Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [16]
But something curious did occur during that first voyage. A lookout saw them first, rising a long way off. Astonished, he sounded the alarm.
IT WAS SEPTEMBER 23, the fleet’s exact position unclear but the weather good, skies bright, no sign of a storm on any horizon. Nonetheless, the lookouts spotted immense swells marching slowly and silently toward the ships. Columbus and his captains turned the fleet into the oncoming seas and watched open-jawed as the surface of the ocean rose in great oil-smooth hills of blue and green. The swells lifted the ships to exhilarating heights but posed no danger.
What Columbus did not know was that these swells were most likely the advance guard of a hurricane rising hundreds of miles away, well out of sight—the same brand of swell Isaac observed as he stood on the seat of his sulky in Galveston four centuries later.
The ships continued their journey; Columbus opened the gates to the New World.
The more time Columbus spent in the waters of the Indies, however, the more he saw the flaws in his original appraisal of Caribbean weather. Water spouts danced among his ships. Tropical rains fell as if from a ruptured cask. Squalls tore the sails from his spars. By the time of his final voyage, Columbus had learned that the seas of the New World were both seductive and deadly, but in the process had become adept at reading the tropical skies for signs of trouble.
He was ready for his first true hurricane.
FOUR YEARS BEFORE the storm, Ferdinand and Isabella, intending to reward Columbus, appointed him viceroy of the Indies. He reached Hispaniola in August 1498 expecting to savor the perquisites of rank, but found rebellion and turmoil. When word came back to Spain that chaos, not the sovereigns, reigned in Hispaniola, Ferdinand and Isabella dispatched an emissary, Francisco de Bobadilla, to straighten things out. Secretly they had granted him extraordinary powers, which he demonstrated immediately upon his arrival. It did not help that as Bobadilla sailed into Santo Domingo harbor he saw seven Spanish corpses dangling from the gallows. Swaying palms were one thing; swaying countrymen quite another. He used the hangings as a pretext to arrest Columbus and lock him in chains, a degree of public humiliation that speaks clearly of some deeper passion filling Bobadilla’s portfolio. Greed perhaps, but certainly envy.
In October 1500 Bobadilla marched the iron-laced Columbus through town and on board a ship, La Gorda, bound for Spain. Bobadilla himself took over the administration of Hispaniola. After returning to Spain, Columbus remained in chains for six more weeks before the sovereigns released him. He pleaded for the license and funds to conduct one more great voyage. In a sign of new warmth toward the admiral, Ferdinand and Isabella commanded Bobadilla to assemble all proceeds from trade and the mining of gold that were owed Columbus, and to place these in the custody of his designated agent. On March 14, 1502, the sovereigns granted Columbus another voyage. Like wise parents seeking to head off the wars of jealous children, they forbade him to stop at Hispaniola.
Columbus, delighted to be sailing again, set out with four caravels, and on June 29, 1502, found himself and his fleet off Hispaniola. He saw that a great convoy of thirty ships was being readied in the Ozama River at Santo Domingo for imminent departure, but did not know at the time that this fleet was carrying Bobadilla and a vast fortune in gold, including his own share. That Bobadilla had consigned Columbus’s gold to the smallest and flimsiest of the convoy ships, the Aguja, was yet another mark of whatever hidden passion fueled his hatred.