"Looking for Columbus" by: Joanne E. Dumene in: <> (April 1990, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 11-15) Nearly five centuries after the voyages of Christopher Columbus, questions still persist about where he first landed in the New World. The history books tell us his first sighting was an island in the Bahamas. In 1942, Samuel Eliot Morison, noted naval historian and biographer of Columbus, name Watling Island as Columbus's first landfall. He wrote, "There is no longer any doubt. . . . That alone of any island in the Bahamas, Turks or Caicos groups, fits Columbus's description." In 1926, on the basis of earlier investigations, the Bahamian Parliament changed the name of Watling Island to San Salvador--the name given the island by Columbus. In the November 1986 issue of National Geographic, Senior Associate Editor Joseph Judge discounted Morison's findings. Judge claimed that Columbus stepped ashore on an island now called Samana Cay, latitude 23x 05' north, longitude 73x 45' west. The National Geographic Society had researched that theory intensively for five years. Nine other landfall islands have been proposed, and some 23 different routes to the New World have been suggested. For centuries, this mystery of the world's most famous landfall has intrigued and occupied the minds of navigators, historians, geographers, and scientists. Some tried to find the true land- fall by calculating the distance from Gomera, Columbus's point of departure in the Canary Islands. Other backtracked from Cuba, one of Columbus's known landings. Still others reconstructed relative distances from island to island, comparing their plot- ting to current charts. Part of the problem with any of these methods is that what remains of Columbus's log is only a copy (or a copy of a copy) made by Bartoleme de las Casas, a Spanish Dominican missionary and historian whose History of the Indies (Hawthorne, New York: Mouton De Gruyter, Tres Breve Relation sur la Destruction de Indies, 1975) begins with Columbus's voyage. The part of the diary dealing with the discovery is written in first-person narrative, and many believe Las Casas copied that part of the log verbatim. Columbus's son Ferdinand used some of the same language in a biography of his father. More recent research was conducted by Dr. Steven Mitchell, a professor of geology at California State College in Bakersfield, and three teams of Earthwatch volunteers. As members of Earth- watch, a nonprofit organization that puts money and people at the disposal of scientists conducting research in the field, they had volunteered for the opportunity to take part in a scientific venture that could change the history books. The 49 volunteers, from 20 states, included computer analysts, teachers, writers and editors, retired executives, college students, and a lawyer. Mitchell, who had been studying Bahamian coastlines since 1975, knew that today's shorelines are not exactly the same as the ones Columbus saw 500 years ago. Some features have remained the same; others have changed dramatically because of the erosive, often destructive forces of wind and waves. He suggested using a different approach to landfall investigations other than the traditional computerized studies of navigational techniques, sailing Columbus's route as recorded in his log, or backtracking from the later Cuba landfall. Mirchell preferred to study geological and archaeological evidence and to look more closely at shorelines and land formations. When Columbus arrived at the Bahamian shores, for example, he visited Indian villages, so to solve the age-old question requires a search for the remains of those villages and what is buried underneath the shifting sands. Dr. William Keegan, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina and a coinvestigator in the lost landfalls of Columbus project, was in charge of that aspect of the search. "I felt we needed to look at all the theories and study the different approaches," said Mitchell. Through previous on-site research and field work, he was able to eliminate many of the proposed routes. And of the nine landfall sites proposed, he said only three deserved serious consideration: Joseph Judge and Samana Cay; Samuel Eliot Morison and Watling; and Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander R. T. Gould, who in 1927 suggested Conception Island as the first landfall. After surveying and testing Conception Island and consider- ing the changes in its shorelines, Mitchell concluded that this uninhabited island should receive equal consideration as the landfall. Conception Island, four miles long and with an area of four square miles, has a lagoon that occupies most of its center. Smaller lakes are located along the periphery of the lagoon, matching Columbus's description of "many waters." Only the "very green trees" do not fit, but Mitchell's theory covers that discrepancy: Heavy logging has destroyed the trees, and the natural tropical canopy forest has been replaced with scrub and imported trees such as Australian pine and palms. Furthermore, the headlands have eroded, bays have become choked with sand, and reefs may have grown wildly or have been smothered in sediment. "On approach, the Bahamian islands just do not look the same as they did when Columbus discovered them," says Mitchell. "Even so, Conception has all the requisite physical features that Samana Cay does not have, including a large central lagoon." Mitchell contends that when Columbus returned to his ships and set sail, he could have seen the hills of Long Island and Rum Cay to the south, which looked like numerous islands. And Conception is the right size for what Columbus referred to as an isleta, an island less than four square miles in area. Views from ships also are important. Columbus wrote that he saw Indian villages on that first island as well as on other islands. Conditions under the water are just as significant. Columbus had to have an anchorage, for example, and a long boat had to be able to reach the shore. Conception Island, southwest of today's San Salvador Island, formerly Watling Island, and northwest of Rum Cay, which Morison claims is the second island Columbus visited, offers a solution to the mystery of the light Columbus described as "a little wax candle rising and falling . . ." If Columbus landed first on Conception, he would have sailed between Rum Cay and Watling Island at night before sighting land. And a fire might have been burning on Watling's southeastern shore. On a direct western course, which Columbus had changed to instead of his initial west-southwest course, it could have happened. On 22 June 1987, Mitchell and his unlikely group of volun- teers began testing these