Wooden Ships On The Water

[tropicstorm]

Eyes never beheld the seas so high, angry and covered by foam. We were forced to keep out in this bloody ocean, seething like a pot of hot fire. Never did the sky look more terrible; for one whole day and night it blazed like a furnace. The flashes came with such fury and frightfulness that we all thought the ships would be blasted. All this time the water never ceased to fall from the sky.

- Letter from Christopher Columbus to Queen Isabella of Spain, in the year 1494

Think about it - these brave explorers, mostly at that time from Spain and Europe. Of course, there are pretty cold winters where they came from. So, they didn't sail in winter - they waited for the warmer weather in late spring and early summer and set sail to the New World in say, perhaps, June or July - a two month journey to the Caribbean. Using only a compass, a sextant and the stars, they navigated their fragile wooden ships through the trades to arrive in Caribbean waters sometime in August or September. Is it any wonder why there are so many shipwrecks off the coast of Florida and in the Bahamas and Caribbean waters? Just imagine some of those master sailors cruising in blue and fair sky weather never knowing that they were steering directly into the path of a ferocious hurricane. Oh, they eventually saw gray and dark skies on the horizon - pulled their sails in and battened down the hatches. But, it would be too late for the wooden ships, hulls broken into pieces and battered to smithereens. It's amazing to me that they just kept coming in their vessels, so many never returning.