2023-12-19 06:31:23
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his men ushered in one of the most memorable events in human history: the discovery of America. The interest in his feat and that of Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro and the other illustrious conquerors of the new world is beyond any doubt. There is practically no one who has not heard of them or who does not know what the achievements of their expeditions were, since millions of books and hundreds of films have covered them.
Even if these and other explorers had done nothing else, their journeys through the New World alone were enough to earn them fame. “Nowhere else had such a number of voyages through such wild lands been heard of,” warned Charles Fletcher Lummis in ‘The Spanish pioneers’, originally published in 1893 and now republished by the Rialp publishing house. This American historian and activist highlighted the “walks of thousands of miles carried out by small groups or by solitary heroes.”
«The only precedent comparable to the Spanish conquest of the New World was the story during the gold rush of the Californian Argonauts, who crossed the great plains in the most notable population movement known to history. But even that pales in size, hardship, danger and endurance compared to the journeys of the pioneers,” added Fletcher Lummis.
At the same time, however, other great Spanish explorers carried out similar exploits that have not been as researched in the academic field until relatively recent times, such as the case of Juan Bermudez. This inveterate traveler was born in Palos de la Frontera (Huelva) in the last third of the 15th century. The year that has never been fully clarified within that small aura of mystery that surrounded the character for a long time.
A childhood at sea
We know, however, that as a child he already dreamed of traveling beyond the seas and discovering territories never explored by Europeans. Bermúdez belonged to a family with a great seafaring tradition, which influenced him to become an expert of the sea at a very young age, before even reaching adolescence. In fact, his first trip to America was the discovery with Columbus. Between the years 1498 and 1519 he has documented up to 22 voyages between Spain and the New World, most of them as captain or master.
That mark was never surpassed by any other man in the 16th and 17th centuries, especially if we take into account that these crossings could only be made at certain times of the year to take advantage of the direction of the wind, and that it took months to cross the Atlantic. . “To understand these journeys of thousands of miles, carried out by small groups or by solitary heroes, one must be familiar with the country they crossed and know something about the time in which these feats were accomplished,” the historian warned as early as 1893.
In the case of that first voyage to America in 1492, Bermúdez was on board La Pinta, the caravel captained by the navigator and explorer Martín Alonso Pinzón. In the second, in which Columbus also wanted to count on him, he held positions of greater responsibility and enriched his knowledge so much that, in the following years, he captained his own caravel: La Garza. From there, this boat was dedicated to transporting people, animals, merchandise and tools to the settlements that were being established on the new continent.
The Bermudas
Of all those expeditions there was one much more important, which was the one through which he wrote his golden page in the history of the discovery and conquest of America. A journey that departed in July 1505 from Seville, the headquarters of the Carrera de Indias, and in which he was the top leader. The trip headed to Hispaniola, in the Caribbean. That outward journey occurred without any setbacks, so he managed to unload his merchandise without the slightest problem. On the return trip, however, everything got complicated.
A strange storm, as described by some ship’s journals, surprised La Garza and diverted him from his course in a northerly direction instead of towards the Azores, as usual. The journey became uncontrolled and took him parallel along the coasts of the Florida peninsula, pushed by the current that originated in the Gulf of Mexico. When he had been sailing aimlessly for a few days, with barely any control of the ship, Bermúdez reached a small archipelago that he named the Garza Islands, in recognition of his caravel.
The archipelago was located north of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, the current islands that years later would be named the Juan Bermúdez Islands in his honor and, finally, simply as Bermuda, as they are currently known. There are more than 150 and Bermúdez claimed them as part of the Spanish Empire. However, the expedition did not disembark due to the risk of running aground. Later they were colonized by the English.
Year of discovery
The year in which he discovered them is imprecise, although it is known that it was before 1511 because in the work of the chronicler of the Indies Pedro Mártir de Anglería, ‘Legatio Babylonica’, published that same year, he included an island called La Bermuda between those that made up that area in the Atlantic Ocean. In the book, however, its true discoverer was not mentioned. Although there is no clear date, the inhabitants of the archipelago celebrated the Fifth Centenary of the sighting of it in 2005, which is why they consider that Bermúdez discovered the archipelago in 1505.
Historians have reached this conclusion after research carried out in the last years of the 20th century. It is known that, in 1512, he bought two caravels in Portugal, the Santa Cruz and the Santa María de la Antigua, and the following year, he piloted the second one with Juan Rodríguez Mafra and headed to the island of Cuba and Hispaniola, to where they carried goods and passengers. On this trip they are accompanied by Juan Martín Pinzón, son of Martin Alonso Pinzón.
Bermúdez returned to the islands in 1515, according to his companion Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés in the Summary of the Natural History of the Indies, published in 1526, but due to the bad weather they encountered, they did not attempt to dock on the island. The final details of his life are unknown, although it is assumed that he died in his native Palos de la Frontera, but it is not known how or when.
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