Guanahani

Guanahani was the name the natives gave to the island that Christopher Columbus called San Salvador when he arrived at the Americas. Columbus reached the island on 12 October 1492, the first island he sighted and visited in the Americas. Guanahani is one of the islands of the Lucayan Archipelago in the Bahamas, but the exact island is a matter of some debate.

Candidates

Landfall theories

Prominent candidates

• Modern San Salvador Island; it was in fact known as Watling Island before 1925, but renamed after some historians made what was then considered a persuasive case that it was Guanahani. This hypothesis was first proposed by Juan Bautista Muñoz (1793). It was resurrected by A.B. Becher (1856) and forwarded strongly by James Murdock (1884). Notable defenders of the theory include the influential historians Richard Henry Major (1871) and Samuel Eliot Morison (1942).

• Grand Turk Island, was first proposed by Martín Fernandez de Navarrete in 1825, but soon fell out of favor until it was resurrected by Robert Power in 1924.

• Samana Cay, first proposed in 1880 by Gustavus V. Fox, a US Navy captain. Fox's theory was little known until revived in a 1986 issue of National Geographic Magazine.

• Plana Cays, proposed by Ramon Juan Didiez Burgos in 1974, Keith A. Pickering in 1994.

Other suggested candidates

• Cat Island, was long believed to be Guanahani and identified as such on many nautical charts from the 18th Century. In light of the competing new theories of Muñoz and Navarrete, Washington Irving (1828), with the asssistance of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, set out the case for Cat island, and was supported by the weight of Alexander von Humboldt (1837).. The hypothesis lost traction after the publication of Bartolomé de las Casas' abstract of Columbus's on-board journal (1875-1876), which argued strongly against the identification.

• Mayaguana, proposed by Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen in 1864.

• Conception Island, proposed by R.T. Gould in 1943

• East Caicos, proposed by Pieter Verhoog in 1947.

• Egg Island, proposed by Arne Molander in 1981

• Lignum Vitae Cay, proposed by John Winslow in 1989

Clues

Trans-Atlantic track

The first way to locate Guanahani is to follow the distances and directions Columbus gave in his log. This procedure is difficult because of the uncertainties in knowing the length of Columbus's league, the speed and direction of ocean currents, and the exact direction his magnetic compass would have pointed in 1492.

John McElroy was one of the first to attempt this in 1941, using a speculative magnetic chart for the year 1500 and currents from pilot charts. His vast overrun in distance was corrected by a fudge factor, leaving his endpoint in the vicinity of Watlings Island. This result was substantially confirmed by Doug Peck's sailing voyage of 1991.

In 1986, Luis Marden of the National Geographic Society applied currents to the first half of the voyage (but not the second half) and determined Samana Cay as the most probable landfall.

In 1992, Goldsmith and Richardson used vector average currents (rather than prevailing currents) along with an updated magnetic field, and found a track that ended in the vicinity of Grand Turk Island.

In 2004, Keith Pickering applied magnetic declinations from a more modern source and found a track that ended in the vicinity of the Plana Cays.

Lights on the evening preceding the discovery

At 10 p.m. on October 11, Columbus noticed lights "like a little wax candle, rising and falling" at the horizon. He pointed them out to other people on board, some of whom were able to see the lights, while others didn't. The actual landfall was about 35 miles from the location Columbus saw the lights, so if taken that the lights were from a ground-based source, then they could not have been from Guanahani, but must have been from another island farther east. For the Plana Cays theory, the light would have been on Mayaguana. For Conception, it could have been on Cat Island, Watling/San Salvador or Rum Cay. For Caicos it could have been on Grand Turk. For Cat Island it could have been Watling/San Salvador and for Lignum Vitae Cay it could have been Eleuthera Island. Other theories have no ready explanation.

Description of Guanahani

Columbus calls the island very flat with many trees. This is true for all of the proposed islands. His next statement is more problematic. He says Guanahani has "muchas aguas y una laguna en medio muy grande" – many waters and a laguna in the middle (or "in between") very big. The word laguna creates many problems. It is uncertain whether it means lagoon or pond. In any case, most of the proposed islands have either a lagoon or pond; only East Caicos lacks one.

