All language subtitles for James Mays Great Explorers s01e01 Christopher Columbus.eng

Back when I was a boy,
I had to learn a little poem,

and I expect you did as well.

It went, "In 1492,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue."

I can't remember
any of it after that,

but it doesn't actually matter,
because those first two lines

cement the salient pub quiz fact
in your head.

It was 1492, Christopher Columbus
set sail from Spain,

he discovered America,
hopped ashore at Long Island,

and rewarded himself
with a nice, fat hot dog.

But there must
actually be more than that

to this rather enigmatic character.

Why, for example,
is he celebrated as a national hero

in a country he never even visited?

'So, join me, viewers,
as I set out to discover that.

'The age of the Great Explorers

'was one of the most dramatic
in history.'

BOOMING EXPLOSION
Oh-ho-ho-ho!

'When men risked their lives...'

Cast off and set sail. Whoa!

Take up on the peak.
Argh!

'..to seek new lands.'

We're somewhere
north of the dog's arse.

Where the camera gone? Hello.

They crossed thousands of miles
of treacherous ocean,

they built floating fortresses,
they mapped the stars,

they developed
whole new branches of science.

Eurgh! Absolute pish.

'But were these explorers
really heroes,

'or just a bunch of chancers?'

It's a miracle he found anything,
really.

Completely made up.
Man was a charlatan.

'And is their legacy
one of triumph...'

Ooh!
'..or destruction?'

Crikey.
Now it's turning a little bit dark.

'I'm doing
a bit of discovering of my own...'

BANG
Unbelievably terrible.

Medieval satnav 2.0 - a stick.

'..to learn how these explorers
conquered the oceans...'

Look at that. I love it.

Nobody panic yet.

It's not just a map, it's a weapon.

'..and changed the world forever.'

Whoa!
Dial out!

Ah, gold!

If you were in the navy, the French
would definitely have got us.

CHUCKLES

CLUNK

'Columbus's world-changing voyages
began in southwest Spain,

'which is nice, because I get
to have a lovely scenic stroll

'for your viewing pleasure.'

I think we got it, the walking shot.

'All good voyages start with a map,
and here's the one Columbus had.'

Now, very easy for me to say this
in the 21st century

after a very agreeable lunch,
but it's a bit crap.

Apart from that there are
a lot of things missing -

Australia and New Zealand
for example -

look at the shape of everything!

Look at Africa.
Look at the shape of that.

It's ridiculous.

Back when Columbus was a lad,

the most exciting part of the world
was Asia.

This is where all the shiny
and aromatic stuff

that Europeans coveted came from,
carried along the Silk Road.

But... unfortunately, in 1453 -

this is when Columbus
was still an infant -

Constantinople
had fallen to the Ottomans,

which caused
a bit of a Silk Road block.

The Europeans no longer had access
to all those lovely silks

and spices and jewels.

They were just stuck
with their mud and turnips,

as if they were all
living in Norfolk.

Something had to be done,

and what had to be done was
to find a sea route from Europe

over to the Indies,
as Asia was then called.

This is how
The Great Age of Exploration began.

Forget the space race,
this was the spice race.

The Portuguese were the
hot favourites to get there first,

but it was a hazardous voyage
over 10,000 miles south,

around Africa, and off to the east.

'Enter a man with a plan.'

Those steps are really annoying.
LAUGHS

'Not me, Columbus.'

Rather in the way that young men
these days are obsessed with, say,

magazines about Airfix models,

the young Chris Columbus
was obsessed with maps.

And he had a brother
who ran a map shop,

so he could get high
on his own supply.

Historians have long believed that
Columbus was an Italian from Genoa,

but recently, some have claimed

that he may have been
a Spanish Jew from Valencia.

While they fight it out,

what we do know is that
he spent a lot of time on boats,

and he knew that daring sailors
were rewarded with great riches.

He became obsessed with finding
a quicker route to Asia,

and with, of course,
the glory that would follow.

So, after several more years
of sailing and calculating

and map-bothering,
he'd come up with a plan.

He would absolutely
slash the journey time to Asia

by simply going west.

This was revolutionary -
sailing off the edge of the map.

But if he could pull it off,
fame and fortune would be his.

With fevered excitement,
he travelled to the courts of Europe

and pitched his plan
to their kings and queens...

..who all told him to sod off,
sailing west was madness.

But Columbus, whether stubborn
or simply delusional, persevered.

He tried schmoozing.
He tried "map-splaining".

He tried boring them witless.
He tried for years.

Finally, and at the grand old age
of 41, he got a bite.

Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain
had just won a very expensive war

expelling the Moors
from their country,

and they needed
a bit of a cash injection.

They also probably quite liked
the idea of sticking one over

on their great rivals,
the Portuguese.

And it's also possible

they were simply sick to death
of Columbus nagging them.

It was game on.

Europeans would be sailing
over the horizon to the west.

The Crown found backers to pay
for crews and three small ships,

and they sent Columbus here,
to Palos de la Frontera,

to collect the lucre.

In the 15th century,

the streets of Palos would
have been rammed with boat builders,

ropemakers and drunken sailors.

Columbus met with
the bravest of the ship-owners,

who lived in this house
and laid out his plans.

In just a few short weeks,

he would be in Asia -
except for one slight snag.

Let's have a look
at Columbus's workings

to see where it went
so horribly wrong.

As our high-tech demo will show,

it starts with a philosopher
in ancient Egypt

whose name is very easy to say (!)

STRUGGLING: Eratos...thenes.

He noticed something
a bit strange about shadows.

This is the spinning celestial
dust mote that humanity calls home.

The sun is represented
by this torch on a stick.

In reality, it is much bigger
and much further away.

This is how they do things
at the Griffith Observatory (!)

Here is Egypt. Now, here is a camel.

And if I put the camel down there,
you can see

that the shadow of the camel
is directly below the camel.

If we now move the camel
further north...

..you can see
it casts a shadow that way.

Clever old Eratosthhh...whatever

measured the different angles
of the shadows,

did a spot of trigonometry

and worked out
the circumference of the Earth.

