The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar (9 page)

Chapter 4

T
HE
S
COTTISH
D
ISCOVERY OF
A
MERICA

O
nce upon a time the inhabitants of the remote islands off the coasts of the North Atlantic had a particularly brutal custom toward visitors. If a storm blew them ashore, the islanders would rush from their homes, kill the survivors, and divide the booty. The practice gives a new dimension to the phrase “tourist trap.” It was from these dire consequences that a chance meeting occurred that came to unite two of the greatest families of the pre-Columbian seafaring world, Sinclair and Zeno.

Henry Sinclair was the earl of the Orkneys. These windswept islands that lie off the northernmost point of Scotland had been inhabited by Scots, Picts, and—before Sinclair’s day—Norse settlers.
¹
His family had received these lands through inheritance and marriage. The Sinclairs already owned large stretches of land in the Scottish northlands and strategic property near Edinburgh, which had been a reward for fighting alongside William the Conqueror in
A.D.
1066. In 1390 Henry Sinclair
was showing his strength in his new possessions by sailing there with his fleet. His arrival came just in the nick of time for Niccolo Zeno, an Italian of royal blood who had traveled north as an adventurer. Zeno’s father was a nobleman descended from one of the strongest, wealthiest families of Venice. His brother Carlo, a naval war hero, had saved Venice from a Genoese invasion. Not one to live in the shadow of his brother’s glory, Niccolo was out to make a name for himself. On tiny Fer Island, however, he almost lost his life.

He had sailed from Venice north up the Atlantic along the coast of Britain and planned to explore still farther north. On this tiny island, between the Shetlands and the Orkneys, Zeno’s ship ran aground on a reef just off the shore. The islanders there still have a custom called
grindadrap,
which means whale hunt, but the term does not come close to describing the gruesome scene.
²
Anywhere between a handful and a group of a hundred pilot whales will swim close to the shore, and the war cry
grint,
goes out through the island. Within minutes the entire population is on the scene carrying everything from ten-inch knives to harpoons. Men in powerboats in modern times force the whales to shore. If the event takes place at a sloping beach, many of the whales will be forced on to the beach, where groups stand ready for them. A handful of men will rush a beached whale, thrusting their knives into the whale’s spinal marrow and causing the whale to thrash violently and thus break its own spinal cord. More men then descend on the whale and attack it with knives until the bay froths with its hot pink blood. Lawrence Millman describes the modern scene in
Last Places,
complete with the image of local children playing with a whale kidney and heart as their parents complete the butchery. All of the islanders eat well, since all would share in the bounty. The Lonely Planet travel guide to the Faeroes describes the scene as a “Greenpeace sympathizers’ nightmare” and goes on to say that “to most Faeroese [it is] as much a part of life as Christmas.”
³

Just as the whales are considered fair game today, so were the explorers and windswept fishing boats of a few centuries ago. The islanders were ready to
grindadrap
Zeno and his crew with their ten-inch fishing knives until the earl of the Orkneys arrived at the last minute. Henry Sinclair, their nominal ruler, dispersed the crowd and spared the sailors’
lives. This fortuitous meeting of Niccolo Zeno and Henry Sinclair became a momentous event for both of them. The two seafarers swapped tales of their adventures and their knowledge of modern warfare. Sinclair had heard of Niccolo’s famous brother Carlo. Called the “Lion of Venice” for his role in the Genoese-Venetian War, he was famous throughout the world.
⁴
The Crusades also had brought the not-too-distant ancestors of Henry Sinclair in touch with the Zeno family—Scots and Britons had taken Venetian ships on the last leg of travel to the Holy Lands.

Sinclair was impressed enough by the Zeno name to appoint Niccolo as his admiral. Niccolo wrote home to another brother, Antonio, of his appointment by “Prince” Henry Sinclair and instructed Antonio to join him in Scotland.
⁵
Sinclair and Zeno joined forces to assert the Sinclair claim to the islands around Scotland. Niccolo, the explorer, traveled the lands that Sinclair had inherited around Scotland and even made a trip to Greenland on his patron’s behalf, where he mapped the coastline.

Henry Sinclair had learned that lands existed west of Greenland from a Faeroese fisherman who had been captured during a voyage to the Grand Banks. The fisherman’s story was remarkable. He described his capture by natives in this strange land and how he had met a man living with his captors who spoke Latin and had books. He traveled south in the new land with six other fishermen who had been with him when their ship was wrecked. In the south they fell victim to cannibals, who ritually murdered his companions but spared him because he taught them how to fish with a net. He was allowed to return to the north through a land called Drogio and finally found his way back to Estotiland. From there he built a vessel large enough to make the eastern crossing to Europe.

