Dangerous Waters
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.”
The Age of Discovery was filled with adventurers who bravely left sight of shore to risk falling off the edge of the world or being swallowed by sea monsters. Turns out, though, scoffing at sea monsters notwithstanding, being an Explorer was way more dangerous than that. Almost none of them died peacefully, let alone lived to a nice old age.
Bartholomew Diaz in 1488 sailed around the southern tip of Africa (Cape of Good Hope). A decade later, while accompanying Cabral, he got caught in a storm (off that same Cape, which he had wanted to name Cape of Storms). His ship sank, and he and his crew drowned.
Christopher Columbus. Well, you know what he did. But according to Dr. Frank C. Arnett of UT Med School Houston (quoted by Wikipedia), Columbus likely suffered food poisoning on one of his voyages, which brought on Reactive Arthritis: For the last 14 years of his life, CC suffered recurrent fevers, bleeding from the eyes, and prolonged joint pain.
Vasco de Balboa. Crosses Panama and finds the Pacific Ocean, 1513. Falsely accused of treason by a strong political enemy, summarily tried and then beheaded (eventually; it took three swings).
Image from WikiMedia Commons, photo by Marine 69-71
Ponce de Leon. Claimed Florida for Spain, 1513. Fatally wounded by an arrow when the indigenous Calusa attacked while he was trying to organize a colony there. Never did find the Fountain of Youth.
Ferdinand Magellan in 1519 sailed around the world. Except (technically) he didn’t. Eight months from journey’s end, he tried to convert the inhabitants of Mactan, an island in the Philippines, and died when a group of them surrounded him and attacked.
Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the East Coast, 1524. Later, when he landed on the island of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, the residents ate him.
Francisco Pizarro made short work of the Inca Empire in 1531 and was assassinated ten years later in Lima: His name was Diego Almagro; Pizarro killed his father…
WikiMedia Commons image; Altairisfar photograph
Hernando de Soto explored the southeast and came upon the Mississippi River c1540. He died of a fever somewhere between LA and MS. But nobody found any gold…
Image from WikiMedia Commons; photo by Hudconja
Henry Hudson in 1609 discovered a River and Bay in the northeast. They were later named for him. But first, his own crew mutinied and set him adrift to die in his own Bay.
the New York Public Library
Jacques Marquette, with partner Louis Joliet, explored the Mississippi River (but failed to find the NorthWest Passage). Contracted dysentery; died when only 37. (Jolliet, lived to be 55, maybe, but nobody knows where or how he died.)
Robert de la Salle claimed the Mississippi River for France in 1682. On an ill-fated quest to establish a colony, his men mutinied and one of them killed him (after which they killed each other).
BTW: I could have added Cabot (another one whose death is not recorded); Cortez who died of dysentery; Vespucci who succumbed to malaria; Cartier who may have contracted typhus; and Coronado who caught some kind of fatal “infectious disease” (is that a euphemism?) as a result of their unsanitary months at sea and/or exposure to unknown bacteria. But I figured just using the Headliners made the point well enough.
Anyway, Happy Columbus Day.
