Welsh Journals

Between 1971 and 1974 Admiral S. E. Morison crowned a long and productive career as a historian of the sea and of the Americas with the publication of his two-volume The European Discovery of America. He died soon afterwards, so the volume under review in a sense stands as his memorial. The Great Explorers consists of 11 of the 20 chapters of volume 1 of The European Discovery and 18 of the 31 chapters of volume 2, reprinted as a single work. As the title implies, the criteria for selection have focused on the outstanding figures of the age of discovery, though whether Admiral Morison played any part in the compilation is not stated by the publishers. The voyages of eight explorers are related. The account of those of Columbus is largely the one developed in Morison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1941), but brought up to date with the findings of subsequent scholarship. The account of Magellan's circumnavigation is now one of the best and most coherent available, and that of Cartier's explorations in Canada places him squarely before the eyes of English-speaking historians of the age of discovery, who have hitherto been inclined to overlook or play down his contribution. Columbus, Magellan and Cartier get the bulk of the book, over 100 pages each, and five others (Drake, Verrazzano, Cabot, Frobisher and Davis) get between 25 and 50 pages each. One notes that this select company of great explorers includes no less than three Italians, a tribute to the intelligence, imagina- tion and energy of this people and an indication of their role in getting the age of discovery under way. Obviously in a selection there are exclusions which are necessary but which one regrets: the early chapters on medieval voyages and alleged voyages, for example (though perhaps Welsh readers will be glad to be spared Morison's curt dismissal of the twelfth-century voyage of 'Prince Madoc' to the realms of fantasy); his important presentation of some of the lesser-known voyages to south America, particularly its southern and western coasts; his skilful dissection of the charlatanry of Amerigo Vespucci; and, on a lighter note, his sallies at the expense of that genial old rascal Sebastian Cabot. There are two big differences between this and its parent volumes, however. The first, major, one is the exclusion here of the notes at the end of each chapter (with the inexplicable exception of an abbreviated version of those at the end of one of the chapters on Drake). These notes, often many pages long, are small essays in themselves and notable contributions to scholarship, defences or elucidations of interpretations put forward in the main body of the chapters, and penetrating discussions of sources and literature. For specialists in the fields covered by the book this will be the most keenly felt loss. The other difference has to do with the effect of the choice of chapters from the parent volumes on the general character of this one: it becomes less a study of the European discovery of America as narrated through the many fifteenth- and sixteenth-century voyages, and more a set of sea biographies of the major navigators to the waters of the American hemisphere in this era. It seems to shift the approach rather near to a 'great man' notion of history.