He was accurate to within 1%,

which is
an absolutely phenomenal result.

Unfortunately
for our hero Christopher,

he based HIS reasoning on the work
of a different ancient, Ptolemy,

who, in turn, had based his work on
the assumptions of some other bloke,

and they were miles out.

The moral of this story is
don't copy other people's homework.

Ptolemy's estimate
shrank the world by 28%

Columbus had backed the wrong camel.

I shall extinguish the sun.

Getting the girth of the Earth wrong
could have fatal consequences

for the sailors on the voyage.

Right, let's go back to that
15th century map of the known world,

reproduced here
in handy laser-cut wood.

His idea was to go west

and approach the Indies
from the other side.

So, we'll rearrange the map.

Erm... Hang on. How does it look?

Something like that? Bear with me.

With the 28% shrinkage,
he was already off to a bad start.

But then Columbus made a series
of other errors.

Most notably,
he confused the Roman mile

with the bigger Arabic mile,

and that made the Indies
apparently there.

Columbus's whole plan
was based on an idea of the world

that was 58% too small.

He calculated that that
would be four weeks' sailing away.

The truth, however,

is that Asia
is all the way over there,

or twelve weeks' sailing.

Columbus's mistakes,

and the mistakes of those around him
all the way back to antiquity,

spelled certain death
for a crew on that voyage.

If only he'd had the plastic
Chinese globe, the bicycle light,

and the knock-kneed plastic camel
with Blu-Tack on its feet,

he'd have known.

And, of course, there was
another thing he didn't know yet.

There was something else here.

JAMES MAY:
Welcome back, viewers, to 1492.

After ten years
of persistent nagging,

Christopher Columbus has finally
convinced the Spanish Crown to pay

for his frankly insane voyage
sailing west to Asia.

There was just one thing
he'd forgotten -

to check if a ship
could actually sail there.

Well, he was in luck.

Sailing technology had recently
made a major leap forward,

thanks to a new type of sail.

'Time for a demonstration.'

Permission to come aboard, skipper.

'Now, if you're expecting fancy CGI
or re-enactors in dodgy wigs,

'this is not the series for you.

'But if you're expecting me
with dodgy hair

'investigating exactly
how it all happened and why...'

Morning.

'..well, you're in luck.
Join me aboard 12ft dinghy Skiffy.'

This sail setup is known
as square rig, for obvious reasons.

This is what most European ships
would've had.

But the Portuguese,
especially in the 1400s,

noticed another type of sail,
a triangular one.

And what we're going to do today
is demonstrate the difference

by sailing to a buoy just over there
and back again.

I've got the skipper on board,
who is Alan.

Aye, aye.
Aye, aye.

And he's here to take control
if necessary,

and to make sure I don't
accidentally sail to the Caribbean.

Are you ready, skipper?
I am.

In three, two, one. Go!
Go.

If you just slacken off that.
That's it. Right.

Goodbye, cruel world.

'The first leg is downwind,
plain sailing all the way.'

Oh, God, there's the buoy.
Bring it round.

'But next comes the upwind leg.'

CREW MEMBER:
Going in the wrong direction!

Where are you, camera?
ALAN LAUGHS

Come over here.
I need to talk to you.

The point about the square sail
is that it's really just like

a big bin bag full of wind.

It's great
when you're going downwind,

the wind is roughly behind you,

it fills up,
and it thrusts you along.

But when you want to go towards
the wind, it's a bit problematic.

'Whilst it's all very easy downwind,

'upwind, the ship has to do
something called tacking -

'basically,
catching what wind you can

'to zig-zag
to where you want to go.'

For this reason,
sailors were quite nervous

about sailing away
from the shore downwind,

because their fear was that
they'd never be able to get back.

They'd be lost at sea forever,
rather like we are.

SONG: 'Drunken Sailor'

We want to go over there.

'But tacking with a square sail
is not easy.'

Ready about?

Ready about.
OK, here we go.

We ARE moving.

ALAN LAUGHS
Just the wrong way.

Well, that's three metres

in about 15 minutes.
ALAN LAUGHS

It'll take us a while
to find the New World at this speed.

'After about half an hour
of getting nowhere fast,

'or rather slowly,

'we admitted defeat
and got a tow from the crew

'back to the start line.'

Right, that square sail
was frankly rubbish,

but let's see how we get on
with the triangular ones,

which were an absolute game-changer.

'In the early 15th century,

'sailors had noticed
a different sail used in the East.

'On the River Nile, for example,
the wind mostly blows south,

'but boats could still sail north
just fine.

'Triangular sails were the key,

'and they would revolutionise where
sailors like Columbus could go.'

Ready?
Righty-ho.

'Just like with the square sail,

'the downwind leg is easy-going,
a gentle beeline towards our buoy.'

Right, we're going to come round,
up towards the wind now.

'But as we round the buoy,
we're not being blown backwards.'

We're pretty much going
in the right direction.

That's where we want to go.

But we're only, sort of,
30 or 40 degrees off.

It's a huge difference.

The sail is now
acting like an aerofoil.

When the wind rushes over it,

it creates an area of low pressure
on the curved side, the outer side,

and high pressure on the inside.

It's great.

'And the finish line's in sight.'

Victory!
Yay!

We've done it.

What a craft Skiffy is
with triangular sails.

A nice, neat zig-zag,

and home in time
for cocktails and a debrief.

And that was deeply significant
because it shortened journey times,

and it meant the sailors
weren't quite so scared

of being lost at sea.

All because of triangular sails.
It's fantastic.

'A simple change
in the shape of a sail

'meant that Columbus could now
change the shape of the world.

'But to go with his sails,
he needed ships.

'And for ships,
he needed to go to the Palos Port,

'the Cape Canaveral of its time.'

Here is a replica
of Columbus's fleet.

In the middle is the Santa Maria.

Not really very big,

when you consider
what it was going to achieve,

but it is at least
"plumptious" in the hold,

so it can bring back all those
spices and treasures from Asia.

Ha-ha! Either side,
there is the Pinta and the Nina,

based on Portuguese designs.

Small, sleek, fast.

