Cuba

There are british members of the Gefaell family in the UK, since a couple of hundreds of years ago. Maybe some influence here....?

 

A misquote here methinks (from Bram Stokers Dracula)

"by God I have created a monster!!"

 

Hmmmm, so it could be that, like his supposed countryman half a millenium ago, Guillermo is a secret Chinese agent, sent to stifle the highly constructive debate amongst foreign devils, on multitudinous worldshaking issues on boat design forums, by introducing truckloads of dry, indisputable facts. But he has been subverted by our foreign devil quirky humor (dammit, there's only one "u" in humor, Mike!), and he now lapses into joking with the foreign devil Westerners. Even worse, he now buys and rents houses on little-known islands all over the Western Ocean.

 

Charlie whilst I have a lot of time for my american cousins (I was actually made an honourable or was it horrible? yank some time back on this forum - I suspect it was to shut me up?! eh Longliner? but it didn't work!) you still can't spell worth a damn - theres as many 'u's in huumouur as you want, as long as it makes 'ee laff'

Mike

 

You're a wise guy, charmy... You got me!

 

Brit vs Yank spelling is one of those subjects best discussed over some fine liquids brewed from hops. In such a setting the discussion may be long, agreement never reached ... but who cares?

 

Humm, the Spanish Sea captains in the XV century, beginning of XVI were not very good, but Spanish were not stupid. Their political skills would turn them in one of the most powerful nations in the next century.

So, if they were not stupid why should they choose to put a foreigner and a minor sea captain as “Piloto mayor de España, a title corresponding to the modern one of head of the admiralty, and which was borne by Vespucci until his death"?????????.

It is obviuos that Amerigo was far better than any other Spanish Captain and clear that this was no minor sea captain, but the best Spain could find for the job.

On the expeditions he has participated he has the Captain of his own boat and the only reason he was not leading, was because he was not Spanish, neither Portuguese.

He was the one that first said that America was not India, but a great continent and had said that with the knowledge he had adquired in his voyages and with his outsatanding cartogtapher and navigation skill.

Minor sea Captain?

Take a look:

“ Having obtained three ships from Ferdinand, King of Castille, Vespucci was able to undertake his first voyage. Accordingly, he set sail from Cadiz on 10 May, 1497, sailing toward the Fortunate Islands, and then laying his course towards the west. After twenty-seven or thirty-seven days, on 6 or 10 April, he touched the mainland (Guiana or Brazil?), and was well received by the inhabitants.

In this first voyage he may have entered the Gulf of Mexico and coasted along a great portion of the United States, as far as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Then he returned to Spain, and landed at Cadiz on 15 October, 1498. ….

On 16 May, 1499, Vespucci sailed from Cadiz on his second voyage, with Alonzo de Ojeda and Juan de la Cosa. He directed his course to Cape Verde, crossed the Equator, and saw land, on the coast of Brazil, at 4° or 5° S., possibly near Aracati. From there, he coasted along the Guianas and the continent, from the Gulf of Paria to Maracaibo and Cape de la Vela; he discovered Cape St. Augustine and the River Amazon, and made notable observations of the sea currents, of the Southern Cross and other southern constellations.

There two expeditions were undertaken in the service of Spain; the third and the fourth, in that of Portugal.

On 14 May, 1501, he sailed from Lisbon to Cape Verde, and thence westward, until, on 1 January, 1502, he came to a gulf at 13° S., to which he gave the name of Bahia de Todos Santos, and upon the shores of which the city of Bahia now stands. From there he coasted along South America, as far as the Plata. On his return, he discovered the island of South Georgia, at 54° S., and 1200 miles east of Tierra del Fuego. He arrived at Lisbon on 7 September, 1502.

On his fourth voyage, he sailed with Gonzal Coelho from Lisbon, on 10 June, 1503, touched land at the Cape Verde Islands, and bent his course towards the Bay of All Saints. At Cape Frio, having found great quantities of brazil-wood, he established an agency, exactly on the Tropic of Capricorn. Thereafter, he coasted along the continent, nearly to the Rio de la Plata, and then returned to Lisbon, where he arrived on 18 June, 1504.

Vespucci made a fifth voyage with Juan de la Cosa, between May and December, 1505; they visited the Gulf of Darien, and sailed 200 miles up the Atrato River. .

The facts regarding the voyages of Vespucci are accepted as given in the above narrative by the majority of the authoritative biographers of that navigator; but the inexactness of the printed texts, the difficulty of identifying the names of places, used by Vespucci, with the modern ones, and the error of attributing sincerity to all assertions contained in official documents, especially in those relating to legal proceedings, have given rise to enormous confusion in all that relates to the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci, of which the chief base for future criticism will be the investigation of the apocryphal codices of the narratives of the voyages of Vespucci, written at the time when the authentic ones appeared.

