Columbus_ The Four Voyages - Laurence Bergreen [168]
Ferdinand and Isabella had rehabilitated Columbus, but not enough to suit his taste and vanity. He compiled his personal Book of Privileges in which he listed all the properties, titles, rights, awards, and offices that he believed he was still owed, but his grievance went unrecognized. The Sovereigns were in a difficult position as a consequence of the sprawling realm discovered by Columbus. To neutralize the threat he posed, Ferdinand and Isabella cut him down to size.
On September 3, 1501, they declared that he would not be able to return in triumph to Hispaniola, after all. In his place, they chose a younger man, Nicolás de Ovando, as the next governor and chief justice. The appointment meant Columbus no longer ruled the realm he had discovered. Playing to his vanity, they permitted him to retain hollow titles such as admiral and viceroy, and he was allowed to keep the money confiscated by Bobadilla. On one hand, the Sovereigns had honored Columbus; on the other, they had replaced him.
He entered a dark period. His health was declining, his eyesight failing, his body tormented by rheumatoid arthritis. His moods alternated among grandiose ambition, paranoia, and lucid intervals—all because he had lost control of the brave enterprise he had begun, and earned a reputation as a scoundrel rather than the hero of his imaginings.
Despite everything, the third voyage provided important results. Columbus had once again demonstrated his peerless navigational ability, crossing the Atlantic with such efficiency that the accomplishment, all but unthinkable before his first voyage, was becoming commonplace. He had survived a terrible tsunami. And he had finally located the mainland, touching Venezuela, the Orinoco, and the island of Trinidad, and found a region rich in valuable pearl fisheries.
But Ferdinand and Isabella had, in effect, sent the Admiral of the Ocean Sea into retirement. It seemed that his seafaring days were over, and the next shore he reached would be death.
His work done, Francisco de Bobadilla, Columbus’s nemesis, embarked on a passage home to Spain, sailing with a convoy of thirty vessels in June 1502. Aboard his ship were Francisco Roldán, the former rebel, now rotated back to Spain; Guarionex, the fierce cacique who had once challenged Columbus, soon to be presented to the Sovereigns as a trophy of the Indies; and the Admiral’s steadfast ally Antonio de Torres, the captain. In her hold, the ship carried 200,000 castellanos of gold, equivalent to 87,000,000 maravedís (more than ten million dollars), and a nugget said to be the biggest in the Indies, valued at 3,600 pesos.
Considered the least seaworthy of all the ships in the fleet was little Aguja (“Needle”), carrying Columbus’s personal store of gold, disgorged by Bobadilla. It was worth 4,000 pesos.
Conditions were forbidding on the day of departure; a swell, aceitoso y maloliente, rolled in from the southeast, where hurricanes often formed. A low-pressure system sapped the air of vitality. Shreds of high-altitude cirrus caught fire at sunset, but sea-level breezes did little to dispel the disquieting mood. Dolphins skimming the surface added to the sense of impending mayhem.
On July 11, the fleet was negotiating the Mona Passage, a strait running between Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. With its extensive sandbanks and riptides, the strait was difficult to navigate even in fair weather.