CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

Schanche missed an opportunity to enlighten your readership about the true landfall of Christopher Columbus. He could have based his article on substantive landfall knowledge from the scholarly Oct. 13 workshop at John Hopkins University. Instead, he relied on three blind mice groping for rationalizations at the Pier 66 Resort and Marina in Fort Lauderdale.

Both Joseph Judge and several Samuel Eliot Morison spokesmen were invited to join me at the Hopkins workshop (Robert Power’s reconstruction is ludicrous). All Morison supporters wisely declined. Judge did give his colorful slide show, but then immediately skedaddled to avoid probing of his flimsy evidence. If I had been invited to Fort Lauderdale, Schanche would have learned:

All independent experts agree that Columbus navigated accurately by latitude sailing rather than blindly by dead reckoning. This places him squarely in the middle of North East Providence Channel next to Egg Island instead of 90 or more miles south.

The 98 journal clues describing four Bahama islands on his route to Cuba give overwhelming support of the northern route originating at Egg Island. Even though this third-hand copy of the journal is “peppered with demonstrable mistakes,” there are 20 consecutive clues that fit my third island far better than Morison’s.

The earliest known detailed landfall map, by the French engineer Alain Manesson Mallet in 1685, displays many of the unique features of Egg Island and none of Watlings.

The earliest mapping of Columbus’ island names into modern ones was published by Don Antonio de Alcedo in 1786 before the landfall controversy developed. The highly respected Don Antonio took it for granted that Columbus entered the New World through North East Providence Channel, stopping at New Providence (not Rum Cay!) on his way to Cuba.

ARNE B. MOLANDER, Gaithersburg, Md.