On October 14, Columbus made a boat trip to the eastern part of the island. Therefore he went the length of the island in a North-northeast direction. This is only possible on Plana Cays, Conception and Egg, and to a certain extent on Samana Cay. Columbus noticed a reef that completely surrounded the island. All proposed islands have a reef, but the ones on Cat and Watling don't completely surround the island. Between the reef and the island was a harbor "large enough to store all ships of Christianity." Of course this is an exaggeration, but the harbor on Egg is definitely too small. Columbus went on land and saw "a piece of land, that looked like an island, but actually wasn't one." This is difficult to track, because it may have become a real island in the past 500 years.

Island or islands

Disputed about Guanahani is the question of whether Guanahani was one island or not. Evidence is said to be contradictory. Columbus never says Guanahani consisted of several islands, something which is surely worth noting. But on reproductions of the map of Juan de la Cosa, who was with Columbus, Guanahani looks to some researchers like a string of islands.

See also

• Columbian Exchange

Bibliography

• Becher, A.B. (1856) The Landfall of Columbus on his First Voyage to America. London: Potter. online

• Fox, Gustavus V. (1880) "An Attempt to solve the Problem of the First Landing Place of Columbus in the New World", Report of the Superintendant of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Appendix No. 18, June 1880). Washington, DC: Government Printing office. offprint

• Fuson, Robert (1961) "Caicos: Site of Columbus's Landfall", Professional Geographer, vol. 13 (2), pp.65-97.

• Humboldt, Alexander von (1837) Examen critique de l'histoire de la géographie du nouveau continent et des progrès de l'astronomie nautique aux quinzième et seizième siècles, Paris: Gide, vol. 3, p.169ff.

• Irving vol VI, App. 16, p.238-71

• Irving, Washington (1828) "Appendix XVI: Route of Columbus in his First Voyage", in vol.IV of A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. London: Murray. App. XVI, pp.239-71

• Judge, Joseph (1986) "Our Search for the True Columbus Landfall", National Geographic, vol. 170 (No. 5, November), pp.566-71.

• Link, E.A. and M.C. Link (1958) A New Theory on Columbus's Voyage through the Bahamas. Washington DC: Smithsonian institution.

• Major, Richard H. (1848) Select Letters of Christopher Columbus, with other original documents relating to his four voyages to the New World. London: Hakluyt. online

• Major, R.H. (1871) "The Landfall of Christopher Columbus", Report of the Fortieth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science - Notices and Abstracts, London: Murray. p.171-72

• Molander, Arne (1983) "A New Approach to the Columbus landfall", Terrae Icognitae, vol. 15, pp. 113-149.

• Morison, Samuel Eliot (1942) Admiral of the Ocean Sea. 2 vols. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

• Muñoz, Juan Bautista (1793) Historia del Nuevo Mundo, Madrid: Ibarra. v.1

• Murdock, J.B. (1884) "The Cruise of Columbus in the Bahamas, 1492", Proceedings of the US Naval Institute, Vol 10, pp.449-86.

• Navarrete, Martín Fernández de (1825-37) Colección de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles desde fines del siglo XV: con varios documentos inéditos concernientes á la historia de la marina castellana y de los establecimientos españoles en Indias, 4 vols., Madrid: Imprensa Real.v.1 (1825), v.2, v.3 (1829)

• Peck, Douglas T. (1993) Christoforo Colombo, God's Navigator, Columbus, WI: Columbian Publishers

• Peck, Douglas T. (post-1996) "The Navigation of Columbus and the Controversy over his landfall island in the New World", New World Explorers, online

• Pickering, Keith (1994) "Plana Cays as the Landfall of Columbus in 1492", Dio, Vol. 4 (1), p..15-32.

• Pickering, Keith (1997, rev. 2010) "The Columbus Landfall Homepage: Just where did Columbus first see the New World?" online

• Roukema, E. (1959) "Columbus Landed on Watlings Island", American Neptune, vol. 19, pp.79-113.
• Varnhagen, F.A. (1864) "La verdadera Guanahani de Colon", Anales de la universidade de Chile, vol. 26. offprint

• Verhoog, Pieter (1947) "Columbus Landed on Caicos", Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute, 80, 1101-1111.

External links

• Site of Keith Pickering, advocate of Plana Cays
• Paleogeographic evaluation furthering the Samana Cay landfall theory