The whole lot could be expected
to bimble along

at a very vigorous four knots or so,
roughly a brisk walk.

Ships like these

were one of the greatest feats
of engineering of the age,

floating fortresses
that harnessed the wind

to transport you to lands afar.

Now, if anybody watching this
is thinking,

"Ooh, that would be an adventure,
going off on an old sailing ship,"

you might want to think again.

Come aboard,
and I'll show you what I mean.

You have to bear in mind that there
were 90 blokes on these three tubs.

They stayed in the same clothes
for the entire voyage

in their own slime and filth.

They slept in shifts,

and you slept simply
in a convenient place on the deck,

probably curled up on an old sack
or something.

The smallest of the lot
was the Nina,

a proper little leaky tub,
God above!

It's about 60ft stem-to-stern.

And I don't know if you've watched
any of those YouTube videos

called things like Container Ship
In Heavy Atlantic Swell.

HOWLING WIND

They're absolutely terrifying.

But now imagine doing that in this,

which is really just
a bit of a GCSE woodwork project.

It's unthinkable.

This would be bad enough
on a trip along the coast,

but the renegade Columbus
would be sailing these ships west

into the blue beyond.

I don't know
what he's smiling about.

Believe it or not,
it wasn't that easy

to persuade men
to go on these voyages,

and one way
they got around this problem

was to offer an amnesty
to criminals.

Murderers, for example.

"We'll let you off,

"but you have to go on
Christopher Columbus's voyage." Hm.

To sum up, this was
a death cruise on a rickety tub,

sleeping on a sack
with a bunch of stinking murderers.

No wonder he couldn't get the staff.

I know some of you are wondering,
and no, there were no lavs onboard.

You just had to let it hang out
over the side.

But at least the food was terrible.

Somehow,
Columbus managed to scrounge up

a motley crew of 87 sailors,
and they would need feeding.

Food rotted quickly
in the hot, damp ships' holds,

so almost everything he took
was dried to preserve it.

Right, well, here is a selection
of the sort of things

Columbus's crews
would've had onboard.

There's salted fish,
some hard cheese,

salted pork, peas, raisins,
lentils, and some nuts.

They would've also had
lots of liquid things, thankfully.

Delicious red wine and beer.

But half of their calorie intake
would have come from something

called ship's biscuits,
or hard tack,

and we're going to
make some of that right now.

OK, this is not really
very different

from making something
like a chapati,

but don't get your hopes up.

'It's a very basic recipe.

'Two types of flour,
boring old wholemeal

'and a delicious,
fibrous green flour made from peas.'

Mm, very nice (!)

'Add some salt, because even sailors
deserve flavour in their biscuits,

'and bind it all together
with water.'

Now, I've worked on a cooking show,
and I know that we're now going

to skip ahead to a point where I've
already made a lovely ball of dough.

That's how cooking shows work,
even in the 15th century.

SHORT BEEP

Weirdly,
that we're talking about explorers,

this has worked out
to look more like a map of Tasmania,

but anyway, that comes much later.

'Now, one essential requirement
of ship's biscuits

'was that under no circumstances

'were they allowed to be light
and fluffy.'

They made a series of holes in it,

going all the way through
with a fork

to stop exactly that happening.

So, anyway,
that's basically the gist of it.

And now, again,
by the magic of television,

we will skip forward to a point

where a whole load of these
have been baked.

SHORT BEEP
Look at those.

Let's see what it tasted like,
being an explorer.

Oh.

It's quite difficult to articulate
how horrible that is.

It's extremely boring, very dry.

I mean, almost wantonly miserable.

Now, those were once-baked biscuits,

but the fact is, they baked them
a lot more than that.

The point was
to remove all moisture from them

because moisture would encourage
the growth of mould.

So, here are some I made even,
even earlier.

These are twice-baked.
Let's see what the effect is.

Oh, God!

So hard to chew.
That's only twice-baked.

OK, four-times-baked
ship's biscuits.

SLIGHT CRUNCH,
HE LAUGHS

Oh!

You need a machine tool
to get through this.

CRUNCH
Oh, a bit came off.

CRUNCHING

That's unbelievably terrible.

Oh, excuse me,

I'm gonna have to have a bit of beer
to get rid of that.

'The sailors soaked the biscuits
in water to soften them.

'But once a day, if the weather
was calm enough to cook,

'they got to dip them
in a bowl of this stuff.'

Ta-da! Salt pork and pea stew.

That is a pre-softened
ship's biscuit.

I can't do it, I'm sorry.

How long has that been soaking for?

CREW MEMBER: About an hour.
An hour?!

'Best resort to a spoon
if I want to keep my teeth.'

Mm. That is delicious.

But it might be delicious because
I've been eating ship's biscuits.

It's a bit like being beaten up,
and then when it stops,

you think, "This is nice."

But it isn't really nice.
It's just normal.

Columbus's very, very baked biscuits
might have been mould-free,

but there wasn't much he could do
about these little fellas.

These are weevils,

and these got into
absolutely everything.

Now, they're perfectly harmless
to eat.

They also help to weaken
the structural integrity

of the ship's biscuit
by burrowing through them.

But nevertheless, they are weevils.

To demonstrate just how different

their enthusiasm for ship's biscuits
is compared with mine...

Oh, yeah,
they've gone absolutely mad for it!

SHORT BEEP
They're also escaping.

CREW MEMBERS: Oh, no!

Some of them
have actually jumped out.

They're very agile.

So, now, as a poor sailor,
miles from home,

hungry, probably cold,
you're faced with stark choice.

It's a protein-enhanced,

unchewable ship's biscuit, or...

a nice glass of red.

Thank you for watching.

Mm!
SHORT BEEP

Oh, God. There's one in there!

Finally, Columbus's ships were
packed with everything he needed -

sailors, biscuits, wine, weevils,
and a very badly wrong map.

All that was left to do was pray.

The night before the voyage,

Columbus came and prayed fervently
to the Virgin Mary,

because he knew that what
he was about to do was terrifying.

Even for a seasoned sailor,

it was a highly dangerous leap
into the unknown.

"O mare o l'e male,"
went the ancient Genoese saying.

