In time, Europeans settled in the islands and on the southeastern coasts of America. They dreaded the approach of late summer, when copper-colored clouds of a tropical storm might push slowly upward from the southeastern horizon. What they learned about them came mostly from the natives, who had long memories for such frightening things and reckoned the time of other events from the years of great hurricanes. Strangely enough, although during the more than four hundred years that have passed since then, man has finally mastered thermo-nuclear reactions capable of permanent destruction of whole islands, he still probes for the secret of storm forces of far greater power.
It is hard to say who was the first hunter of storms. Columbus and his sailors were constantly on the lookout and actually saw several West Indian hurricanes. Luckily, they didn’t run into one on their first voyage, or the story of the discovery of America would be quite different, for the ships sailed by Columbus were not able to stand up against these big winds of the tropics. They would have been sunk in deep water or cast ashore as worthless wrecks.
If Columbus had been lost in one of these monstrous storms—and he didn’t miss it by very much—it might have been many years before another navigator with a stout heart could have induced men to risk their lives in the uncharted winds of the far places in the Atlantic Ocean. Out there toward the end of the world, where increasing gales dragged ships relentlessly in the direction of the setting sun, sailors who ventured too far would drop off the edge of a flat earth and plunge screaming into eternity—so they thought. Only in Columbus’ mind was the earth a sphere.
By the time Columbus had made his third voyage to the West Indies, he had learned a good deal about hurricanes and how to keep out of them. He got this information by his own wits and from talking with the natives in the islands bordering the Caribbean. They told him of storms much more powerful than any that were brewed in European waters. After listening to their tales, he was afraid of them. In 1494 he hid his fleet behind an island while a hurricane roared by. The next year, an unexpected one sank three of his vessels and the others took such a beating that he declared, “Nothing but the service of God and the extension of the monarchy would induce me to expose myself to such dangers.”