ABSTRACT
The four expeditions Columbus led to the Caribbean between 1492 and 1504 were part of an evolutionary maritime expansion by western Europe. It appears likely that, by the 1480s, Bristol fishermen were fishing the Grand Banks, Newfoundland, because their cod grounds in high latitudes were already affected by falling sea temperatures.1 More centrally germane were the endeavours of the Portuguese. In 1415, the capture of Ceuta had given them a foothold on the Maghreb. Valorously in the van of the assault had been a young Prince Henry. As ‘Henry the Navigator’ (1394-1460), he was to mastermind Portuguese expeditions that acquired Madeira, the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, and probed almost as far into the equatorial ‘torrid zone’ as Sierra Leone.