"The sea is evil."

Early the next morning,

after four months of preparation
and decades of planning,

the three tiny little ships
weighed anchor

and set off that way,
over the horizon, into the unknown.

JAMES MAY: Welcome back to
the dawn of the age of exploration.

Christopher Columbus
is finally setting sail for Asia.

And it's lucky he had all these
sea gods looking out for him,

because he'd misplaced it
by around 10,000 miles.

He'd set off,
had a brief stop at the Canaries

to stock up on more delicious
hard tack and wine,

and headed west, roughly speaking.

Very roughly speaking.

This is the satnav
of Columbus's era, the astrolabe.

It basically gives you the height
of the sun above the horizon,

and that allows you
to calculate your latitude,

how far north or south
on the globe you are.

Now, this is a piece of tourist tat
from a gift shop,

and it is completely useless,

but the one Columbus had
was completely useless as well.

And in any case,
he didn't like using it.

He said,
"For my voyage to the Indies,

"I did not make use of intelligence,
mathematics or maps."

At that rate, it's surprising
he made use of a ship.

So, how exactly was he navigating
his way to Asia?

Let's find out.

Sailors would use something
called "dead reckoning".

Which is nothing
to do with being dead -

although that was highly likely

if you were a sailor
in Columbus's time -

but it's to do
with your relationship

to something
that is dead in the water.

Typically, a piece of seaweed.

If I toss this over the side,
that's dead in the water.

There it goes. We're going that way.

It can also tell you
how fast we're going that way.

'Time to reckon with dead reckoning
with a little challenge.'

Right, what we're gonna do now

is attempt to sail
a perfect equilateral triangle,

in which each side

is half a nautical mile long.

'We'll navigate our triangle course
Columbus-style.

'Skipper Ben is in charge
of the seaweed dispersal.

'Skipper Alan
is in charge of direction.

'And Skipper Me is in charge of time

'and bossing
the other skippers about.'

I'm going to count how long
it takes the seaweed to go

past the boat,
all the way to the stern.

They didn't have any reliable way of
measuring seconds back in the day,

so they had to do it by chanting,
which is what I'll do.

OK, skip, are you ready
with seaweed? Aye.

And go!

One mea culpa, two mea culpa,
three mea culpa, four mea culpa.

Four seconds. Four seconds
is a boat speed of four knots.

So, to do a nautical mile
will take us...?

Seven-and-a-half minutes.
Seven-and-a-half minutes, OK.

By the way, the reason the chant
for the piece the seaweed going past

is "one mea culpa, two mea culpa"
is because, well,

these days, we'd say
"one potato, two potato",

but potatoes
hadn't been invented yet.

SKIPPER LAUGHS

About a minute to go
until the new heading.

'On Columbus's voyage,

'the crew made careful records
of speed and direction every hour.'

Nobody panic yet.

'But for our exercise, we have to do
it on each new leg of the triangle.'

Ready to go about. And go!

That's gonna go with a bang, guys.
Yeah.

Helm over.
OK, jibe ho!

Cor!
And yes, go!

One mea culpa, two mea culpa,
three mea...

It's just under three seconds.

Six knots, five minutes.
Relax, everybody.

And next, we will turn back
for the final leg

of our perfectly-sailed
equilateral triangle.

'After one more tack...'

Here we go.

OK.
'..one more speed check...'

Four mea culpa, five mea culpa...
Three-and-a-half knots, six minutes.

'..and five-and-a-quarter
more minutes...'

We've got about 45 seconds to go,
crew,

and then we will be back
exactly where we started.

Keep on saying it,
and you'll be right!

ALL LAUGH
Does it look like where we started?

Well, the point is,
it does look like where we started,

because it looks like the sea,
that's part of the problem.

Yes, yeah.
And hang on, here we go.

Three, two, one. There we are,
we are back where we started.

Perfect.
In the ocean.

Right, let's have a look at
the actual GPS plot of what we did.

Right.
Our triangle.

There you go.
That is absolutely woeful.

BOTH LAUGH
It's not...

It's not even vaguely triangular.
It's actually more of a rectangle.

'If we went this badly wrong
over just three nautical miles,

'imagine how wrong
Columbus was going over 3,000.'

We were a bit rubbish then,
but in fairness to us,

so was Christopher Columbus.

Everything he did was wrong.

It's a miracle he found
anything at all, really,

and didn't just go round
in a circle.

In truth,
the ships were lost at sea,

heading in the direction
not of China, but Papua New Guinea,

and that would have been
a whole other story.

The weeks were ticking by,

and the crew were getting
more and more worried,

because sooner or later,
their supplies would run out,

if indeed they were still edible.

Which brings me back to Spain
and onto my favourite subject.

Now, I've said this
many times before,

but this is an excellent place
to say it again.

Woodwork... is important.

WHIRRING

Good woodworking was a matter
of life and death for sailors,

not just because
their ships were made of wood

but because of what
is being made here - barrels!

These people are coopers.

'What a polite man.

'I don't think
he actually needed that bit.

'In case you haven't noticed
the racket in the background,

'there have been a few updates

'since the handsaws and planes
of Columbus's day.'

Each vertical piece,
or stave, as it's called,

is quite a sophisticated component
in its own right.

It is of itself barrelled,
to use the engineering term,

it's fatter in the middle
than at the ends.

It's also hollowed out
on the inside,

and it's slightly chamfered
on both edges.

'Now, like me,
you're probably thinking

'that these barrels are love poems

'written in the language
of exquisitely curved oak.

'But no,
this is some high-grade tech,

'engineered with precision

'to perfectly preserve Columbus's
food and wine... and weevils.

'They are the tin cans
of the 15th century,

'just a lot more beautiful.'

Your half-finished barrel
is soaked in water

to make the wood more pliant.

And then it's brought over here
and put on a bonfire.

Whoa!

Thank God he put it out.

Look at the inside.

'The fire leaves behind a layer
of carbon that helps seal the wood.'

It's a thing of beauty.

It's still not finished.

Getting that end in
is a little bit like

getting the tyre back
on your bicycle after a puncture.

