History of the U.S.E revealed

´The Spanish monarchs sponsored extensive Atlantic exploration. Spain’s most famous explorer, Christopher Columbus, was actually from Genoa, Italy. Columbus had grown up reading tales like the Travels of Marco Polo, printed for the first time just before his birth by Johannes Gutenberg on his new press. Columbus was also married to a Portuguese noblewoman named Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, the daughter of the Governor of Porto Santo, an island near Madeira. As a navigator in Portuguese-controlled waters off the coast of Africa, Columbus must have had many opportunities to hear the stories of fishermen who had gone to the Grand Banks in search of Cod. Beginning in 1485, he approached Genoese, Venetian, Portuguese, English, and Spanish authorities, asking for ships and funding to explore his westward route. All those he petitioned—including Ferdinand and Isabella at first—rebuffed him; their nautical experts all concurred that Columbus’s estimates of the width of the Atlantic Ocean were far too low. However, after three years of entreaties, Ferdinand and Isabella agreed to finance Columbus’s expedition in 1492, supplying him with three ships: the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. The Spanish monarchs knew that Portuguese mariners had reached the southern tip of Africa and sailed into the Indian Ocean. They understood that if not challenged the Portuguese would dominate trade with  Asia and the Spanish rulers decided to act.