GROSS NAVIGATIONAL ERROR - ETERNAL RECOGNITION

Navigation is a vital constituent in the successful profile of a proficient sailor. A bad navigator at sea will be exactly that- 'at sea', meaning lost and confounded!

Navigation has come a long way; from just winds, sun, moon and stars to devices like sextants and cross-staffs to take measurements, and almanacs and trigonometric tables to compute the readings to work out one's position. Then came lighthouses, buoys and charts to guide mariners to reach their destination safely. The biggest boost to navigation came in the 20th century with great technical advances from gyro compass to radar and radio aids like Loran and Decca to satellite navigation.

A serious navigational error can lead to grounding of a ship or a collision resulting in loss of life and property and the guilty person is duly punished.  An error discovered in time before causing harm often becomes a subject of leg pulling and humour in the wardroom. In my days in the Navy, a common error was heading for Bimlipatam (now Bheemunipatnam) instead of Vizag (Vishakhapatnam) as their landscapes looked alike from a distance while approaching harbour. Even specialist navigators were known to have fallen victims to the misidentification including one who as Fleet Navigating Officer almost took the Indian Fleet to the wrong harbour. That did not come in the way of his rising to become the naval chief in due course of time!

One of the funniest stories is the rib-tickling incident of the landing craft Magar crossing the Arabian Sea at the height of the monsoon on its maiden voyage from London to Bombay (Mumbai). With no navigational aid but for an erratic compass, the Captain felt lost in stormy weather and poor visibility. A merchant ship was sighted and messages exchanged which revealed that both ships were headed to Bombay but were on opposite courses. Thinking the other ship was right, both ships started following each other's wake going around in circles for a while till a fishing boat came by and helped point the ships in the correct direction to Bombay!

It is quite understandable that serious faults are punished while small, harmless incidents are laughed at. But can you imagine someone becoming a historical legend and earning eternal recognition and praise for committing a gross navigational error! 

The idea that the earth is round was proposed by Pythagoras in ancient times before 500 B.C. Although many seafarers believed that to be true, navigational challenges prevented them from taking any voyages to prove it. Europeans carried out gold and spice trade with India, China and Japan mostly by land and short sailings using the Silk Route. The onset of the Ottoman Empire closed the Route for the Europeans who then had to find other ways to resume trade.

That is when an Italian explorer and navigator, Christopher Columbus, began touting the idea of sailing west to reach the East Coast of Asia. The idea met with stiff resistance and was rejected by Spanish experts but he kept persuading the Spanish royalty and finally got them to accept it and sponsor a voyage. And so in August 1492, he sailed west in search of Asia and on 12 October, made a landfall at an island locally called Guanahani in the Bahamas. He also visited other islands now known as Cuba and Hispaniola. He returned to Spain by early 1493 and claimed he had reached East Indies in the Far East.

In the next nine years, he made three further voyages to the west landing in Lesser Antilles, Trinidad, north coast of South America and east coast of Central America. On his third voyage he made a landfall in what is now Venezuela and realised that the place was too big to be an island and was perhaps a continent. But he still held firm that it was the Far East and named the indigenous people 'Indios' (Indians). 

Spanish experts doubted that Columbus had succeeded in his mission and there were reports of harsh treatment and enslaving of the local people by him. In 1499, he was removed from the post of Governor of the Indies which Queen Isabella I had appointed him after his discovery in 1492. He spent his last few years in disgrace and under various litigations before his death in 1506.

Meanwhile, another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, undertook an exploratory voyage west and after making a landfall, claimed that Brazil was part of a fourth continent which he called the "New World". He undertook a second voyage and based on his discoveries and findings, cartographers made maps showing the "New World" as America derived from Vespucci's first name, Amerigo. Also Vasco Da Gama reached India via Cape of Good Hope thus putting to rest claims of Columbus.

So where did Columbus go wrong? He made a number of errors but the biggest one was grossly underestimating the circumference of the Earth due to which he thought he would have to travel 9000 miles at the maximum. Some say that he deliberately misled the Spanish royalty regarding the distance in order to get the sponsorship but most give him benefit of doubt and reckon that the error occurred because of confusion between the larger Arab mile and the shorter Italian one. Additionally, he did not know that sailing west, there would be another continent between Europe and Asia. 

After years of ignominy due to reputation of bad governance, achievements of Columbus started gaining traction particularly after the American War of Independence. He was lauded for establishing mutually beneficial contact between the American and the European continents. His 1492 voyage is regarded as one of the three shaping events of modern age and he is referred to as the "founding figure of New World relations." Some credit him for discovery of America even though Vikings had been visiting the continent 5 centuries earlier. He has a country, Colombia, named after him and two prominent districts, District of Columbia in US and British Columbia in Canada. Countless roads have been named after him and commemorative stamps released all over the world apart from statues and monuments including New York's Columbus Circle where a 76 foot column with a 14 foot marble statue of the legend looks down upon me whenever I get out of Ruchir's apartment next door!

And today, 12 October, is celebrated as Columbus Day in US and is a holiday in some countries marking the anniversary of his first landing in the Americas.

No mean recognition for skewed navigation!