Gracias.
Did you see the end-over-end bit?

That's why the barrel is
the shape it is.

It's a very,
very manoeuvrable object.

Skilled people
can just flip them around,

spin them around,
roll them over there,

even when they're full.

MUSIC: 'The Blue Danube'
by Johann Strauss II

You find yourself slightly in fear
of being run over by a barrel.

So, there is the completed barrel.

A thing of beauty, but also vital,

because all the provisions
that went onboard

would have gone in these,
liquids and food.

That horrible hard tack,

the ship's biscuits
that we made earlier on,

they would have been stored
in these.

So they had to be perfectly sealed,
otherwise liquids would run out

or seawater would get in
and make those biscuits,

believe it or not,
even more unpalatable.

So, this really is a matter
of life and death for sailors.

The cooper is as important as
the captain and as the shipwright.

So, I'm gonna say it again,
woodwork is important!

Now, while these beautiful barrels

would have perfectly preserved
Columbus's dried foods,

as his voyage went on,

his drinking water
would have started festering

with deadly diseases.

Time to visit a lab
with my own mini water barrel,

presumably made by a mini cooper.

Now, four weeks or so ago,

Jason, our Spanish fixer,
filled this with water,

well water, fresh but untreated,

exactly the sort that Columbus
would have had on his journey.

And Chris thought the voyage
would last for four weeks.

So, let's see what four-week-old
barrel-stored water is like.

Here we have a sample pot,
and we need 100 millilitres.

Oh, dear. It's disgusting.

It's sort of stale
and definitely a bit brown.

If only we had lab technician
called Melania

to do a proper analysis
of that for us.

Gracias.

'Melania is going to extract
the filth from our water

'and grow a culture from it
to see what's lurking.'

That now goes off
for analysis in the lab.

She'll also do a second batch

that factors in
the sailors' hygiene onboard.

Last time I was left alone
in a chemistry lab

with a Bunsen burner
was in about 1976.

Didn't end very well.

So, now do I get
to look down a microscope?

'In the great tradition
of television,

'here's one Melania made earlier.

'First, the four-week-old well
water, straight from the barrel.'

Oh, that looks disgusting!
What is it?

IN SPANISH:

'The bacteria in this water

'could cause food poisoning,
pneumonia and sepsis.

'Bad news for Columbus's crew.
What about the second sample?'

Now, what Melania did
is sort of simulate water

that would have been drunk by people
from a communal scuttle bucket

with their personal drinking cups -
tankards, if you like.

And, of course,
the sailors didn't live

particularly clean
or wholesome lives,

so things like sweat
and faecal matter

would have been introduced.

And I'll look at it underneath
my magnifying lamp.

Eurgh! It's got a face!

This sample
actually has E. coli in it.

So, what that means is if you were
a sailor in the 15th century

and you wanted to go
on a voyage of exploration,

you had to be prepared
to drink Tom Bowling's turds.

Thank you, that was... delightful.

Back to 1492, nearly a month
into Columbus's journey.

He'd thought that by now
he'd be enjoying a slap-up supper

and a hero's welcome in Asia.

But he was still lost
in the blue beyond.

Four weeks passed
and then five weeks.

Supplies were dwindling.
There was still no sign of land.

The crew were becoming edgy,
and they wanted to turn back.

Columbus's crap sums
on the back of an envelope

were leading them further
and further into nothingness.

The water must have been
disgusting by now.

But maybe God
was on Columbus's side.

Because after five and a bit weeks
at sea,

and at almost exactly the point
where he said they would find land,

they found... land.

But it wasn't Asia.

JAMES MAY: 'You rejoin me
at an exciting time, viewers.

'An utterly inept sailor...'

Boom!

'..not me - Columbus - had somehow
crossed an ocean and made it to...

'not Asia, some mysterious islands
that we now know as the Bahamas,

'Cuba and Hispaniola
in the Caribbean in the Americas.

'Try telling him that, though.'

'He was certain he was
on some islands just off Japan.'

Now, it's probably fair to say
that the people of Spain

weren't exactly on tenterhooks
waiting for news of Columbus.

He'd been gone for seven months.

Most people thought
they'd never have to be bothered

by Columbus again.

But then a letter
to the Queen arrived,

sent by Columbus
on his safe return to Europe.

I've got a copy of it here.

It's all written
in miniscule Old Spanish,

but this is the 21st century,
so I have a translation app.

And he wrote that,
"I arrived at the Indian Sea..."

Ha-ha-ha.

"..where I discovered many islands
inhabited by many people.

"I took possession of all of them
for our most illustrious King

"by public proclamation
and unfurling of banners,

"with no-one making any resistance."

Really?

The letter was shared
all over Europe, accompanied by -

brace yourselves, viewers, for
the next best thing after woodwork -

woodcut prints.

CHORAL MUSIC

This is a 15th-century version
of a tabloid front page.

The first thrilling pictures
of the new lands to the west

and of the local Taino people,

who Columbus said
welcomed them with open arms.

Also, here's one in colour
as a treat.

"They traded with us
and gave us all they had,

"graciously and willingly.

"Your Highness may believe
that in all the world,

"there can be no better people.

"They love their neighbours
as they love themselves.

"They have the sweetest manner
in the world,

"and they are gentle
and always laughing."

Now, we should probably take
a moment to enjoy that record

of a rather beautiful bit
of human interaction,

because pretty soon,
things are gonna get a bit bloody.

The ships returned,
minus the Santa Maria,

which Columbus,
ever the skilled navigator,

had crashed into some rocks.

And he got a bit lost too.

But when they finally arrived,

the nation was
in fevered anticipation

to see what they'd brought back.

The two ships arrived back in Spain
seven months after they'd departed,

and they were full
of marvellous and exotic things,

the likes of which had never
been seen in mouldy old Europe.

To start with, exotic fruits.

Here is a selection of things
that weren't available

in the local greengrocer
up until then.

This one deserves
a particular mention.

It is a fruit.
It is a chilli pepper.

And people discovered
that if you ate these,

they set fire to both ends
of your alimentary canal,

but they did change
our eating habits forever.

There were fun new pets.

