. leguas q pudie ra yr a surgir aql dia : por dos razones/. La vna porq vido dos Islas al sur las queria ver /. la otra porq los yndios q traya q avia tomado en guanahani q llamo san salvador q estava ocho leguas de aqlla Isabela : no se le fuesen/ dlos qua les diz q tie ne necessidad y por traellos a castilla etc. …

2. Lieutenant-commander R. T. Gould, R. N. , ‘The Landfall of Columbus : …,’ cit ., p. 424.

F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 27

APPENDIX 3: A Landfall Clue from the Captain of La Pinta

Having gained royal approval, Columbus needed ships and men. Martín Alonso Pinzón, a seasoned captain of Palos de Moguer, was among the first to support Columbus’s enterprise in 1492. His caravel, La Pinta , was the second largest of the fleet. After a bad start, when Pinta ’s rudder jumped its gudgeons during the run from Palos to the Canaries, she proved to be the best sailor of the fleet. During the days’ runs westward across the Atlantic, she consistently held the lead. We have also seen that by all accounts of the landfall, the lookout on board Pinta was the first to sight dry land in the moonlight before dawn on 12 October. At two in the morning, the sailor Juan Rodrigo Bermejo de Triana cried out the long-awaited word after seeing the bottom and then sighting land. Following the instructions of the Captain-general, it was probably Captain Pinzón who ordered a Lombard fired. Soon Niña and Santa María joined up with Pinta . The fleet marked time until dawn, keeping to windward of the land at a distance of 2 leagues (5 miles). By several accounts, the first land seen was a number of small cays lying to the south of the island at which the fleet anchored by late afternoon. The men called them the ‘White Islands’ on account of their sand shining white at dawn. Because they were the first seen, Columbus ordered them called the ‘Princesses.’ It is therefore clear that the fleet didn’t anchor at the lands sighted from Pinta before dawn on 12 October. Perhaps this added to the friction growing between Columbus and his first captain. Perhaps this is why Columbus made no mention of the ‘Princesses’ in the Diario . More than a month later, after the fleet had made its way among the Lucayan Islands to the north coast of Cuba, the mounting discord between Columbus and his first captain culminated in an act of insubordination. On 21 November, Columbus recorded with disgust that Martín Alonso had quit the fleet without leave and sailed off toward the east. The object of Martín Alonso’s interest was the Island of Baneque , which the explorers first learned of from the natives of Cuba on or before 12 November. According to what the captains understood, Baneque was a place abounding in gold, nuggets of which the natives gathered up at night by torchlight. On board Niña , Columbus caught up with Martín Alonso on 6 January not far from Monte Cristi on the north shore of Hispaniola, after suffering the loss of his flagship some two weeks earlier. The Captain of the Pinta reported that after finding no gold at Baneque (whose location is not given), he had continued to explore and almost three weeks earlier had arrived at a river east of Monte Cristi. This was probably the river that flows into what is now known as Puerto Blanco. Martín Alonso had named this river after himself. The region abounded in gold, and for at least sixteen days Martín Alonso and his men occupied themselves with gathering up nuggets of the coveted metal. Martín Alonso therefore arrived at the site of Puerto Blanco on or before 18 December. This means that he covered the same distance sailing upwind in 27 days that Columbus, now in command of Niña , did not quite cover in 37 under practically the same conditions. This does not include the 8 days Columbus spent salvaging the wreck of Santa María and establishing the fortified settlement of Navidad. Here it is relevant to recall that of the seven natives Columbus ordered taken captive on the landfall island, three were stationed aboard Pinta . On 13 October, Columbus recorded that natives of San Salvador indicated that south of that island there was a king who had much gold. Puerto Blanco is almost exactly due south of Grand Turk. That the greatest quantity of gold taken up during the first voyage was found here is supported by Columbus’s subsequent decision to establish the settlement of Isabela on the Rio Bahabonico not far from this site towards the end of 1493. Twenty-three years after the landfall, in