12 THE AGE OF EXPLOR ATION In 1497 98 the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India by sea successfully finding the eastern route to Asia satisfied with their monopoly of the old trading routes However Portugal Spain England and France wanted to find new sea routes to Asia in order to import goods directly In the late 15th century Portuguese explorers pioneered the eastern route to Asia by sailing around the southern tip of Africa
13 DISCOVERING THE NEW WORLD THE VIKINGS The Vikings of Norway are the first Europeans known to have visited North America However people in the rest of Europe were not aware of these discoveries A Viking named Gunnbjörn Ulfsson sailed near Greenland in the 10th century and Erik the Red was the first to colonize the island The first Europeans to land on the North American mainland were the Viking explorer Leif Eriksson and his party They are believed to have reached the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador now in northeastern Canada in 1001 Archaeologists have found evidence of Viking settlements there from about Leif’s time COLUMBUS By the 1490s educated people knew that the world was round and that the east could be reached by sailing west To believe however that it would be practical to make such a voyage was a different matter Master navigator Christopher Columbus was one of the most optimistic advocates of the western route In 1492 he set off on a voyage to find this route Columbus’s expedition had three ships The Niña and the Pinta were small speedy ships called caravels
14 THE AGE OF EXPLOR ATION On Columbus’s voyage of 1492 93 Vicente Pinzón commanded the Niña while his brother Martín Pinzón was captain of the Pinta Columbus commanded the Santa María the flagship This 19th-century print shows the three ships
DISCOVERING THE NEW WORLD 15 Columbus’s flagship the Santa María was more than twice the size of the caravels Funding for the voyage came from the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella as well a group of Italian bankers in Seville Spain The little fleet set sail from Palos Spain on August 3 1492 For the most part the passage was smooth and the winds were steady As the days passed however the men could not see how they would sail home against winds that had blown them steadily west By October 9 the men were ready to rebel Columbus said that he would turn back if land was not sighted within three days On the night of October 11 Columbus thought he saw lights in the distance At 2 am on October 12 Rodrigo de Triana a seaman aboard the Pinta cried loudly the first sight of land The small Spanish fleet had unknowingly reached not Asia but the Caribbean islands that are now The Bahamas The islands are part of North America lying between
