Here is the companion volume to Morison’s European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600, published in 1971. As announced at the outset, the work mainly covers sea voyages, though a few land explorations receive attention. The plan is as strictly chronological (from 1492 to 1619) as circumstances permit; first come the Iberian voyages lasting through most of the sixteenth century, then the circumnavigations by Drake and Thomas Cavendish, and finally the discoveries of Le Maire Strait and Cape Hom by the Hollanders Willem Schouten and Isaak Le Maire. Morison’s undertaking is of majestic scope; based on all sources in Latin and modern languages, taking account of the best secondary writings, and including a few of the worst for humor’s sake.
Morison gives the career of Columbus full coverage, as in previous works, and then follows with the minor voyagers—Alonso de Ojeda, Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, Juan de la Cosa, and others—who coasted the Spanish Main. Vespucci and Juan Díaz de Solis are then given treatments that, considering the length of the volume, are rather brief. Morison returns to the view long ago held by Viscount Santarem and Edward G. Bourne of Amérigo as a liar, charlatan, and bumbling navigator, but with the observation (p. 297) that he “played (his) cards so cleverly as to be elected to the exclusive club of the immortals.” The late Alberto Magnaghi and Roberto Levillier, who each championed Vespucci for a different reason, would have objected violently to this, and objections may be expected from their living followers.
Morison considers Magellan, to whom he devotes seven chapters, the greatest voyager who ever sailed, and no one is likely to dispute this. Some will question Morison’s assertion that he left Sanlúcar in 1519 intending to go around the world, but doubters will agree that, having learned the width of the Pacific before his death on Mactan in the Philippines, he must have shifted to such a plan.
Coverage is then given to the Pacific crossings following Magellan’s, and to the discoveries of Bermuda and Florida, and to voyages in the Gulf of Mexico. Morison expresses none of the doubts some have felt that Ponce de León really sought a Fountain of Youth in Florida or wherever. He then describes the adventures of Hernando de Soto and Cabeza de Vaca in the southern United States and gives attention to the career of Sebastian Cabot in Spanish service in the Río de la Plata and Paraná. Sebastian fares rather well at the hands of Morison, who gives him credit for important discoveries while shaping up badly as a commander of seamen. Following a description of the Spanish conquest of the River Plate, the narrative turns to early voyages along the southern Chilean coast: the discoveries by such as Juan Fernández Ladrillero are especially welcome here, as they are little known in the United States.
Taking leave of Iberian voyagers now, though once briefly returning to them with Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Morison turns to England and the voyages of Drake and Cavendish. California readers will be interested in the judgment that the brass plate found near San Francisco Bay in 1936 (and believed by some to be the authentic one left by Drake in 1579) is a fake. This reviewer has never held an opinion regarding the plate, but knows that Morison has already received at least one heated reply to his argument. All this has no bearing on Drake’s deserved reputation as the foremost navigator of his generation and his “consummate seamanship” (p. 683).
The Dutch discovery of Cape Horn is described briefly, mostly from English and French translations of sources.
Long known as a Harvard historian, rear admiral, and enthusiastic sailor under canvas, Morison uses a thoroughly seagoing vocabulary to give his narrative color. By sea and air he has seen nearly all the water and land his explorers saw, and, being an authority on ancient and modern navigational techniques, and on ocean currents, winds, and weather as well, he can explain much that land-based historians frequently fail to understand. At times he possibly explains more than his general readers would wish; these readers might be willing to spare some details and receive more clarification about what the voyagers, in their geographical confusion, thought they were doing as against what they actually accomplished.
In a work of this magnitude, small errors of fact or oversights inevitably creep in. One case is the apparent confusion (Index and elsewhere) between the Castilian Casa de Contratación at Seville and the short-lived body of almost the same name at Coruña in charge of the García Jofré de Loaysa expedition of 1525. Another is the forgetful assumption (p. 487) that the Pizarros had already conquered Peru when Charles V made the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529 conceding the Moluccas to Portugal. These are of slight importance, in the light of the author’s splendid achievement.