Talking parrots became all the rage,

whether you were a prince
or a pirate.

This one came
from the visitor's centre.

There were things to swing in.

The hammock would go on
to revolutionise sailing

and the health of sailors.

There was... oh, dear, tobacco.

The sailors tried this,

and the weird thing was
that once they tried it once,

they found
they couldn't stop trying it.

And there was one other thing
that was even more addictive.

That...

..is gold.

Forget Asian silks and spices,

this was the stuff
explorers' dreams are made of.

The word "gold" appears
in Columbus's diary

of his first voyage 142 times.

In truth, he only managed
to scrounge a piddling amount

from the Taino people,

but that's not
what he told the Queen.

He said they had
"vast mines of gold"

and that she could have as much gold
as she desired.

That little white lie
was the sweetest sound to a monarch,

because gold means power.

Gold! We've always believed in it.

Humans have been obsessed with it.
And why?

Well, the Aztecs thought
it was produced

by the life-giving force of the sun.

It's also in limited supply,
which means it can be controlled.

Even today, it is believed that
all of the world's gold reserves

would fit in one big block between
the legs of the Eiffel Tower.

'Here, old gold is melted down and
refined in one of these, a crucible,

'by one of these, an Adam.'

How long will that take to warm up?
About five to eight minutes.

'The Taino gold was in the form of
beautiful jewellery and keepsakes,

'but to Columbus,
it just meant cold, hard cash.'

It's things that were once
incredibly precious to people,

but they're probably now dead.

Just remember that when you retire

and you're given your gold watch
or your solid gold letter opener,

one day, you will turn to dust,
and it will turn to scrap.

There it is.

That's upbeat, isn't it?
THEY CHUCKLE

The crucible is now
as red as a Spanish sailor

exposed to too much Caribbean sun.

This is your last chance
to reclaim that wedding ring,

gold sovereign, watch band.

No? OK, chuck it in, then.

It's all gone in the pot.
It's all coming out as an ingot.

I love the colours of the flames.
Look at that green there.

Gone.

'While our gold melts,

'let's look at how Columbus managed
to persuade his new acquaintances

'in the Caribbean
to part with their gold.'

Now, the Taino people on the islands
didn't have this technology.

They didn't have furnaces.

What they would do was find nuggets
in the streams and rivers

and simply hammer them into shape.

But what really impressed them
was the work of the Arawak people

on the mainland,
because they did have furnaces.

They melted gold, and they
alloyed it with rich red copper

to give them something a bit like
what we would call rose gold.

They called it "guanin".

Now, fortuitously,
Columbus's men had with them

a great deal
of another copper alloy, brass,

which is made from copper and zinc.

And it was in the form
of trinkets, really,

like these little hawk bells.

And the Tainos really loved these,
because they looked like,

and just as importantly,
even smelled like

the guanin from the mainland.

So the sailors were able to trade
these virtually worthless trinkets

for handfuls of real gold.

The sailors
couldn't believe their luck.

Neither could the Spanish Crown.

Right, here is the big moment,
the pour.

I am going to press the button.

Are you ready for me
to press the button?

Ready.
Here it comes.

Ah! Gold!

We talk about people
dripping in gold.

This actually is dripping gold.

Looks like a slightly...
bar of toffee at the moment.

Just don't lick it.

'Columbus said that gold
is the greatest treasure

'and that he who possesses it
can do all he wishes in life.'

I like it!

'Gold, simply put, meant greatness.'

Gold, like the love it so often
represents, has been quenched.

Last thing now, to clean it.

And it's heavy... because it's gold!

Oh-ho-ho! There it is.

Even in that state, it's worth,
I would guess,

what, �350,000-�400,000?

Yeah, give or take.

So, really,
it's that or a pretty decent house.

That's what the Spanish
went mad for.

It drove them insane.

Is your security quite good here?

Columbus was
the court's new golden boy.

He was granted a second voyage
post-haste,

but this wasn't just a gold grab -

or at least
it couldn't be seen as one.

Isabella wanted souls too,
to convert the Taino people

from their gods
to her Christian one.

This time,
Columbus set sail with 17 ships

full of sailors, obviously,

but also soldiers, priests,
woodworkers, stonemasons, miners,

everybody you needed
to set up a whole new society.

And his instructions
from the Crown were twofold -

convert souls and find gold!

JAMES MAY:
'Welcome, viewers, to 1493.

'And Christopher Columbus
is now a pretty big queso

'after finding land to the west

'glittering with the promise
of gold.'

I am walking on television.

'But now he has to do it again.

'And all of Europe is watching.'

Now, as we know,
he's a terrible navigator.

Look, he's dropped the chart,

and that globe's
probably just a drinks cabinet.

So, how the hell is he going to
pull it off it a second time?

Well, it was actually
a bit of a breeze.

This bucket o' ice represents
the cold of the North Pole,

and this bucket of hot water
represents the heat of the equator.

Science again!

My handy smoke stick
will show how wind is formed.

And you will see
that the flow of cold to warm

will make it go down that tube
to the equator in a second.

Yes! Look at that!

That's really quite fabulous,
isn't it?

Anyway, if I can just give that
to an assistant

so I don't burn down Christopher
Columbus's old headquarters.

That steady airflow, AKA wind,
is pretty handy for sailors.

If we look at the globe again,
that means the wind would blow...

Whee! ..south towards the equator.

But of course,
the world is spinning.

So if I make the wind blow
and the world spin

at the same time, look what we get.

That was almost spot-on, actually.

Columbus had stumbled upon God's
own transatlantic conveyor belt,

the trade winds.

And this is still used
by modern sailors.

They say things like, "If you want
to go to America from Europe,

"sail south until butter melts,
and then turn right."

Now, any old idiot could sail
to the Americas,

but next came the difficult part -

establishing
Spain's first New World HQ.

So, a man who was bad at maths
but got lucky

was now tasked with setting up
a whole town

on an island 4,000 miles away.

1,200 people
would be travelling with him,

and they would need housing,
and before that, of course, feeding,

and that meant taking animals.

'Columbus packed cows, mules,
some of these cute little fellas...'

