And so we come to that prince of navigators, that consummate seaman, that greatest of all maritime discoverers, Columbus, and we shall proceed to learn from contemporary accounts the kind of seamanship and navigation which he employed on his memorable voyages, the life which he and his companions lived in those historic cruises into the unknown. Happily Columbus’s log is still preserved to us. Even though it is somewhat mutilated, yet it is full of illuminating information, and must be regarded as “the most important document in the whole range of the history of geographical discovery.” The methods, the instruments, even the ships employed by Columbus were merely typical of the best which then were used. Emphatically they were not otherwise. Therefore if we note carefully the ways of the _Santa Maria_, the _Pinta_, and _Nina_, we are really focussing the most expert seamanship and navigation of the fifteenth century. There were certainly ships afloat as good as, if not better than the _Santa Maria_; but what is to be remembered is that those illustrious explorers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were really expert navigators, and not merely daring seamen, astute traders, or courageous soldiers. Columbus, Drake, Davis, and so on were, according to their times, really scientific men. I wish to emphasise this because the world is wont to admire their valour and enterprise while forgetting their mental abilities and achievements. As we shall see presently, Columbus’s navigation was always better than that of the skippers of the _Nina_ and _Pinta_. Drake was an excellent navigator, especially in regard to astronomical navigation. Davis, as anyone who cares to read his works may see for himself, was most learned in the theory of finding one’s way across the trackless sea.
In the light of modern knowledge, modern practice, and modern nautical instruments, some of the errors in navigation of those days may seem to us ridiculous, until we recollect that these men were really fumbling in the darkness with nothing to guide them except moderate knowledge, inefficient aids, and their own natural instincts. Long before Christopher Columbus set out to the westward he had studied cosmography and astrology at the University of Pavia. He had also visited Lisbon, whither the fame of the achievements of Prince Henry the Navigator’s illustrious captains had attracted other capable seamen, among whom were such men as Da Gama, and his own elder brother Bartolomeo. At this time Lisbon was still the centre of all nautical and geographical enterprise. Here Bartolomeo was working as the head of a school of cartography, and here Christopher had every opportunity for studying the charts and logs of the greatest living sea captains after Bartolomeo had returned home. He had the dual advantage of learning all that both Genoa and Lisbon could teach him. Furthermore, he was a practical seaman, and had already sailed as far to the north as Iceland.