Ben Thompson - The Age of Exploration: Totally Getting Lost

If at first you dont succeed Youre not the only one. In fact, youre in pretty good company.

The Age of Exploration was an era of discovery. Fearless pioneers set sail into the unknown in search of new lands, adventure, and fortune. At a time when most of the world was still a mystery, these brave souls risked everything to glimpse what lay beyond the horizon. By land and sea, early explorers traveled to the far corners of the globeand occasionally found themselves hopelessly lost.

On October 7, 1492, Christopher Columbus stood on the rocking deck of the Santa Mara, gazing out at uncharted waters, with all the confidence of Captain Kirk. Though he was sailing headfirst into unfamiliar territory, Columbus was certain that hed be setting foot on Chinese land at any minute.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said of his eighty-seven crew members. They had been at sea with Columbus for twenty-nine days. Thats twenty-nine days without fresh supplies. Twenty-nine days drifting in the middle of the ocean with nothing but water as far as the eye can see in every direction.

Have you ever been on a really boring car ride? Like, your parents want to visit some park in the middle of nowhere, so you spend all day driving down the highway without anything exciting to look at or anything fun to do except listen to your dad sing a bunch of dorky songs youve heard a million times? For the crew of the Nia, the Pinta, and the Santa Mara, traveling with Columbus was kind of like that. Except, instead of eight hours in a car, theyd been at sea for an entire month. Oh, and there werent any gas stations to buy snacks, so if they ate all their food, they would starve to death.

Are we there yet? one guy may have mumbled as he munched on a stale biscuit, looking with sad eyes at the shrinking pile of food in the ships hold.

Throughout the Age of Exploration, the life of a seafarer could be so unpleasant that English writer Samuel Johnson once said it was like being in jail, but with the added possibility of drowning. If the dangers of sea travel werent bad enough, the awful conditions aboard the ship might make you want to take your chances in the open ocean.

The food was as terrible as it was limited. The most common food available was barrels of old salted meat and this really gross stuff called hardtack, which was just flour and waterbasically a rock made of gluten. Scurvy was a constant problem among the crew because of the lack of veggies. Bugs and rats were everywhere, and disease was rampant. Hygiene was nonexistent, and everything smelled horrible. Many people died from minor infections due to minor injuries or by getting knocked overboard while trying to rig up the sails.

The crew worked four-hour duty shifts, day and night, and slept packed together on the floor or in hammocks in the cramped, dark, stuffy space belowdecks. Sea shanties, card games, and gallons of whiskey were all that kept them going at times.

Disobedience was answered with a whipping or time in the brig. Mutiny, if unsuccessful, was met with death.

Now, twenty-nine days into their mission, Columbuss crew members had all come to the same conclusionthey were almost at the point of no return. These hardened sailors knew the ships were carrying about sixty days worth of supplies, and if Columbus didnt turn back really soon, the crew wouldnt have enough food to get them all home alive

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Leif set sail when he was ready; he ran into prolonged difficulties at sea, and finally came upon lands whose existence he had never suspected.

The Saga of Erik the Red

The first European to discover America was a Viking. A Viking named Leif Erikson, to be exact.

The Vikings were fierce and often bearded seafarers who lived in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway between AD 793 and 1066. They are, perhaps, best known today for terrorizing their European neighbors by plundering, pillaging, and burning cities to the ground. The Vikings were tough, terrifying warriors you wouldnt want to encounter in battleon land or sea. They were well-known for their skills at sailing and navigation. They spent a good three hundred years striking fear into the hearts of anyone unfortunate enough to come within rowing distance of their awesome dragon-headed longships.

Erik the Red, in particular, is remembered as one of the toughest Vikings in all of history. Which is nothing to sneeze at.

Erik was known as the Red not because hed get so mad that his face would turn crimson, but because he had really long red hair and a huge, bushy red beard. He was born in Norway about 950 and spent his early years putting on armor; grabbing a huge, two-handed battle-ax; and raiding unsuspecting European villagesreducing them to charred rubble. Things went well until, in 980, Erik and his dad got into a fight with their neighbors that resulted in, as the sagas put it, some killings. Convicted of murder, Erik and his pops were kicked out of Norway. They boarded a wooden ship and sailed west to the recently colonized Viking realm of Iceland.

Erik and his dad were pretty happy in Iceland for a while. (Its actually green and lush and not as miserable as it sounds.) Erik got married, had some kids, one of them being the intrepid Leif Erikson, bought a farm, and captured a bunch of Irish and English villagers to work as his slaves. But he still wasnt a particularly chill dude, so it wasnt long before his old life caught up to him. One day, some of Eriks slaves were working in a field when they accidentally caused a rockslide, which crushed the house of Eriks neighbor. The neighbor got mad and killed the slaves, which wasnt very smart, because Erik became furious and killed him with a sword. The dead neighbors best friend was Hrafn the Dueler, who, as his name might suggest, challenged Erik to a duel. So Erik killed that guy, too. A few weeks after that, Erik lent some benches to a different neighbor, a guy named Thorgest. Thorgest didnt return the benches, and when Erik went over to ask him about it, Thorgest got mad. Swords were drawn, and in the ensuing fight, Erik went berserk and killed Thorgest, both of Thorgests adult sons, and certain other men (whatever that means).

Naturally, Erik was exiled from Iceland for three years.