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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Christopher Columbus
Replicas of Nina, Pinta set to anchor in Peoria
The 14 Jun. 2010 at 18:13Maritime News
By Patrick Oldendorf- Journal Star
A replica of Christopher Columbus' famous ship will be dropping anchor in Peoria next month.
The Nina has stopped in Chillicothe and Peoria several times in the last 15 years, but this year the wooden, sea-going vessel is back - this time with its sister ship, the Pinta.
The replica ships will dock from July 9 to July 12 at the RiverPlex landing adjacent to the Spirit of Peoria.
"Little children love scrambling around the ships, and school-aged children study Columbus and his ships," said A.J. Sanger, a spokesman for the Columbus Fund. "Older people can appreciate and admire the work that went into building (the ships) ... and think about how small (it was) for men to go to sea in."
The Nina was built completely by hand and without the use of power tools in Bahia, Brazil, in 1992, the 500th anniversary of Columbus' entry into the new world. Archaeology magazine dubbed it "The most historically correct Columbus replica ever built." The boat is 93 1/2 feet long and about 52 feet tall and was featured in the film "1492."Niña, Pinta sail to town
The 18 Mar. 2010 at 17:29Museum news
By Chris Segal - News Herald
Amidst the morning rain, replicas of Christopher Columbus’ Niña and Pinta vessels sailed into the Panama City Marina on Wednesday to set up a temporary floating museum.
With the help of a dinghy, the two vessels floated into the marina and will stay until Monday.
The ships are touring as a sailing museum. They offer guided tours and displays for school groups and the public. Each ship has a crew of four people who will be on hand to answer questions and talk about the vessels.
The two Columbus replicas were most recently docked in Alabama and, after a weekend in Panama City, they will make their way south to St. Petersburg and then up the East Coast.
This Niña was launched in 1992 and has been called by Archaeology magazine the “most historically correct Columbus replica ever built.”
Of the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria, the smaller, faster Niña was Columbus’ favorite ship, and he made most of his journeys on it. The replica Niña has sailed a half-million miles, docked in 600 ports and traveled through the Panama Canal about a dozen times. This is the fourth time the Niña has docked in Panama City.
“Panama City has always been great,” said Niña Captain Morgan Sanger. “They really support the ship.”
Read more...Sailing Against Conventional Wisdom
The 13 Feb. 2010 at 05:42Ancien Maritime History
By Dalya Alberge - The Wall Street Journal
It takes a brave soul to rewrite history by sailing against current thought. More than 500 years after Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, another seaman is doing just that, entering previously uncharted academic waters with claims that other "Europeans" -- the Minoans -- got there first, thousands of years earlier.
Gavin Menzies, 72 years old, is drawing on his experience as a former British Royal Navy submarine commander to prove in a book he is writing that the Minoans were such supreme seafarers that they crossed an ocean and discovered the New World 4,000 years ago.
Eight years after he made controversial headlines with his first American history book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," which sold more than a million copies in 130 countries, he may spark debate anew by claiming that the Bronze Age civilization of Crete, which built magnificent palaces, devised systems of writing and developed a trading empire, got rich on vast quantities of copper mined in America.
Transworld Publishers undertook his first book, in which he claimed that a Chinese eunuch led a fleet of junks to America 71 years before Columbus. The book led to invitations to lecture at universities including Harvard, to an honorary professorship at Yunnan University in China, to the sale of film rights to Sky Motion Pictures and to HarperCollins snapping up the sequel in 2008, "1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance."
"Revisionist history tends to sell exceptionally well," says Luigi Bonomi, a leading literary agent who represents Mr. Menzies. "There is a huge audience eager to read new things about history."