The Long Shortcut

To the end of his life, the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus clung to his belief that by sailing westwards he had found not a new continent, but merely a short sea-route to Asia. Like other geographers, he underestimated the size of the Earth and overestimated the east-west extent of Asia. A globe made at the time of Columbus’ first voyage to 1492 showed the distance from the Azores westwards to Japan as no greater than the length of the Mediterranean. Thus when Columbus reached the Bahamas he thought he had arrived at the Indies (the collective name then used for India, Southeast Asia and Indonesia), which is why the Caribbean islands are called the West Indies. During his second voyage in 1494, all the members of his crews had to swear that the coast of Cuba, along which they were voyaging, was ‘the mainland at the beginning of the Indies’. The penalties for breaking the oath later dependent on rank: offenders paid a fine, had their tongues cut out, or received 100 lashes.