the course of an interrogatory in the lawsuit between the heirs of Columbus and the Spanish crown, Francisco García Vallejo, a mariner who sailed on Pinta , confirmed, in his response to the nineteenth question, Martín Alonso’s discovery of seven other islands of the Babueca Banks .1 Now, from an abundance of contemporary cartographic and textual evidence, it is certain that the Banks of Babuece are the Turks Banks. Because Martín Alonso died in 1493, there could only have been two occasions on which he might have visited them; either the night of 11 October sailing well ahead of Columbus’s fleet, or between 21 November and 18 December having quit it. Professor Manzano y Manzano of the University of Seville concluded that Martín Alonso explored Babueca during the latter period. 2 He based his conclusion exclusively on the testimony of Francisco Garcia Vallejo. However, Vallejo’s deposed response to the nineteenth question actually 28 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s states that one night, the said Martín Alonso dispatched himself and departed from the Admiral and betook himself to fetch up at an island which is called Babueca, and thence, after he discovered it, he ran more than two hundred leagues to the southwest from there and discovered the Island Española and entered himself in the river that they call Martín Alonso’s and there he put his name .3 This text is in disagreement with those dated 21 November in Las Casas’s paraphrase of the Diario and his Historia . Under this date, both texts of Las Casas read the Island of Baneque . Because of this and because Vallejo relates that Martín Alonso departed from the Admiral at night and sailed toward the southwest between his respective discoveries of Babueca and Española , one is forcibly impelled to deduce that Vallejo relates that Martín Alonso’s first departure from Columbus’s fleet refers to the night of 11-12 October and not to the afternoon of 21 November, when, in broad daylight, he quit the fleet for what appears to be a second time. Those who have studied Vallejo’s deposition have missed an important point in his response to the preceding eighteenth question in which he describes an exchange between Pedro [Peralonso] Niño, a pilot on Santa María and Cristobal Garcia Xalmiento [Sarmiento], a pilot on Pinta in which Niño cautioned proceeding warily the night of 11 October because of a suspected proximity to land and Sarmiento countered by declaring his intention to crowd on sail. This appears to describe the rationale behind Pinta ’s departing from the Admiral and sailing well in advance of the fleet that fateful night. Columbus’s own reference to Babueca was written in 1498, and Las Casas’s subsequent reference to it in his Historia is to the Islands of Babueca .4 It is clear that these refer to the islands of the Turks Bank. The late Professor Arrom of Yale University (a native of Cuba) was positively convinced that the term Baneque referred to the Port of Banes just north of the Bahia de Nipe on the North shore of Cuba. 5 In any case, it is certain that Baneque and Babueca are two distinct places. Sailing east from Cuba to the Turks Banks in December is an upwind struggle, even for a motor vessel. Given the record of the directions of the wind preserved in the Diario , it would seem very unlikely that Pinta could have navigated 190 miles from the region of Nipe to the Turks Banks, looked for gold where there was none, and then navigated 95 miles from the Turks Islands to Puerto Blanco in 27 days. The reason opposing this is simple, Martín Alonso was looking for gold. Besides Great Inagua (which would certainly have lain in a tacking angle, if he hadn’t known the island already as Isabela ), the first land he would have seen going east from Cuba would have been the mountains of Hispaniola. His Guanahaní captives knew that gold came from this island. Moreover, as any captain of the time knew and as Columbus repeatedly demonstrated, it was always easier to sail upwind along a coast than in the open sea. As Las Casas remarks: … and well was all this time necessary to reach there [Martín Alonso’s river] , as ever he held to the east, which the wind was and is, [and] therefore contrary: … 6 It is thus most likely that Martín Alonso saw the seven other islands of the Babueca Banks the morning of 12 October. One may therefore conclude that evidence with respect to Martín Alonso Pinzón, properly analyzed, supports a first landfall at the Turks Islands.

