The Age Of Discovery
The
modern world was heavily influenced by the voyages of mariners such as
Christopher Columbus. He and his
contemporaries, whether admired or hated, did very much to create the modern
world as we know it.
The Portuguese fashioned the first Eureopan vessels that could explore
unknown waters and return safely, the caravels.
They combined Mediterranean, Atlantic and Arabic ideas of hull design and
rigging that enabled them to make fishing voyages to the Grand Banks (off
Massachusetts), and the first voyages of European discovery—along the African
coasts and on to India. When Vasco
da Gama reached India in 1498, they realized their dream of finding an all-sea
route to Asia.
Columbus (resident for many years in Portugal) and his followers borrowed
these techniques and sailed in the other direction toward Asia, discovering and
settling America as a by-product of their efforts to reach China.
They established an enormous empire in the New World, and prompted other
European nations to follow in their wake. They
also pioneered new versions of naval warfare in Europe, assembling large armadas
of artillery-equipped galleons.
The Western European nations became active in the century following the
Portuguese and Spanish explorations. They
constructed generally smaller, sea-worthy vessels, and blanketed the rest of the
globe with exploring, conquering and settling expeditions.
To the Iberians, they were nothing but pirates, and the legacy of piracy
remains strong in the history of this time period.
Francis Drake, Captain Morgan, Captain Kidd, Blackbeard, and others
created romanticized legends of bravery and buried treasure.
Captain Cook’s encounter with Hawaii brought the most remote islands in
the world under European influence. The
colonies founded by these nations have made significant marks in the modern
world—Canada, the United States, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa.
In the meantime, throughout the vast Pacific Ocean (the world’s largest
single geographical feature), thousands of outrigger canoes were covering the
immense distances between small islands. Beginning
in pre-historic times, intrepid sailors struck out from the Southeast Asian
archipelagoes into the open waters. Relying
upon sturdy outrigger canoes, and their familiarity with the sky, the horizon,
cloud formations and ocean swells, they undertook astonishing voyages into the
unknown. Over the centuries they
populated the far-flung islands of the Pacific, and established lifestyles based
on their relationship to the ocean—fishing, trading, bathing and even surfing.
As the world became known and charted, ocean voyaging became common
throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.
Commercial, military and scientific sailings blanketed the globe.
Emerging powers such as the United Kingdom began to construct large
navies. Sturdy whaling vessels with
their try-works and decks slippery with blubber traversed the northern and
southern oceans. Ships of all
nations made their way to China to collect cargoes of porcelain and silk.
Three and four-masted schooners made their way along coastlines,
increasing the Atlantic trade and carrying slaves from Africa.
The sleek clipper ships made their way from Baltimore and Philadelphia to
bring prospectors to San Francisco Bay in record time.
This was the pinnacle of the era of the sailing ships, regarded
nostalgically by many a modern sailor.