Christopher Columbus essays

Christopher Columbus essays Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer, was from Genoa. He sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. His main goal was to find a route to the Indies to be able to trade goods and to carry the message of Jesus Christ to faraway lands. Between 1492 and 1504 he took a total of four trips to the Caribbean and South America. Christopher Columbus was the oldest son of Domenico Colombo and Susanna Fontanarossa. He was born in 1451 in the Republic of Genoa, which was known as the trading center for goods from the Far East. His parents named him Cristoforo, which is the Italian name for Christopher. He had four brothers and one sister. His father was a weaver and a cloth merchant. Everyone in his family helped work in the shop. As a small child he went to a school set up by the weavers guild. The children were needed to work, therefore, school was only held for a few hours each day. They were taught math and Latin. As a teenager, his father sent him to the University of Pavia. While there, he studied geometry, astronomy, grammar, geography, the Latin language, and navigation. When he was about twenty years old he worked on a cargo ship that sailed on the Mediterranean Sea. On the first time passing the Portugal Coast, his ship was sunk by an enemy ship. He swam for six miles holding on to an oar until he reached Lagos. After spending a few months there, he went to live with his brother, Bartholomew, in Lisbon. He taught himself how to read and write in the language that the people of Lisbon used, Castilian. To earn a living, Columbus became a chart maker. The knowledge Columbus gained while collecting evidence for his charts convinced him that there were lands across the great ocean and he had to find them. Around 1480 Columbus married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz. She was the daughter of a Portuguese nobleman. After being married for about one year they moved to Porto Santa. While there, he started working on his plans to sa...