F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 29

Notes to Appendix 3

1. See note 328 above.

2. Juan Manzano y Manzano, Los Pinzones …, cit ., vol., 1, cap. 1, sec., xi, pp. 127-132.

3. AGI, Patronato 12 núm. 2, rame 23, hoj. 70v, a la dezima nueve pregunta dixo :

que sabe que vna noche el dicho mrn alº se despydio e partio del almyrante e se fue a dar a vna ysla que se llama babueca e de ally des que la descubrio corrio mas de doscientas leguas al sudueste desde ally e descubrio la ysla española e se entro en el rrio que llamã de mrn alº e ally puse nõbre …

Cesáreo Frenández Duro mistranscribed a number of words including the name Babueca as Baburcas in his Pleitos de Colon , Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, Madrid, 1875, Series II, vols. 7 & 8; vol. 8 (II), p. 220. Alice Bache Gould gives a correct transcription in her Nueva lista documentada , cit., p. 145.

4. Raccolta …, cit., Parte I, ii, 16, en las islas de Babueca . Las Casas, Historia …, lib. 1, cap. cxxxiv, en las islas de Babueca [twice]. See also Alonso de Chaves, Bajos de Babueca , note 136.

5. Personal communication from Professor J. J. Arrom, March, 1986.

6. Las Casas, Historia , lib. 1, cap. lxvi. There appears to have been no doubt in Las Casas’s mind that Martín Alonso sailed along the coast to Puerto Blanco.

30 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

APPENDIX 4: A Landfall Clue from the Captain of La Niña

Seven years after the landfall, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, a younger brother of Martín Alonso and captain of the Niña on the voyage of discovery, undertook his first independent voyage across the ocean. The venture was privately financed and consisted of a fleet of four caravels. It did not end well. Two caravels were lost in a hurricane on the Banks of Babueca . The fleet set sail from Spain near the beginning of December 1499. Its first destination was the Cabo Verde Islands, where provisions were acquired for a transatlantic voyage. On or about 6 January 1500, the fleet sailed from the Island of Fogo on a southwest course. While crossing the ocean, the pilots lost sight of the pole star. Vicente Yáñez had become the second navigator to the Spanish New World to cross the equator. 1 After weathering a storm, the fleet sighted land on or about 20 January. Vicente Yáñez named it Cabo de Santa María de la Consolación , and named a point near it Rostro Hermoso . He took possession of the land in the name of the Spanish sovereigns, believing it west of the line of demarcation established by the Pope in 1494 between the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal. Unknowingly he had landed at Portuguese Brazil. Professor Manzano y Manzano has made a reconstruction of the fleet’s course northwest along the coast of South America between the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil and the region of Paria, now Venezuela. 2 At Paria, the Spaniards took 36 natives captive and felled and loaded a cargo of Brazil wood. Then the fleet followed the Windward and Leeward Islands northward to Puerto Rico and at length arrived at the north coast of Hispaniola. Here the fleet touched at Puerto Blanco, then called Rio Martín Alonso after its discoverer, Vicente Yáñez’e older brother, and called at the village of Isabela Vieja which Columbus founded in 1493. A 1504 printed Venetian account of this voyage gives the date 23 June for the fleet’s arrival at the north coast of Hispaniola. 3 According to the testimony of Anton Fernández Colmenero, Vicente Yáñez’s nephew-in-law and a mariner on one of the four caravels, the fleet then called at the Island called Isabela or Xumeto .4 It is here that Professor Manzano y Manzano deduces that the crew loaded a cargo of presumed cinnamon and ginger. He identifies this island as the fourth visited by Columbus and the brothers Pinzón eight years earlier. During this first voyage, Columbus recorded his belief that the Island of Isabela contained a greater abundance of valuable trees and herbs than any other island visited up to that time. Previous investigators have mistakenly ascribed to Vicente Yáñez an itinerary among the Islands of Samana , Saomete , and Maguana . In his valuable contribution to the history of the early Spanish explorations, Professor Manzano y Manzano shows how this account, taken from the testimony of the sailor Pero Ramirez, relates to Vicente Yáñez’s second independent voyage to the New World made with a single caravel in 1504. 5 He demonstrates that Pero Ramirez was not present on the voyage of 1499-1500. The testimony of Anton Colmenero relates that the fleet then continued on to the Banks of Babueca , where it was overtaken by a hurricane. Here, on the bank’s shallows, two anchored ships were lost in sight of the others. In his vivid account of this voyage, written in 1501, the papal diplomat Peter Martyr places this event in the month of July. 6 Vicenta Yáñez’s two surviving caravels returned to Spain at the end of September. They carried cargoes which included a quantity of Brazil wood, cinnamon, ginger, a South American opossum whose body Peter Martyr examined, and precious stones identified at the time as topazes. Now, it is certain that the Banks of Babueca are the Turks Banks. Grand Turk and Great Inagua correspond with Columbus’s Islands of San Salvador and Isabela according to the Grand Turk landfall theory. If the Island of Isabela is Great Inagua, it’s a simple cruise to go from Isabela Vieja on the river Bahabonico to Great Inagua, and then navigate from Great Inagua to the Turks Banks. If the Island of Isabela is Fortune Island, the distance to sail from Isabela Vieja is twice as great, and a complicated upwind navigation to avoid Acklins Island is necessary from Fortune Island to the Turks Banks. Southeast of Grand Turk, Hawk’s Nest Anchorage (twice recommended to the British Royal Navy as a developable harbor) corresponds well with Columbus’s description of a landfall island anchorage large enough for all the ships in Christendom. The fact that Vicente Yáñez appears deliberately to have made for Babueca in the face of an approaching storm suggests that he knew of the existence of an anchorage there. One is inclined to F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 31 infer that, menaced by an approaching hurricane, he remembered the security of Hawk’s Nest from exploring it during the voyage of discovery eight years before. This reef harbor is not an easy anchorage to enter under threat of weather without firsthand knowledge. This misfortune of Vicente Yáñez offers evidence on the part of the former captain of the Niña that Columbus’s landfall island is the Island of Grand Turk.

