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The Navigational Background to 1492

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2009

Michael Richey
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Abstract

Columbus's first voyage to America has been widely regarded as a considerable feat of navigation. Feat it certainly was, but the great advances in navigation during the fifteenth century were in fact made by the Portuguese, whose adaptation and development of Mediterranean methods to the more demanding requirements of the ocean made the European voyages of discovery possible. It was in Portugal too, probably during the years 1478–85, that Columbus acquired his knowledge of navigation. This paper, which was presented to a meeting at Brown University, USA on 26 September 1989, where the author was Gulbenkian Research Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library, examines navigational practice in the Mediterranean during the late middle ages and its subsequent development during the Great Age of Discovery.

Keywords

1. History
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , May 1992 , pp. 266 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1992

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References

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