Christopher Columbus, who died in the northern Spanish city of Valladolid 500 years ago, ended his days alone and bitter, a fate shared by many other great explorers.
Spain’s Conquistadors also came to a sticky end against the backdrop of violence and internecine rivalry which thrived in the 16th century, during the brutal conquest and colonisation of Latin America.
Their most famous member Hernan Cortes, conqueror of the Aztec empire, was criticised, as was Columbus, by the Spanish royal court, then accused of rebellion.
Having lost influence under Charles V he ended his days forgotten in 1647 near the southern Spanish city of Seville.
“As with all men who have scored major successes they can feel sad and abandoned afterwards,” explained Columbus and Latin America specialist Jesus Varela Marcos, while also underlining the “explorers’ aggressive nature”.
Francisco Pizarro, who defeated the Inca Empire was murdered by his rivals, something which also befell the likes of Diego de Almagro, Vasco Nunez de Balboa or Lope de Aguirre.
Still others, such as Juan Ponce de Leon, Francisco de Orellana or Pedro de Alvarado, died in combat against local populations of places whither they had ventured.
Portugal’s great navigators had similarly momentous destinies in store for them, such as Bartholomeu Diaz, the first westerner to round the Cape of Good Hope, who was killed in 1500 during an expedition led by Pedro Alvares Cabral.
“Admiral of the Indies” Vasco de Gama, the first European to reach India via the Cape, endured almost two decades of semi-retirement before he was finally appointed viceroy of the Indies in 1524, shortly before his death.
Ferdinand Magellan, leading the first expedition to undertake the circumnavigation of the world, was killed by an unfriendly native’s arrow in the Philippines in 1521, without managing to stay the course which saw his fellows complete the historic task.
Britain’s James Cook likewise was killed by an unwilling Hawaiian host in 1779, while Frenchman Jean-Francois de Galaup, count of La Perouse, disappeared off the Solomon Islands in 1788 and compatriot Dumont d’Urville fell victim to a railway accident in 1842 near Paris.
“Exploring is dangerous but that’s part of the attraction of discovery,” says Varela. Controversies also flowered around the world.
The end of the 19th century saw an argument rage on the source of the Nile. John Speke, having established that the great lake flowed out of Lake Victoria, tussled with Richard Burton before being found dead from a gunshot wound believed self-inflicted on a hunting trip.
David Livingstone died exhausted and alone in 1873 as he chased the Nile source in the belief it flowed from the Fountains of Herodotus, while contemporary John Stanley, who rescued Livingstone on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in 1871, was criticised for brutality towards local populations, notably during his descent of the Congo River (1874-77).
Rival Savrognan de Brazza, while a gentler soul, still fell out of favour in Paris for his handling of French colonies in Central Africa.
At the start of the 20th century the discovery of the North and South Poles also led to similar controversy.
Americans Robert Peary and Frederick Cook both claimed in 1909 to have reached the North Pole but recent studies have cast doubt on the claims of both.
Peary ended his days in brooding silence, amid the doubts over his claim, in his house in Maine — though he had destroyer USS Peary named after him — while Cook spent five years in jail for financial wrongdoing.
Briton Robert Scott died on the way back from his trek to the South Pole in the knowledge that Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten him to it in 1911, though he remains a hero in the eyes of his countryfolk, who slated Amundsen for failing to state his objective, a foible seen as underhanded behaviour.
Historians say Amundsen laboured under the unfair criticism to the end of his life.
That end came when the explorers’ curse struck again, Amundsen dying in an plane accident in 1928 after he joined a French rescue mission to try to find the missing crew of Umberto Nobile, an Italian friend and rival. – AFP