Columbus Day Poll: Favorite "Discoverer" of America

Elvis. Elvis discovered America. With is buddy Jesus at his side.

Elvis. Elvis discovered America. With is buddy Jesus at his side.

"It's not 'evolution,' it's 'Elvis-lution'..."

Leif. The earliest *individual* that I know of - random Polynesians almost certainly got there first but didn't have the fortune to be recorded as named entities.

I don't think that the alien space bats took over until the Reagan administration. And Bill Bryson probably isn't in the running.

Amerigo Vespucci. You have to admire the self-promotional acumen of a guy who achieved perpetual naming rights for two continents and wasn't even the discoverer. He's an opportunistic man of our shallow times.

Well, since the Vikings suck almost as much as the Packers, and I love lasagna and pizza, I have to give it to Columbus.

The bottom line is that although Irish Monks may have made it, they never made it back to tell us.

Elvis needs boats!

Since I know I have Irish ancestry I'm confident it was Brendan or one of the other Irish monks.

Columbus.

You've got to publish the discovery for it to count. Leif and company just found a few more odd islands in the North Atlantic; Columbus connected the Old World and the New.

Vespucci does get credit for realizing that the discovery was a new continent and not just the east coast of Asia.

Bristol fishermen. They did make it there and back, but didn't want to tell anyone about their new fishing grounds...

So the story goes, they did have maps naming locations of land near these new fishing grounds, including one named after a local merchant, Richard Americke. Vespucci got hold of the maps and used the name, Weismuller thought that Vespucci had used his first name for the continent.

Jack Kerouac discovered America, man.

The Bristol-based fisherman who may have been fishing (mostly for cod) in the waters off Newfoundland from c.1480, and possibly earlier. Iceland stopped exported salted cod to England (mostly via Bristol) in 1479, with a number of consequences that cause some people to think Bristol's fisherman started fishing the Newfoundland fishery about then. It seems reasonable that if they were fishing near Newfoundland, they would known of Newfoundland, and even landed on Newfoundland.

A royal charter was issued in 1479 to some of the merchants in Bristol to find a new source of cod.

Supposedly, the supplies of cod coming into Bristol. and the market price, barely noticed the termination of the Iceland source, suggesting the fishermen knew of the Newfoundland fishery before the royal charter was issued. Or, perhaps more likely, they were simply smuggling from Iceland. (It was the King of Denmark who stopped the trade, not the people in Iceland. Other than legal control from the remote Denmark, I'm unaware of any reason for the people in Iceland to ignore or not profit from any smuggling.)

The royal charter may have simply been "business as usual" to obtain a monopoly on the fishery, and/or to legalise any claims to Newfoundland. Or any smuggling from Iceland was becoming more difficult, so the Bristol merchants really did want to find a new cod fishery.

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Following on from this idea that Bristol's fishermen (and merchants?) knew of Newfoundland before John Cabot's voyage in 1497, there happens to be a highly speculative hypothesis about the origin of the name "America". It goes something like this:

In 1490, the Bristol merchant Richard Amerike shipped supplies, including salt, to someplace called "Brassyle".

Presuming the fisherman really did know of Newfoundland, then there may have been a fishing processing facility (for cod salting) on Newfoundland. If so, that might be the mysterious Brassyle. It's possible Amerike was involved in the financing of this possible Newfoundland operation.

It's known someone, presumably the fishermen, had named other features in the area around Brassyle. These other names are not known (as far as I know). The fisherman may have named a feature "Amerike", "ap Meryk", or even "America", presumably after Amerike.

John Cabot successfully sailed from Bristol to Newfoundland in 1497. There is known to be a financial connection between Cabot and Amerike, but the details are unknown.

Interestingly, after Cabot's voyage, the Spanish envoy in London wrote a letter(? report?) mentioning seven(?) years of voyages from Bristol to a place called "Brasile".

Cabot is known to have drawn maps (all of which are now lost). It's a reasonable guess Cabot knew of the Bristol fishermen's stories. Hence, he may have also used on his maps some of the names they used. And/or named something after his financial supporters.

It is known (a copy of?) one of Cabot's maps was sent to Spain. That copy is also now lost, so we've no idea if it included a feature named "Amerike", "ap Meryk", "America", or similar. In Spain, one or both of Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci could have seen the map.

Martin Waldseemüller, who published the map that ultimately named the Americas, explained he got the name from Vespucci's use of "America" in Vespucci's own maps(? letters?). Waldseemüller wrote he assumed "America" was based on Vespucci's own first name. (Vespucci himself is not known to have ever explained the origin.)

In 1908, Alfred Hudd suggested Vespucci's "America" was not based on his own first name, but was a corruption or copy of the "Amerike", "ap Meryk", or "America" he had seen on (the copy of?) Cabot's map.

If so, then in a sense, it was Bristol fisherman who named the Americas.

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(Whilst quickly checking my statements, I discovered Rodney Broome wrote a book about the naming hypothesis in 2001, Terra Incognita: The True Story of How America Got Its Name. I was unaware of this book, having first learnt of the fisherman's suspected knowledge of Newfoundland when I lived in Bristol.)

Could it be? Well, I suppose... but it does strike me as a bit of a reach. The known (as in documented from the time) facts includes the official termination of the trade in salted cod, Cabot's voyages, Amerike's shipping of supplies to Brassyle and his financial relationship of some sort with Cabot, a Cabot map reached Spain, Vespucci used America, and Waldseemüller copied that name thinking it was based on Vespucci's own name.

I'm unaware of any non-circumstantial evidence (documentary or otherwise) that Bristol's fisherman knew of the Newfoundland fishery or of Newfoundland, actually had a fish processing facility on Newfoundland, that they or Cabot named anything in the area Amerike or similar, that Columbus or Vespucci saw Cabot's map, or that any of the maps prior to (Vespucci's and?) Waldseemüller's used America as a name.

And of course, Cabot's possible "America" was something in or around Newfoundland, far to the north of where Columbus and Vespucci sailed. Why a name associated with a reported later landing in a place far away, and by a sometimes-enemy country, would be used seems a bit odd.

The Portuguese who were fishing the Grand Banks in the 14th century. But I like the Kerouac reference.

Has to be Prince Madog

Gwyn Williams [ISBN 0-19-285178-0 now apparently out of print but more or less well summarised here http://www.ramtops.co.uk/madocdee.html ] suggested that the story was all about the Government of the time (16th century) making stuff up. If he's right, Madog seems a very timely hero.

I've always been fond of Bjarni Herjólfsson because there are few better names than 'Bjarni.' I like him even better now that I know there's a heathen metal song about him. Take that, Elvis.

Dresden Codak:

http://dresdencodak.com/cartoons/a_columbus.jpg

Ex-drone has the best answer. But I vote Leif.

Leif Erikson's fellow Vikings -- as evidenced by the butternuts found in Viking settlements in Greenland. And also the fact that since they fearlessly hopped from Scandinavia to Iceland to Greenland, they wouldn't have feared the voyage.

The Straight Dope on Amerigo:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_021.html

Oh, and don't forget those guys that *walked* here from Russia.

Asterix.