theories. The 14 members of Team I conducted field surveys on Long Island, a 60-mile-long Bahamian out island, hypothesized to be the third one visited by Columbus on his voyage of 1492. Mitchell and Dr. Keegan believe Columbus's log descriptions of this third island, which he named Fernandina, are more detailed and verifiable than those of the first two islands he visited. The plan was to gather concrete evidence of the landings on Long Island and then work backwards to find the first landfall. Every morning, with backpacks loaded and bota bags slung from their shoulders, team members clambered onto a flatbed truck for a bumpy ride over dusty roads to a drop-off point. From there they hiked two to three miles across rough terrain, up and over jagged limestone cliffs, and through thick scrub, or slogged through tidal waters to reach their destinations. Following a daily field briefing, they broke into smaller units of two or three people to accomplish various assignments. Some took salt pond core samples, which entailed wading out into mucky salt ponds, hammering long tubes into the bottom, and carefully drawing out a sample that would be analyzed later. Others surveyed the places where Lucayan villages had been located previously, marking off old and new dunes in relation to the village sites. Strong swimmers in the group snorkeled off the coastline to check the depth of channels and to determine the location and age of reefs. At the end of each day, the results of the day's work were analyzed and added to the growing mass of evidence. Each day the case for a landing on Long Island's northern shore was strengthened. The core samples showed evidence of freshwater. The snorkelers found what seemed to be the place Columbus describes as a "wonderful port with an entrance, even though one could call it two entrances, for it has a small island in the middle, and they are both very narrow. And within [it is] very wide, enough for a hundred ships if there were depth. . . ." In the back of their minds, they constantly asked themselves if Columbus could have landed here. Even though all three of the more plausible landfall theories claim Long Island was the third island visited by Columbus, scholars disagree as to exactly where he landed. Judge claims Columbus landed on the southern end. Morison says the northern end was the landing site. Mitchell's intent was to determine which theory was the most likely by checking them both. His investigations were based in part on Commander Gould's suggestion that certain approaches would prove impossible if neasured by evidence. Gould said we would then be left with the one solution with the highest degree of probability. Mitchell is still searching for that one solution. The evidence collected by the Earthwatch team suggests strongly that there are better site candidates on Long Island than the ones suggested by Judge in National Geographic. "We have found good anchorages, evidence of Indian villages, places where longboats could have come in to shore," said Mitchell. The evidence strongly suggests that two of Columbus's anchorages off the third island were at Fish Pond Cape and Columbus Harbor. The second week of the field project found the group anchored off Conception Island, comparing their view of the island to what Columbus said he saw. excitement rippled through the group when they could see "one piece of land that is made like an island even though it is not . . . which one could cut into an island in two days." Eagerly, they began each hot day as before, preparing for field investigations. This time, however, they had to swim from the 85-foot dive boat to the shore before they could begin their work. Shoes, hats, other clothing, and supplies were along in a rubber raft. Ashore once more, one group walked the island's perimeter and took core samples of the lagoon, while others sought evidence of coastline changes. Divers and snorkelers searched the waters around the island, investigating the reefs and looking for channels where a longboat might have been able to come into a bay. The first Earthwatch team to investigate Conception Island found a piece of Spanish pottery. Although it does not prove anything about Columbus's first voyage, the shard of an old Spanish olive jar was uncovered in the middle of an area that had been used by Lucayan Indians. The area had not housed a village, but could have been used for the collection and preparation of food, such as conch. Mitchell claims the pottery probably was deposited on Conception between 1492 and 1512, proving evidence of Spanish-Indian contact on Conception, because the islands were depopulated by 1512 after the Lucayan Indians fell victim to disease and slavery. "What we found supports the Conception theory; this island has to be considered more seriously as the first landfall," says Mitchell. "There is good evidence in the island, its physical features, the size of the lagoon, prehistoric Indian activity, and the Spanish pottery. I'm not saying it is the (Columbus) landfall, but clearly it must be considered." Later investigations by Earthwatch and Mitchell added support to this theory. Team 2 picked up the search on 20 July and concentrated on Crooked Island as either the second (Judge's theory) or the fourth (Morison's) island visited by Columbus. Investigators and volunteers nade detailed coastal geological surveys and shallow offshore snorkeling surveys. The archaeological group located three previously unknown Lucayan Taino sites and discovered a ceramic zemi, a representation of Lucayan ancestral spirits at one site. This was the first ceramic zemi to be found north of the Caicos Islands. Also uncovered was a collection of bones and the corner of a floor of a prehistoric house, the first Lucayan Taino house floor identified during excavations in the Bahama Islands. In August, Team 3 sailed the 40-foot "Sea Joy" over the Morison, Judge, and Gould tracks along the coasts of Long, Crooked, Acklins, and Conception Islands, and Samana Cay and Rum Cay. Team 3 anchored off Conception Island, as Team 1 had done, and conducted further geological surveys. Meanwhile, the archaeology group went to Acklins Island, where they investigated ten Lucayan Taino sites. And so another theory--the Mitchell/Gould track--entered the Columbus landfall controversy. So far, Mitchell is not making any definitive claims. He knows there ia a possibility that 500 years down the road, scientists might be asking the same question: "Where did Columbus land?" And always having a question means that someone will always try to answer it. Right now, Mitchell and his volunteers are continuing to search for an answer to the question. Reprint permission granted by publisher. DUMENE01.ART