The Man Who Led Columbus to America

Dust jacket unclipped, slight wear to edges. Original blue cloth boards with bright white titling. No ownership marks.Slight discolouring to page edges. Illustrated by Artist Sketches, photographs. xx, 202 pages clean and tight. Columbus did not sail due west to America. Instead he employed a route plan for the round trip which took advantage of the trade winds. How did Columbus, without having been there, know about the trade wind route? This was the key to his success. But until now the source of this information has not been solved by researchers. Now a history student-navigator with working knowledge of both cartography and navigation (Columbus' two fields) presents the solution in The Man Who Led Columbus to America. In solving the mystery, Chapman first explains the navigation described in ancient manuscripts (in layman's terms), then plots the courses described (shown herein on simplified charts), and next includes photographs showing the remarkable accuracy of the early descriptions; finally an artist is employed to illustrate the natural happenings which had previously been thought to be "miraculous events." In addition the author found that these early manuscripts contained the first written reports of: an iceberg encounter, a submarine volcano eruption, a coral sea, grapefruit, sea grapes, and the island groups of the Faeroes, the Azores, the Antilles in the Caribbean, and the Bahamas. Size: 8vo