Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci was the third child born to his Italian parents
in Florence in 1452. At an early age, he was trained in navigation,
mercantilism, physics, Latin, astronomy, and cosmography, as well as
in the literatures of Vergil, Dante, Petrard, and others by his father
and uncle. He shortly afterwards became a merchant and traveled to
Seville, Spain to do business for the rich Medici family, including
equipping ships for long voyages.
Vespucci admired Columbus and during this time, became
increasingly interested in his voyages. In 1499, Vespucci sailed as an
astronomer and merchant with Alonso de [H] Ojeda. During this voyage,
his ship traveled along the coast of Venezuela. Later, he
participated in a voyage with Goncalo Coelho, another Portuguese
captain, which explored a large portion of Brazil.
There is a lot of controversy over whether or not Vespucci
discovered the continent of South America before Christopher Columbus.
However, he was the first explorer to state that it was a new
continent instead of the West Indies, which is the location it was
previously believed to be. Because of this radical concept, which he
included in a letter to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici, telling
of his discovery, he became instantly famous. In 1507, Martin
Waldseemuller, a German mapmaker named the area commonly known
as the New World "America" after Amerigo Vespucci, whom he believed
to have been the first European explorer to reach it. Columbus,
although a friend of Vespucci's refused to believe that South America
was different from the Asian continent and died in 1505, believing
that his voyage was through a route to the West Indies.
Vespucci later claimed that he had made four voyages to the New
World, only three of which can be verified. He also claimed that his
first voyage to the New World took place in 1491, a year earlier
than Columbus, but this is doubted by historians, although it was
accepted as fact at the time.