He's surprisingly heavy
for a little pig.

'..and, of course, a herd of TV's
least co-operative contributors.'

Hello, goat.
They are largely buggering off.

Now, all of the animals they took

were completely alien
to the people of the Caribbean.

The only animals
they had domesticated so far

were dogs and guinea pigs,
which were for -

children, look away - eating.

Columbus's ships were
the New World Noah's Ark.

His animals would go on
to populate the Americas.

Every time
the Spanish passed an island,

they'd drop off a couple of pigs,
a boy and a girl, obviously,

so that they would multiply
and become a future food source.

It's just cupboard love, isn't it?
GOAT BLEATS

You just want goat snacks.

Chomp, chomp, chomp!

Goats like these
ran wild and feral all over.

And if you'd never heard one,
you might have found their bleating

quite intimidating
or even terrifying

until you work out that goats
are actually just complete halfwits.

Aren't you?

But there was one animal

that would truly captivate
the people of the New World.

Imagine if you'd never seen
a horse before,

or, more importantly,
seen someone riding one

going faster than any human could go
on their own legs.

The horse would become
incredibly important

to the indigenous people's culture,

because they could ride them
for transport.

They also used them
for warfare and for hunting.

And most importantly,

if you'd never seen a horse before
and you didn't have horses,

you would never have seen
that level of cuteness.

That foal is one week old.

Took me years to learn that,

standing up and... wagging my tail.

Oh.
CREW: Hey!

Riches from Columbus's new colony

would soon start arriving
back in Spain,

and the palace in Seville
became the operations centre

for all New World exploration.

Spain was so delighted
with its new lands,

it wanted the world
to know about them.

And the way to get
the world's attention back then

was with a painting.

Wow!

This is
The Virgin Of The Navigators.

This painting comes from an era
when art was largely functional.

It was there to dispense
quite clear messages.

And the one in this painting
seems to be that Columbus's journeys

were really more like missions,
it was about spreading Christianity.

And the painting is surrounded
by saints.

It's all pretty clear.

It's not about conquering lands
or anything tawdry

like, I don't know, gold.

Even then, spin was alive and well,

and there's a second lie
hidden in the painting.

You will notice at the back,
barely visible,

the indigenous people
gratefully sheltering

under the loving embrace
of the virgin,

just as Queen Isabella herself
felt that she was.

Isabella had told Columbus,

"Treat my Indians well and kindly
and do not upset them in any way."

Well, guess what?

Thanks to the trade winds,

Columbus had arrived
back in Hispaniola,

which he still insisted was Asia.

He built a rudimentary camp,
called it La Isabela

and waited for the gold to roll in.

So, this story so far
has been really rather upbeat,

nice sailing ships,
making barrels and so on.

And now it's turning
a little bit dark.

He immediately ran into a problem.

The settlers he brought with him
weren't collecting enough gold.

But that was OK,
because he had the answer as well.

He'd get the local people to do it.

So, he decided that

the Taino people would deliver him
one hawk's bell full of gold

every three months,
or they would be punished.

Now, I have to warn you that
these next pictures are horrifying.

It was brutal.

There were floggings
and maulings by dogs,

women were raped,
people's hands were cut off

and they were left
to bleed to death.

There were mass suicides,

and hundreds were sent to Spain
as slaves,

to the horror of Isabella.

It was all presided over
by Columbus, and all for gold.

Now, none of this stuff is mentioned

in the famous 1492 ditty,
unsurprisingly.

Word got back to Spain, but Columbus
would still make two more voyages.

It was only when
the Spanish settlers complained

about him flogging them too

that Ferdinand and Isabella
could no longer turn a blind eye.

Spain's national hero
was brought back in chains

and banned
from the colony he'd founded.

But that wasn't the end
of the regime.

In fact, it was only the beginning.

Pretty soon, Isabella was sending
anybody who had a ship

over to the Americas,

and they would take their crops,
their animals,

everything they needed
to set up a new society.

And they also took death,
because they took disease.

This handsome building
is St Bart's Hospital in London.

It's home to their Pathology Museum,

which is home
to these interesting-looking jars,

which are home to...

..oh, dear, bits of people.

This is one of the few places
in the world

where you can still see
the hideous effects

of the sort of diseases that
were rife in the time of Columbus.

Here, for example,
is what smallpox does to you.

It causes the end of your foot
to drop off and land in this jar.

This is what bubonic plague does
to your kidneys.

Typhoid does this to your...

I think that's probably
someone's appendix, or was.

And then syphilis does
terrible things to your skull,

and it does particularly
terrible things to your "thumbs".

Now, the point here is
that Europeans had lived

with a lot of these diseases
for a very long time,

so they'd built up
a certain immunity,

they had antibodies
to act against them.

But the indigenous Americans
didn't have them.

So when the Spanish sailors arrived,

they brought quite a lot
of this stuff with them

to devastating effect.

So far, so horrifying,
but the history is worse.

'Dr Caroline Dodds Pennock
is not the sort of doctor

'who can help you with your plague

'but the sort
who can help us understand

'what the indigenous Americans
were experiencing.'

This is an image
of the 1520 smallpox epidemic

which took place in
the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.

You can see
how people experienced it.

The woman here is caring,
they're speaking.

That's what
that little scrawl means.

She's caring for this person here.

This is smallpox?
This was new to them?

They didn't have it pre-Columbus?
It was. It was new.

It's the first
of three enormous epidemics

which sweep across Mexico
in the 16th century.

Within 150 years
of Columbus's voyage,

disease,
made worse by famine and war,

would kill a staggering 80%
of the indigenous American people.

And for those who survived,
more horrors awaited.

You have accounts of people
who are being enslaved

and transported across the Atlantic
even, some into the Caribbean,

some all the way as far
as Spain and Portugal.

I hadn't really
quite appreciated that.

So, the indigenous Americans,

they were actually enslaved
in Europe? Yes.

But it's a really unknown part
of this colonisation.

And so perhaps a million people
are enslaved in Mexico alone

in the first 100 years
after the invasion.

Maybe tens of thousands
are shipped across the Atlantic,

far more into other parts
of the Americas.

