In the absence of gravitas

One summer evening in August 1492, three ships—the carrack Santa María and a pair of a smaller caravels, the Pinta and the Santa Clara—put to sea from Palos de la Frontera in southern Spain, to begin one of the most remarkable voyages in human history. Since the fall of the Mongol Empire and the collapse of Byzantine hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean, it had become increasingly difficult and dangerous for European traders to pursue overland silk and spice routes to India and China. Spain and Portugal had long vied with one another to search out seafaring routes to the ‘East Indies’. In 1488, an eastward possibility had opened when the Portuguese explorer Bartolemeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope, but it was Christopher Columbus’ expedition westwards in 1492 which garnered the most excitement. In the first of four epic voyages, Columbus sailed via the Canaries, in the expectation of reaching Japan, but after many weeks at sea dropped anchor in the Bahamas.