Yes Columbus Discovered Hurricanes, But Not in February 1493

From Signals newsletter in Arizona:

This Day In History, February 10th, 2020 – “A Terrible Hurricane Has Burst Upon Us”

https://www.signalsaz.com/articles/this-day-in-history-february-11th-2020-a-terrible-hurricane-has-burst-upon-us/

This article has been making its rounds on social media the past few days and I am especially seeing it among my allies in the pro-Columbus camp.  While I do not wish to publicly denigrate my friends, this piece has false information in it which I believe needs to be addressed.  While Christopher Columbus and his ships did experience a terrible storm on the return voyage from the Discovery of the New World in 1493, it was not a hurricane. 

  First off, the article presents information that storm struck around February 10 1493. The article also states, “This was before the establishment of the Gregorian Calendar – which probably puts the actual date earlier in February, or late January”.  Christopher Columbus was a meticulous record keeper, and he was rarely vague on what date something occurred.  All the dates of his journal are Julian Calendar dates.  Therefore, if something happened February 10, it happened February 10 by the Julian Calendar which would be February 20 on the Gregorian Calendar. The entry for February 10, 1493 mentions nothing regarding a storm,  all that occurred on that day was Columbus, Vicente Pinzon (captain of La Niña) and several other officers tried to determine where in the Atlantic Ocean they were (Columbus came nearest the correct position, they were south and a bit west of the Azores). A furious storm did arise on February 14, 1493 (February 24 Gregorian) which lasted two days and nearly destroyed the ships, but this was no hurricane.  This storm came from the wrong direction, it arose from the east-northeast. Hurricanes are driven by the prevailing winds and ocean currents, therefore Mid-Atlantic hurricanes at this latitude always come from the South.  All hurricanes are born in Africa, this storm would have originated either in Europe or the Arctic. The article attempts to prove this storm was a rare winter hurricane by citing Hurricane Alice of 1955.  Hurricane Alice was indeed a winter hurricane and is one of only two known hurricanes to span two calendar years, as it lasted from December 30, 1954 to January 6 1955.  But Alice was not in the mid-Atlantic near the Azores, it formed near Barbuda, then moved NNE before dissipating NW of Grenada. A rare winter hurricane did form in the mid-Atlantic just a few years ago, Hurricane Alex formed near the Bahamas on January 12, 2016.  It traveled east, then a bit south, and then curved north before dissipating near Greenland. Hurricane Alex came near the Azores, but like all other Azorean hurricanes at any time if year it approached from the South.

   This is, however, the first detailed description of a storm at sea, Columbus does get credit for that.  He describes it in such detail that it can be mapped on a chart. Storms similar to this one are now well known in the Azores and eastern Atlantic and are caused by convergence of large masses of warm air from the tropics meeting cold air from the arctic causing various warm and cold fronts to develop along the meeting air masses. This storm was probably caused by an intense low pressure passing north of the Azores generating fronts to the southeast and causing strong winds of variable directions with the fronts on a NE to SW line. Three distinct air masses seem to be involved, separated by one warm and two cold fronts at the boundaries. Continental North America experiences similar weather patterns in Spring and Fall. It was indeed a frightful storm. Columbus wrote in his journal that he feared what would happen if he died and news of his Discovery never reached Spain, and what would happen to his sons if their father were lost at sea. Near despair, Columbus quickly wrote down a brief description of the voyage and of his discoveries, wrapped it in waxed cloth, put it in a barrel and threw the barrel into the sea, hoping it would eventually be found.

What Columbus did not write was the quote given in this article.  I have read his journal many times, and Columbus never wrote the six sentences quoted here. Not in any translation or paraphrase.  The original copy of Columbus’ journal is lost to us, as is a copy of the original presented to him in 1493 by Ferdinand and Isabella.  All we have is a paraphrased abstract made by Bartolome de las Casas.  Though Las Casas occasionally quotes the Admiral verbatim, he does not do so in the February entries.  What is most odd about this quote, however, is not that it is first person, but the style of the English.  Though other authors have redone Columbus’ journal into the first person, none of them bothered to put it in a facsimile of Early Modern English.  The English style of this quote is too late for Columbus, it is nearer the English spoken by the settlers of Jamestown or Plymouth in the early 1600s than Tudor Era 1490s English. Where the author of this article got the supposed quote (other than from their own head) is unknown, but I can think of one possibility.  In 1892 Columbus’ letter in a barrel was allegedly discovered off the coast of Wales.  The letter was written in English, addressed to the Queen of Spain and titled “My Secrete Log Boke”. This obvious forgery duped enough collectors into buying it, and it was still making rounds among collectors of such memorabilia at least into the 1940s.  Columbus no doubt encountered the English language among his many voyages around Europe, but it is doubtful he spoke any English, and certainly was not fluent enough to compose a whole letter in it.  The universal language in 1493 was still Latin, and the letter would likely be in either that language or Spanish. If the author of this article got that quote from anywhere, the most likely source is the 1892 forgery which may still be circulating among naïve collectors.

  Columbus also would not have used the word “hurricane” to describe this storm.  He did not learn that word from the Taino Indians until he experienced his first true hurricane in 1494. The English word hurricane comes through Spanish from the Taino word "huracan" which has roots in the name of the Aztec rain god of  wind, storms and rain Huracan which loosely translates as "Heart of the sky". Columbus and those with him were indeed the first Europeans to encounter and describe a hurricane, and he would experience three of them in the New World: September 15 (24) 1494, late October 1495, and June 30 (July 10), 1500. All three of which struck his colonies in Hispaniola. Christopher Columbus discovered hurricanes yes, but not until two years after he found the New World.