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This story merges actual log entries made by Christopher Columbus with both real, (Leonardo daVinci), and fictitious people, places, and events that took place around the world, from 1504 to 1507. The story begins and ends in Cadiz, Spain, a small drinking village with a fishing problem.
I wrote this story as a humorous account of certain events that make it easy to understand how Columbus' one-time popularity and navigational praise, was questioned in 1989, (three years before America was to celebrate the Cinquecentennial of his "discovering America"), as various groups around the world, began publicly protesting his reputation and character, by presenting factual evidence as to his true personality, prejudices, and committed acts against his fellow man.
There is currently a movement to have Christopher Columbus Day renamed, but since it is a national holiday, that would take an Act Of Congress, and to date, no one has tried. However, according to the Associated Press, this October, nine cities across the country will celebrate "Indigenous Peoples Day." instead.
This story, centers around a trade imbalance and retaliation between Asia and Europe- after an Asian conglomerate secretly off-loaded a bunch of manned-rickshaws onto the Cadiz pier. The ultra-cheap taxi service immediately addicted Cadiz villagers into "joy riding", rather than going to work, which paralyzed Spain's manufacturing and shipping business.
Realizing the devastating impact this could have on all of Europe, Queen Isabella formed a co-operative with four other kingdoms, then designed a fool-proof retaliatory plan; beginning with the construction of a massive state-of-the-art sailing vessel, "The Clarissa."
Once Clarissa was loaded down with highly sought-after European goods, she would make her maiden voyage to The New World, sell the over-priced goods, take orders for more goods, then return to Cadiz, to repeat the voyage on a regular basis.
Isabella's plan even took into consideration the fact that no one in the five Kingdoms knew how to even find The New World, so the first priority, was to find a competent navigator to sail Clarissa.
Meanwhile, Spain's most celebrated navigator, former Admiral Christopher Columbus, was serving the last few days of his six-month jail sentence given him by Isabella. As he sat and vengefully counted the hours until his enlistment in Her Majesty's Navy was up, his attitude was lifted whenever he thought about soon joining his unpredictable, offbeat, multicultural group of former officers and rowdy sailor friends at the notorious Anchor Bar; where sailors, whores, traders and assorted derelicts had assembled to begin celebrating their former Captain's 20-year retirement.
The story opens inside the Anchor Bar, and is an account of two voyages from Cadiz; one to The New World, and one to where Columbus thought was America.
During both voyages, they encounter Barbarossa pirates, a tornado at sea, a deadly sea creature, a USO, the first reptilian Blue Man Group, religious terrorists, a gang-rape aboard, the abduction and enslavement of three passengers, a collision at sea, a 30-foot tsunami, and an insufferable, imposing Catholic Monk and his group of pioneering colonists. All this, plus Leonardo DaVinci's constant search for volunteer crewmen to serve as human "lab rats", for testing his endless outpouring of inventions, contraptions and weapons designed to repel boarders,
made life aboard Clarissa as taxing and challenging as life ashore.
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