______Notes to Appendix 4

1. The first appears to have been Amerigo Vespucci.

2. Juan Mazano y Manzano, op. cit ., vol. I, cap. 2, pp. 203-429.

3. Libretto …, cit., cap. xxx in the text, cap. xxxi according to the table of contents, folio 21. See note 218.

4. See note 136 for the Colmenero text.

5. Juan Manzano y Manzano, op. cit., vol. I, cap. 3, sec. v, pp. 515-521.

6. Peter Martyr, Decades …, cit., (1533), dec. I, lib. Ix (1501). 32 F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s

APPENDIX 5: An Analysis of the Testimony of Francisco García Vallejo

Francisco García Vallejo, the mate of the deceased Juan Rodriguez Bermejo de Triana who was stationed as watch on board Pinta two hours after midnight the fateful morning of 12 October 1492, gave his deposition in the Columbus lawsuit at Palos in October 1515. In his response to the eighteenth question, Vallejo relates how Juan Rodriguez Bermejo (who, according to the text of the 1504 Ferrara manuscript and the Venetian Libretto , was in the Pinta ’s crow’s nest) saw a white sand bottom, then raised his eyes and saw the land. Just prior to this in his response, he relates an exchange between the pilots of the flagship and the Pinta , in which Cristóbal García Sarmiento (probably following Martín Alonso’s orders) announced the intention on board Pinta to clap on sail the sooner to reach land. In Vallejo’s response to the nineteenth question, he clarifies the Fiscal’s murky details of this interrogation and confirms that Martín Alonso quit the fleet at night and subsequently fetched up at an island which is called Babueca . He then goes on to describe how Martín Alonso subsequently went to discover the Island of La Española where he found gold and after forty-five days rejoined Columbus near Monte Cristi to give him news of doing so. It is thus evident from this and Columbus’s documentation that Martín Alonso quit the fleet twice; once at night on Thursday 11 October and again during daylight on Wednesday 21 November. Because of the physical difficulty of navigating upwind to Babueca from Cuba, searching unsuccessfully for gold, and then sailing south to explore and discover the Rio Martin Alonso on Española in the 27 days between 21 November and 18 December, one must rule out a visit to Babueca during this period. Las Casas discreetly confirms Vallejo’s testimony of quitting the fleet at night in a Diario paraphrase under Thursday 11 October, 8r35-38: And because the Caravel Pinta was a better sailor and went ahead of the Admiral, she found land and made the signals that the admiral had ordered. Vallejo’s same testimony fully complements Oviedo’s discription of the fleet’s dawn of 12 October approach to the ‘White Islands’ with Guanahaní lying to their north. Francisco Garcia Vallejo didn’t sign his deposition because he couldn’t write. His answers give an intimation of how an unlettered sailor’s mind worked at that time. In answering the questions posed him, he shies away instinctively from lawyers’ abstractions, but becomes clear and animated when recalling the things he saw or the things which had made a vivid impression on him. A translation of the eighteenth and nineteenth questions of his deposition follows:

1 October, Palos. The said Francisco Garcia Vallejo, resident of the town of Moguer, witness, presented and sworn.

…

18. Item: if they know that having changed the course and route by what the said Martin Alonso Pinçon had said, then after three or four days they made land on the island of the Lucayos, on the island of Guanahany.

