With today’s holiday, it is an appropriate time to post a few comments about the excellent history I finished last week. It was The Admiral of the Ocean Seas, the biography of Christopher Columbus that is the preeminent work in the field. Its author, Samuel Eliot Morison, is especially thoughtful, superbly balanced and thorough. He is also a terrific writer, a skill unfortunately lacking nowadays in most who attempt the service of historian.
Morison has tremendous respect and affection for Columbus and the book thereby is a tender look at the adventurous hero. Yes, Columbus’ faults, failures and even his sins are duly presented (as I said, Morison is fair and thorough), but Columbus’ basic ideals and world-shaking achievements are properly hailed. With the current tendencies to diminish Columbus’ character and his importance, elements of which had already begun before Morison’s book was written in 1940, this book provides a fact-based perspective that is much needed.
A few of the points emphasized and well documented in Morison’s book are:
1) The evangelistic motivations of Columbus --- An ardent Christian who daily sought God’s direction in the Holy Scriptures, Columbus desired to open up new lands to the gospel, especially crucial with the gains of Islam in the Old World. Tragically, this noble aim failed as the Spanish lust for gold, women, slaves and conquest burned away the evangelistic enterprise Columbus had initially designed. Columbus failed personally in this grand quest also. All this is carefully characterized in Morison’s history.
2) The pathos presented by Columbus’ ultimate failure to ascertain his claims to have discovered the western route to India and China --- Indeed, Columbus died still ignorant of his real achievements. Morison also presents Columbus’ failures with his men, as governor, and his political relationship with the Spanish court. All of these make The Admiral of the Ocean Seas an informative and quite poignant read.
3) Himself a sailor, Samuel Eliot Morison carefully explores Christopher Columbus as an uncannily skilled mariner. In fact, just before the Second World War, Morison was one of the leaders of the Harvard Columbus Expedition which sailed the same courses as Columbus in his four voyages to the Caribbean. With minute detail, the HCE charted the waters, identified the locations from Columbus’ logs, and experienced some of the same joys and fears those ancient mariners did. Much of this is used in the biography and it really enhances the history.
So, happy Columbus Day! I give you as my present the recommendation to travel back in time to the heady days of exploration with the incomparable Christopher Columbus. And Samuel Eliot Morison’s The Admiral of the Ocean Seas? It is definitely the best way to go.
