The American Discovery of Europe

5. From Iberia to the Baltic: Americans in Roman and Pre-Modern Europe

5. From Iberia to the Baltic: Americans in Roman and Pre-Modern Europe Many american nations have traditions pointing towards animals as teachers of human beings; and it is certain that the Ancient Americans learned much from carefully and consistently observing the lessons offered by the natural world and its living children. Indigenous Americans often seem to have made it a major part of their lives to watch the animals, birds, and other living things in order to learn their secrets, in order to understand the patterns of their behavior.1 I believe that we can be absolutely sure thatAmericans of old, putting out in boats into the waters of the Caribbean, off the mouth of theAmazon , in the Florida Straits, or in the Gulf Stream farther north, would have studied the moving rivers with infinite care, would have, in fact, mapped out the precise movements of the currents and winds with extreme exactitude , and certainly would have observed the onward traveling of huge numbers of logs, branches, debris, and, what is more important still, the behavior of animals in the streams. The logs and the animals, such as the marine turtles of America, were clearly going somewhere, but where?And for the people in theAmazonCaribbean region, it was obvious that floating things were also arriving from the east. Certainly there were rivers in the oceans that formed great circles of going and returning. But the turtles of American waters are especially important, particularly the great LeatheryTurtle. One was washed ashore at Harlech, North Wales, in 1988, weighing 2,106 pounds and measuring about ten feet in length and nine feet across the span of its front flippers.2 106 v The American Discovery of Europe In point of fact, it is very rewarding to look at the behavior ofAmerican marine turtles because their movements, going back millions of years, provide a ready guide for watchful human hunters and sailors. There is absolutely no doubt that American turtles followed the Gulf Stream to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, and Devonshire’s coast, as well as on occasion to Iceland, Norway, and, in one case at least, to Murmansk.They may have even returned to theAmerican tropics, as will be discussed below. The earliest European drawing of anAmerican turtle is from the 1100s ce. E. Charles Nelson, who has written about drift seeds, notes that a churchyard slate of the twelfth century in Cornwall (Tintagel Island) has “a vivid thumbnail sketch of a Common Loggerhead turtle. These animals , natives of theAmerican coast, are frequently stranded on Cornish shores.”3 Five species of turtles have been reported from British waters in modern (post-1700) times.They are the Leathery, the Common Loggerhead , Kemp’s Ridley, Green, and Hawksbill (rare).The first three are the most common.The Leathery nests primarily in Guiana, SouthAmerica, butalsoalongeastFlorida.LeatherysareseenoftenoffnortheastAmerica (Connecticut to Newfoundland) “where they feed on jelly-fish in waters up to 15° C colder than those in which they nest in Florida. The turtle’s temperature may be as much as 18° C warmer than the surrounding water.” In 1958 a Leathery was seen off Norway at 69°18 N and another off of northern Iceland in 1963.ACommon Loggerhead was caught in a fishing line off Murmansk in 1964.The “powerful LeatheryTurtle may well have the stamina to return south.” R. D. Penhallwick tells us that “the circulation of the oceans makes it unlikely that turtles of any species from the Mediterranean orWestAfrica would reach British shores, as this would entail swimming for hundreds of miles against the prevailing currents.” He goes on to inform us that “evidence from other organisms, some the food of Leathery Turtles, as from inanimate objects, all point to the West Indies and the northern shore of South America as the origin of turtles stranded on British and Irish shores . . . as recently as December 1986, a speed-boat turned up at St. Ives, in all probability from the southern United States.” Penhallwick also reviews the evidence supplied by Charles Nelson and others relative to the drift seeds and otherAmerican items that turn up on the coasts of Cornwall, western Ireland, and Scotland. “Indeed, the earliest European reference to them comes from Cornwall where they were collected by Dame Catherine Killigrew before 1570[,]” who said that the “faith of the From Iberia to the Baltic v 107 Cornish folks” was that they drifted from the...