To the eighteenth question he said that what he knows is that having had the opinion of the said Martin Alonso Pinçon, Captain, and having changed [course to] the quarter of the southwest, in three days first following thereafter, this witness saw pass certain birds which are called gayeguillos and parrots and at that time the said Martin Alonso said: ‘we are going between land, for these birds do not pass without cause.’ And afterward in the same three days, they reached the islands of the Lucayos, on the island of Guanahany. [¶] Thursday the tenth of October [ sic pro eleventh], the pilot Pedro [Peralonso] Niño spoke and said to the Admiral thus: ‘Sir, let us not make to go this night, because according as your book says, I find myself sixteen leagues from land or twenty at the latest,’ from which the said Admiral had much pleasure and said for that reason he might tell Cristoval Garcia Xalmiento [Sarmiento], who was pilot of the Pinta, and he said so to Cristovalo Garcia, and the said Cristoval Garcia [said]: What do you bid [me do]?’ [Answered Niño:] ‘In my judgment, let us not set sails this night nor make to go, as I find us near the land.’ And the said Cristoval Garcia responded and said: ‘Then in mine [ i.e. opinion], make sail and let us go as much as we might.’ And hence Pero Alonso Niño responded to him: ‘Do as you might wish, for I wish only to go behind you [and] when I see you give voice, I must betake myself away’ [perhaps this means: Should you strike bottom, I’ll veer off]. And on this, that Thursday in the night, the moon became clear and a mariner who was called Juan Rodrigo Bermejo, resident of Molinos of the land of Seville, from the said ship of Martin Alonso Pinçon saw, as the moon became clear, a white head of sand and raised his eyes and saw the land, and then fell upon a lombard and fired a round. Land! Land! And they held fast the ships until came the day, Friday the eleventh of October [ sic pro the twelfth]. The said F o l l o w i n g C o l u m b u s 33

Martin Alonso discovered at Guanahany the first island, and so much of this he knows and knows it because he saw it with the sight of his eyes.

19. Item. If they know that having found that island, one night they departed the one from another and the said Martin Alonso betook himself on one side and discovered the island Española with [i.e. besides] seven other islands of the Banks of Baburca and arrived at the said island [Española] seven weeks before the said Admiral and anchored and stayed at the said time in the river of Martin Alonso the said seven weeks before the said Admiral arrived at the island Española, who would not have turned to the said island if it had not been for the effort of the said Martin Alonso who sent to call him with canoes and letters that he sent to him, because the said Admiral was going to the islands of the Lucayos under the route of the northwest and, when he turned, had already lost his ship wherein he went.

To the nineteenth question he said he knows that one night the said Martin Alonso dispatched himself and departed from the Admiral and betook himself to fetch up at an island which is called Babueca, and thence, after he discovered it, he ran more than two hundred leagues to the southwest from there and discovered the island Española and entered himself in the river that they call Martín Alonso’s and there he put his name. After the forty-five days he joined up with the Admiral on the island of Monte Cristo and there the said Martin Alonso said how he had discovered the island Española and the gold and brought nine hundred pesos of gold and gave them to the Admiral, and the Admiral did not wish to receive them, and that being there, at Monte Cristo, before the said Pinçon met up with him, there came an Indian and gave voice, after the nao was already lost, who was called Guatrunari [possibly Guacanagarí?] who was an Indian king who wished to give him a diaho, which was a man made of gold, and at that time Vicent Yáñez Pinçon who was present said: ‘Sir, do you understand that?’ And the said Admiral said he understood some of it, and the said Vicent Yáñez said to him: ‘I understand him,’ and he said: ‘Turn, your grace, for he would give you a man of gold, which is and means in his language diaho,’ and that thus the same one [Vicente Yáñez] said: ‘Go, Sir, for it is worth two hundred cuentas [millions] and will bear great evidence of gold to their highnesses,’ and the said Admiral was thinking if he would go for it and hence shortly after he said let us go from here and make sail for Castile that I bear it en bonda [in bond?] enough to make evidence to their highnesses, and so they betook themselves; and [he, Vallejo] knows that Española and the river of Martin Alonso, and [regarding] the said gold, the first man who discovered it was Martin Alonso. Asked how he knows the aforesaid, this witness said because he was present and saw it all with the sight of his eyes.

Obviously Francisco Garcia couldn’t have accompanied Martín Alonso on Pinta and have observed the exchange between Columbus and Vicente Yáñez before reaching Monte Cristi. So his claim to have witnessed this discussion about the diaho ‘with the sight of his eyes’ is impossible. However, it must be remembered that the business of the Fiscal at Palos was to find means of sparing the crown from paying Columbus’s heirs the large percentage of the fruits of the lands discovered beyond the sea. The important Pinta evidence here, stripped of the jumbled recollection of an unschooled mind, is that Juan Rodrigo Bermejo saw the bottom some five miles from the land he was the first to sight, and Captain Martín Alonso Pinzón, sailing ahead of the fleet, discovered Babueca or the Banks of Babueca, the Turks Islands, on 12 October 1492, an event fully confirmed by the blazon of the Pinzón arms conferred on the family in 1519. Together with the descriptions in Oviedo of the islands south of Guanahaní, these two accounts unequivocally establish the landfall island as Grand Turk.

It is recommended that those who wish to explore the Grand Turk Landfall Theory in more detail address themselves to the grandturkcolumbuslandfall.org website.