Wow. I didn't know that.

The better-known transatlantic
slave trade is, of course,

the one shipping African people
to the Americas.

And it turns out that's embedded
in the disease story too.

In the Caribbean especially,

the Spanish work to death
so many people,

and so many die of disease, that
they start needing more labourers.

So they begin to think
in terms of importing people

across the Atlantic to replace
the indigenous communities.

Right. Wow.

Some of the darkest chapters
of human history

seem to have followed
in Columbus's wake.

In your opinion,
Columbus, goodie or baddie?

Was he a product of his times,

and therefore
we shouldn't judge him for it,

or is he culpable?

I mean, as you'd expect
from a historian, I'm gonna hedge,

because I don't think
goodie or baddie

is a great way to measure history.

He was a product of his time,

but he was also
the largest single trader

in enslaved indigenous people
during this early period.

He saw the slave fortresses
that the Portuguese had built

on the West African coast,
and he is inspired by that

and thinks he can do the same thing
in the Americas.

He literally says
to Ferdinand and Isabella,

"We can take as many of these people
as you want."

And it's all very well to say
he's a man of his time,

but Isabella is also of her time,

and she keeps saying,
"Stop enslaving these people.

"I've told you not to."

Yes. Very good point, yes. Hmm.

It's 1506, viewers, and after
four journeys to the Caribbean,

Christopher Columbus has been banned
from the colony he'd helped found.

I bet you're gagging for me to tell
you about Columbus's fifth journey,

the one where
he finally discovers America,

what would become the USA and
where he is so widely celebrated.

Well, there wasn't one,

because he never went there
and he never set foot there.

Instead, he went to bed
in a sulk, in ill health,

and in a fury
over his fall from grace,

and then he died.

Historians speculate that the cause
of death could have been anything

from heart disease,
a tropical disease, arthritis,

an intestinal parasite
or even an STD.

Whatever, as the old sailors
used to say, he had gone aloft.

And he's probably buried here
in Seville's cathedral.

I say probably
because we can't be entirely sure.

He was dug up and reburied
six times.

An explorer, even in death.

So, Columbus's legacy.

This map was made
the year after he died.

But what are those two
weird streaky bits on the left?

Hint, they're not called
Columbus Land.

While Columbus maintained
right to the end

that he had been in Asia,

a rival explorer, Amerigo Vespucci,
had two continents named after him.

North Vespucci,
and, of course, South Vespucci (!)

'Soon, anyone with a ship
was heading to the Vespuccis,

'or the Americas,
as they're sometimes called.

'From now on,
there would be a constant flow

'of all sorts of strange
and wonderful goods

'to European shores,
from the exotic...

The pineapple!

So highly prized, if you were
having a posh dinner party,

you could rent one
to impress your mates.

'..to the delicious...'

Where would we be in Europe
without the potato?

No crisps, no chips,
no delicious Sunday roasties.

'..to the nutritious...'

Tomatoes, we had courgettes,
we had avocadoes.

Life for the European vegan
was about to become very exciting.

They'd been stuck with
the parsnip cutlet for centuries.

'..to the frankly world-changing.'

Very easy to grow,
doesn't require much irrigation.

And potatoes and maize together

would cause
a European population boom.

The exact opposite, in fact, of
what was happening in the Americas.

And as the Spanish took over
more of the new world,

spreading disease as they went,

they finally got hold
of what had eluded Columbus -

great big boatloads of gold.

Right, the exact figure is
hotly debated in academic circles -

ie pubs - but we believe that
prior to Columbus's first voyage,

the amount of gold in
the known world came to 297 tonnes.

We don't have
that kind of props budget,

so we're using a scale
of one gram to one tonne.

That is your 297 tonnes
in the world.

Within 60 years
of Columbus's first voyage,

the Spanish had extracted
from the New World

a further 100 tonnes.

Oh, look at that!

But that is actually nothing

compared with what happened
to silver.

Because it is thought
that before the Columbus voyage,

the world's silver reserves
was 3,600 tonnes,

which is represented by...

There it is in silver scrap.

How much do you think they extracted
from the New World?

Phwoar!

25,000 tonnes of silver.

For all Columbus's obsession
with gold,

it was silver
that changed the world.

This is what funded the building
of magnificent European cities,

a golden age - or silver age -
of art and literature

and the rise of European empires

which would go on to colonise
yet more lands.

Columbus's voyages
enriched the Old World

beyond their wildest dreams,
to the cost of the New World.

So, let's go back to the spot
whence he set off.

An obsessive map-botherer,
a crap navigator

and a bloodthirsty gold-looter

who took a punt on the trade winds
and changed both worlds forever.

I'm now charged with coming up
with some meaningful conclusions

about the voyages
of Christopher Columbus,

which feels like a open goal
to self-cancellation.

Because for hundreds of years,

Columbus had
a sort of historical whitewash.

There were countless positive tomes
written about him.

He's got the little poem.
In 1934, he was granted his own day.

But in the last 50 years,

we've started to examine
these things a little more closely.

And over the last five years, we've
put them right under the microscope.

40 or so statues of Columbus
have been removed around the world.

But I think the way to approach this

is to look at it
through the lens of technology.

This statue was erected
to the courage of the navigator,

and, of course, once
the sailing ship had been invented,

it was going to happen.

To explore is an imperative.

It still is,
and we're still doing it.

We're going to do it into space.

We will do it
to the bottom of the ocean.

Maybe the important thing is
that in the modern age,

we've become a little better
at exploring inwardly.

So, let's remember
that there are continents,

there are countries,
and there are peoples,

but there is only one humanity,
and it's work in progress.

'Next time...'

Good morning, m'luds.

'..Sir Walter Raleigh.'

Imagine making your way here.

You may position yourself

where you can vomit discreetly
into a flower bed.

This is medieval satnav
version 2.0 - a stick.

I've got no training,
I've had no practice,

I'm going to be busking it.

He touched the Queen?
Yeah, yeah.

Crikey.

This is a Tudor license to kill.

CANNON BOOMS
Oh!

So much for the great explorer, eh?

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