A Response by John Dyson, The World and I, December 1991, Vol. 6,
No. 12, pp. 392-393.
 
     The moment I read the results of Dr. Luis Coin's prolonged
and detailed study of the voyages of Columbus I had but one
thought - Joe Judge will have fun with this!
     Fun in the sense of positive criticism is one thing, brutal
mockery and seemingly willful misrepresentation of what a book
plainly states are quite another.  His sneer at my collaborator in
Spain is unworthy.  Dr. Coin was indeed a seaman and second mate;
he also happens to be a master mariner who for some years had been
a university professor of maritime history and navigation.  His
debt to Juan Manzano Manzano, one of the eminent historians who
granted his doctorate, is acknowledged in his own 800-page thesis
soon to be published by the University of Cadiz.
     In fact, we do not state Columbus landed at Grand Turk,
though I see why Judge might infer it from our map on which the
dotted line representing the reconstructed route tails off in the
direction of Grand Turk, Samana Cay, and San Salvador.  Dr. Coin's
analysis of the transatlantic track does not set out to contribute
to the landfall argument, which is still unresolved, despite
Judge's best efforts.  While Mayaguana is undoubtedly in the
Bahamas, as Judge kindly points out, I must spare my deepest
blushes for the matter of pelicans: Like many a researcher working
before me in this field, I was misled by a translation of medieval
Spanish, and it is I alone who deserve the booby prize.
     Even if the birds were blue-faced boobies, however, the
premise holds up.  The distribution maps of the Royal Society for
the Protection of Birds, here in England, show neither the many
boobies nor the frigate birds Columbus purports to have seen in
the mid-Atlantic range across the avian desert of the Sargasso
Sea, but they are common near the Caribbean islands.
     Of course our illustration of the information that might have
been available to Columbus is speculative, and the text makes this
clear.  The story of the "unknown pilot" is indeed an old
chestnut, but the reason scholars have discounted it for centuries
has now been convincingly discredited, and this throws the whole
thing open to possibility.
     A ship sailing from Guinea to Lisbon would tack right out
into the Atlantic and could be blown into the Caribbean in a few
days.  In July 1990 we ourselves arrived just ahead of two
hurricanes only three days apart (which explains why we sailed           d).  On
when we did).  On the second voyage Columbus did find the
wreckage of a European vessel in Guadeloupe.  A small and fine-
lined vessel like a caravel with a hurricane on its tail would
easily surf in bursts of up to twenty knots.  For Judge to
represent this as a constant speed made for days on end, and
further to extrapolate an Atlantic crossing time of four days, is
unjustified and silly.
     The chapters Judge mentions are separated not by ten pages
but by a single two-page spread (with a fabulous picture).  As our
illustrious reviewer is evidently unable to count, we might also
wonder if he can read - so manifest are his misrepresentations of
what the book actually says.
     We do not claim the wreckage seen by Columbus at sea came
from the "oceanic bypass" in use twenty years earlier.  We do not
claim that he saw birds flying eastward toward the Cape Verde
Islands.  The three stages of the scrambling of the log were
completed long after Columbus' death, not by 1493 as Judge
reports.  It is not claimed that Columbus passed among the
hundreds of Caicos Islands.
     Judge's incredulity at what he calls both a noon miasma and a
fog is overdone.  Columbus referred to the problem, writing that
he brought his ships together at sunrise and sunset, "when the
haze is least."  We ourselves sailed within ten miles of St.
Bartholomew without sighting its high coast until the island was
abaft the beam.  Judge's comment that a masthead lookout would see
a 110 foot hill at a distance of fifteen miles, despite the humid
conditions described in the log, indicates his lack of nautical
experience, a factor that has also bedeviled his landfall
research.
     Not wanting to shoot himself in the foot, Judge avoids key
issues - that Columbus knew he would find land at 750 leagues (as
he did), that Columbus told the sovereigns he found the Indies in
twenty days, that the southerly route is confirmed by two
chroniclers who knew Columbus (Bernaldez and Oviedo), and that
with Dr. Coin's reconstructed route, both the "true" and "false"
distance figures given by Columbus and so long a mystery are now
fully explained.
     Judge also firmly skirts the issue of the northeastward
current, which, according to the hydrographic office of Spain,
flows toward the Canary Islands between July and October: Plainly,
this is the "contrary" current complained of by Columbus and
specified by Ferdinand.  Medieval mariners did determine the set         rent us
of a current using the procedure applied by Columbus on September
19 and described by Ferdinand.  Judge's interpretation of
"current" as an effect produced by waves breaking at angles is
nonsense.
     When I first had the pleasure of meeting Judge in Seville I
showed him a photograph of the caravel built by Dr. Coin.  "This
isn't right," he said almost at once.  "We know from a list of
equipment in the archives that Columbus' Nina had four masts, not
three."
     But nothing in that document suggests all four masts were
rigged.  Dr. Coin believes a prudent captain would carry a spar on
deck in case of emergency, as we did.  This typifies the way in
which even the plainest of facts can often tell a different story
when weighed from a new perspective.  It is this kind of skeptical
and professional eye that Dr. Coin has turned on the voyages of
Columbus.  His theory may not be perfect in every detail, as he
himself admits, but it is worthy of more courteous and considered
judgement that it is accorded here.