Vespucci was certainly held in high esteem in Spain, where he established himself after his voyages in the service of Portugal. In 1505, by a royal decree of 14 April of that year, he had received Spanish naturalization, and a decree of 6 August, 1508, named him piloto mayor de España, a title corresponding to the modern one of head of the admiralty, and which was borne by Vespucci until his death.
……
It is impossible to determine, here, the place of Amerigo Vespucci in the history of the discovery of the New World, in relation to those of Christopher Columbus, …... First it is necessary to distinguish between the geographical, and the social, discovery of America. The former is due to the Icelanders, who established, on the eastern coast of Greenland, a colony that was maintained from the tenth to the fifteenth century, of the history of which a very good compendium is given by Fischer in "The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America" (London, 1902); in connection with this work there should be consulted the collection of documents concerning the relations of the Church of Rome with Greenland during these centuries, published by order of Leo XIII. "

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15384b.htm

As I have said, geographically, he has the first to point correctly that America was not India, but a great continent and as it was pointed out, America has been discovered already by the Vikings centuries before Colombo arrived there.

So, in my opinion, America is a well chosen name.

 

the spanish sea captains ,,,,at the time were smart,,,,,,,,so they had to outsource the job,,because at that time ,,,,,,the world was flat,and you would fall off the edge ,,,,,,,,,longliner

 

Ah yes, outsourcing. And C.C., being from Genoa, was certainly a good choice. After all, Genoa is much closer to Greece than Spain and it was well known that the Greeks had demonstrated the world was round over 2000 years before.

 

King Fernando named him 'Piloto Mayor de España' a position hierarchically dependant of the 'Casa de Contratación' in Seville, so not the head of the Admiralty. His mission was to teach navigation (particularly the use of the quadrant and the astrolabius, which many spanish pilots didn't know), cosmography and piloting, at the recently created pilots school in town. He has also the responsibility of the cartographic and hydrographic registers, being a mayor task the keeping of the 'Padrón Real', the map of the new discoveries.

Many of the voyages of Americo Vespúcio (as he is known in Spain), are little or no documented at all and are motive of historical controversy. Some of them seem to be, with a high probability, total inventions. Depending on authors he may have done between two and six voyages. In general he doesn't seem to be very well considered among historians.

Just an example:
The matematician and astronomer Duarte Leite in his work 'Descobridores do Brasil' expresses an opinion particularly despective:

"This vain character is no more than a liar novelist, as good a pilot as many others, cosmographer repeating others' ideas, false discoverer who appropriated the glory belonging to others. In spite of all this, he managed to impress generations of cultivated men who maked enormous efforts trying to interprete his fantasies and give sense to his nonsense"

For those of you reading spanish: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Américo_Vespucio

 

Wheras Mrrs Drake, Frobisher and others were to busy stealing anything that move to be bothered about naming places etc. but the English (and their Dutch and occasionally Portugese allies) probably did more exploring than the rest of the Med put together - they had to to stay away from rather upset Spaniards who in those days (Guillermo is now taking the Spanish Nation further by developing a sense of humour!!) just couldn't see the fun in 'borrowing' gold and stuff from their coffers

 

My God

Duarte Leite was born in 1864, he was a mathematician and mainly a Politician. He was prime minister of Portugal in the first years of the Republic.

That work you talk about is the work of someone who is a Patriot in a very difficult period of our history and didn’t have any background on History. It is a Patriotic work and as Americo Vespucio was Italian he tries to take away all his credit.

Modern (and real) historians from Portugal and Brazil (and elsewhere) recognize the vast importance of Americo Vespucio as one of the Great Navigators and probably, between the navigators, the best Cartographer. (In my opinion miles away from Colombo who needed many years to found out where he was).


This discussion is so ridiculous (about the importance of Americo Vespucio) that I refuse to continue. I will only say that everybody knows that the first Map where the coast of South America was drawn was the Cantino Map, (1502) an Italian Map. Guess who has provided the information for it?

By the way, are there no Italians on this forum?

"Imago Mundi is the only English-language scholarly periodical devoted exclusively to the history of pre-modern maps, mapping, and map-related ideas from anywhere in the world. It was founded in Berlin in 1935 ..... Since 1977 each volume has contained a full complement of scholarly aids in the form of book reviews, bibliography, and chronicles, all of which have made Imago Mundi a valuable journal of record as well as scholarship".
http://links.jstor.org/journals/03085694.html

This is a link to Imago Mundi’s "new" article about Amerigo Vespuci and the origins of that “confusion”. It leaves no doubt about the hard data (maps) that prove his more controversial voyage, the third, when he sailed south, as far away as Patagonia.

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=03....0.CO;2-2&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage



About Cristovão Colom (Christopher Columbus) there are big news:

A Spanish scientist has collected COLOM’s ADN and has been in Portugal to collect the ADN of the families who claim to be of his blood. Results will come in 6 months.

 

It certainly would appear that the Americas are well named then!!

After a no good con artist and a dreamer who misapropriated everything he laid his hands on for his own uses!!

I would like to be a fly on the wall when you tell that to our American cousins (from all American Nations not just the US of A)

 

Then, why do you continue it at all....?

 

We sucked our ma's teat real well!