RE: Archaeologists Think They Have Found the Wreck of The Santa Maria
May 13, 2014 at 12:34 pm
(This post was last modified: May 13, 2014 at 12:34 pm by SteelCurtain.)
When I was in FL in March they had the hand made replicas of the Nina and the Pinta at Ponce Inlet in New Smyrna Beach. No modern tools were used building them. It was really cool. I didn't realize it cost $8 until we were on board. I was kinda pissed until I talked with the crew. They are all volunteers, sailing adventure style with the two boats. It sounded like a lot of fun. I had an impulse to be irresponsible and sign up!
There was a certain cognitive dissonance that I experienced. My whole life, I had this idea of these huge Spanish Galleons that Columbus mightily sailed across the Atlantic with. I don't know where it came from, and I certainly know enough about history to know that there were no huge ships then. But my internal image of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria are these majestic ships.
They are not. Standing on the Nina, it was this tiny little caravel. 65 feet long. Crew slept on the deck. A tiller for a rudder. The Pinta is slightly larger, but not by much. Columbus hated the Santa Maria, he said it sailed like a pig. It, too, was a tiny little nao, a trading vessel.
There was a certain cognitive dissonance that I experienced. My whole life, I had this idea of these huge Spanish Galleons that Columbus mightily sailed across the Atlantic with. I don't know where it came from, and I certainly know enough about history to know that there were no huge ships then. But my internal image of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria are these majestic ships.
They are not. Standing on the Nina, it was this tiny little caravel. 65 feet long. Crew slept on the deck. A tiller for a rudder. The Pinta is slightly larger, but not by much. Columbus hated the Santa Maria, he said it sailed like a pig. It, too, was a tiny little nao, a trading vessel.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great
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