The Log of Christopher Columbus (review)

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 28, No. 1, May 1988, pp. 46-48 REVIEWS The Log of Christopher Columbus. Robert H. Fuson. Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing Company, 1987. xvii and 252 pp., maps, photographs, original art, other illustrations, appendices, bibliography , and index. $29.95 cloth (ISBN 0-87742-951-0) At the risk of hyperbole, Christopher Columbus is rapidly rivalling Napoleon as history's most written-about personage. It seems that in order to celebrate properly the Quincentennial of the Discovery of America in 1992, writers from a variety of disciplines are attempting to tell us everything possible about the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Columbus has been the subject of hundreds of written works over the centuries , and those by Ferdinand Columbus, Bartholome de Las Casas, Martin Navarette, Gustavus Fox, John Thacher, Paolo Taviani, Carlos Sanz, and Samuel Eliot Morison are particularly important milestones. Regardless of this enormous corpus of literature, no one yet has been able to determine precisely where Columbus made his first landfall. This is a bothersome mystery because many are convinced that the initial sighting of America may have been the single most important event in history. Recent studies focus on this geographical conundrum because its solution would be our generation's gift to the quincentennial commemoration. The past few years have witnessed a new surge of Columbus scholarship . Gianni Granzotto produced yet another biography in 1984. A year earlier, the Society for the History of Discoveries published a landmark volume specifically devoted to the first landfall, and the National Geographic Society in a controversial 1986 article claimed the final word on that subject. One legitimately can ask if there are any other arguments to be made about Columbus and the initial discovery, and the answer is that in spite of all the rhetoric, universal agreement is far from reality, further analysis must be completed, and there is indeed much more to be learned. What desperately is needed now, however, is less text and more context . Gratefully, that is what Robert Fuson provides in his new book. Fuson (a long-time member of SEDAAG and an acknowledged expert on both Columbus and Caribbean geography) has modernized the log of Vol. XXVIII, No. 1 47 Columbus' epic seven-and-a-half-month long first voyage, a pleasant change from many of the other translations which often are stilted wordfor -word transcriptions. He has reassembled some missing sections from other contemporary sources (Ferdinand Columbus, for example), rearranged the log so that the chronology is consistent, and made corrections where it is obvious that Columbus himself knew better. Fuson's edited translation is a remarkable document, but what makes it so meaningful is its accompaniment by well-organized essays that provide the necessary context. In clear, concise, and often elegant language , Fuson covers such subjects as contemporary ships and navigation , who Columbus was, his sea-faring experiences, his crews, and even the ironies associated with his numerous burial places. He carefully recreates the provenance of the log, reporting that the original was lost but that Bartholome de Las Casas preserved for posterity an abstract of it. As Fuson says, it is "the closest thing we have to the on-board log of the Santa Maria. . . ." Even so, because of his solid grasp of early Renaissance navigational techniques and his first-hand knowledge of the region's geography, Fuson is compelled to correct Las Casas on numerous occasions. Another strength of the book is the chapter in which Fuson discusses all the theories that have been advanced over the centuries concerning which modern-day island in the Bahamas is Columbus' San Salvador. No one who writes about Columbus these days does so without proposing one or another of those theories. Fuson admits that he has been pondering the question for over thirty years, and in that time he has defended three different islands. He finally has settled on Samana Cay, Gustavus Fox's (and the National Geographic Society's) choice, because "only by starting at Samana Cay will you be able to follow the Admiral to Cuba." As logical as Fuson's argument is, it is unlikely that he will persuade many others to accept the Samana Cay location. There...