To make a better myth, the textbooks describe Columbus’s ships as tiny and
inefficient, when actually “these three vessels were fully suited to his
purpose,” as naval author Pietro Barozzi has pointed out.^48
To make a better myth, several textbooks exaggerate the crew’s complaints
into a near-mutiny. The primary sources differ. Some claim the sailors
threatened to go back home if they didn’t reach land soon. Other sources claim
that Columbus lost heart and that the captains of the other two ships persuaded
him to keep on. Still other sources suggest that the three leaders met and agreed
to continue on for a few more days and then reassess the situation. After
studying the matter, Columbus’s biographer Samuel Eliot Morison reduced the
complaints to mere griping: “They were all getting on each other’s nerves, as
happens even nowadays.”^49 So much for the crew’s threat to throw Columbus
overboard.
Such exaggeration is not entirely harmless. Another archetype lurks below
the surface: that those who direct social enterprises are more intelligent than
those nearer the bottom. Bill Bigelow, a high school history teacher, has
pointed out that “the sailors are stupid, superstitious, cowardly, and sometimes
scheming. Columbus, on the other hand, is brave, wise, and godly.” These
portrayals amount to an “anti-working class pro-boss polemic.”^50 Indeed, even
in 2006, Pageant still characterizes the sailors as “a motley crew,” even
though they now grasp that the world is round.
False entries in the log of Santa Maria are interpreted to form another piece
of the myth. “Columbus was a true leader,” says A History of the United
States. “He altered the records of distances they had covered so the crew
would not think they had gone too far from home.” Salvador de Madariaga has
persuasively argued that to believe this, we would have to think the others on
the voyage were fools. Columbus had “no special method, available only to
him, whereby distances sailed could be more accurately reckoned than by the
other pilots and masters.” Indeed, Columbus was less experienced as a
navigator than the Pinzon brothers, who captained Niña and Pinta.^51 During the
return voyage, Columbus confided in his journal the real reason for the false
log entries: he wanted to keep the route to the Indies secret.^52
To make a better myth, our textbooks find space for many other humanizing
particulars. They have the lookout cry “Tierra!” or “Land!” Most of them tell
us that Columbus’s first act after going ashore was “thanking God for leading