La Salle Professor Says Columbus Almost Died Years Before His New World Trip
By Mark Abrams
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A local maritime historian says famed explorer Christopher Columbus may not have achieved the fame he earned for his discovery of the New World had he not survived a skirmish on the high seas some 16 years earlier.
Brother Edward Sheehy, a history professor at La Salle University, says the Genoese captain and explorer made a journey in 1476 that changed his life. He says Columbus was sailing for England and Portugal in the North Sea on a trading mission when his convoy of ships ran into ships from France and Portugal.
Then, says Sheehy, there was a battle.
"He ends up being wounded and he has to swim six miles to get to the coast of Portugal," Sheehy says of Columbus' narrow escape.
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He says Columbus recovered and, according to a biography written by his son, learned Latin and Spanish, led more voyages around Africa, and married -- all before he ever approached the Spanish monarch and his queen about financial backing for a big journey to India to open the spice trade.
"He had married into a prominent Portuguese family and he had made voyages to Africa," Sheehy says. "He may have gone to Iceland."
But Columbus never made it to India -- instead making his discovery of a new land believed to be islands in the Caribbean in 1492, and staking the claim to the New World for Spain.