The fisherman described Estotiland as being smaller than Iceland, from where his original fleet had started. He said that this land had a great mountain in the center and four rivers. The people there had traded with “Engroueland” (Greenland), receiving goods for the furs and pitch they brought from their own country. Sinclair heard this story in 1397, and the next year he set sail west to see firsthand these lands beyond Greenland. He was no stranger to the existence of Greenland. The bishop of Orkney had been sent there by Pope Boniface IX in 1394, and it was
a Sinclair ship that provided passage for the bishop. The Church in Greenland was centered in Gardar, a settlement on the western coast of that island. From western Greenland to Canada is not a longer distance than the number of miles from there to Iceland.

By the time Henry Sinclair was ready to make the voyage, Niccolo’s brother Antonio had joined them. Before the journey could take place, Niccolo died, and so it was Antonio Zeno who accompanied Henry Sinclair to America and recorded the entire history of the voyage. Antonio inherited his brother’s titles and wealth, although he never received the title admiral from the earl. Part of this inheritance included the maps and reports compiled by Niccolo, who had spent his last few years exploring and charting the coast on a three-ship expedition. The voyage of Henry Sinclair and Antonio Zeno was preserved for posterity in the maps and letters that Antonio sent to Venice, which were published in 1558. They recorded the first expedition since the Norse crossed the Atlantic. Zeno even sent home a map of the New World.

It is possible that Sinclair already knew of lands west of Greenland. The Sinclair family had Norse connections through marriage, and they were aware of the Norse settlements in the western isles. Sinclair may have known of lands in America even before the fisherman told him of his capture. The most intriguing part of the fisherman’s tale might have been the warmer climates described in comparison to the frozen northern isles inhabited and explored by the Norse. The story of the discovery of America loses part of the drama without the tales of the sailor’s fears of ships toppling off the edge of the known and flat land, but such tales are fiction. The fact that the Earth was round was understood from at least Roman times. Pliny the Elder’s
Natural History,
compiled in the first century, records the controversy concerning the measurement of the circumference of the Earth. Such calculations had been debated more than a thousand years earlier. By Henry Sinclair’s day the eastern coast of Canada had been reached by intrepid Norse sailors for hundreds of years. In fact, this chain of knowledge had been unbroken as evidenced by the records that became known as the Norse sagas and by the communications between Rome and the far-flung bishops of the Church. Discovery, then, becomes a relative term.

The Voyage of Sinclair and Zeno

In 1398 Henry Sinclair and Antonio Zeno were ready to sail, but their expedition was marred by the death of the fisherman just three days before they were to embark. He had given Zeno and Sinclair directions in terms that medieval seafarers understood. They measured distance from their home in terms of the height of the sun. The altitude of the sun was calculated with a tool called the astrolabe. This tool combined with a shadow board allowed the sailors to calculate latitude. The journey would go on.

The expedition started in Scotland, and as seems to have been the custom for such western voyages, it was made by hopping from one island to the next. From Scotland, through the Orkneys, past tiny Fer Island, and then farther north. The Faeroes, a group of islands two days north, were most likely the first planned stop. There is some disagreement among later historians trying to trace the voyage—the result of variations in spelling. On Antonio’s map, Fer Island, where Sinclair had rescued Niccolo, was written as “FerIslanda,” and later as “Frisland.” Fer Island is only one day away from the Orkneys, and although sailors liked the landmarks, it was unnecessary to stop so close to the home base.

In an article on the voyage written in 1951, William Herbert Hobbs claimed that Iceland was also called Frisland.
⁶
Tim Severin, author of
The Brendan Voyage,
studied pre-Columbian Atlantic crossings and declared that the Faeroes were just where Zeno said they were.
⁷
Faer
meant “sheep” in the Old Norse language, and “Faer-Eyjaer” was the Norse name given to the Faeroes, where, as noted earlier, sheep raising was the main industry.
⁸
Fishermen from the Hebrides called the Faeroes the “Faraways,” which was most likely a pun in their language, a mixture of Old Norse and Old English. The “Faraway” Faeroes were really only two days’ sailing.

From the sixth century onward Irish hermits had set sail with their sheep to the western islands to live in peace and freedom from Norse attacks. The Norse arrived in the ninth century. Iceland was also reached by these early Irish, and the Norse could have easily applied the Faer-Eyjaer label to Iceland as well.

North of Fer Island are the Shetlands, a more suitable place to take on stores or seek shelter from bad weather. Antonio’s letter indicates that there was bad weather and that they stayed in the Shetlands for a week before pushing north. When the winds were better they took off for the Faeroes, but again a storm intervened. The plan of the Sinclair expedition was to follow the Viking route west. After passing the Faeroes, they would have reached Iceland, where food and supplies could be found. From Iceland, Sinclair’s crew was adept enough to sail directly to Newfoundland without first going north to Greenland. The bad weather changed the plans, and the ships passed Iceland and made one unscheduled short stop on the route to North America, which would cast doubt on the whole voyage. The island in question was called Icaria.
⁹
Either it does not exist anymore, or modern historians are simply unable to identify it.

The narrative of the Zeno expedition records that between Iceland and Greenland they stopped at Icaria, which was ruled by a king. They encountered the openly hostile forces of the king among whom only one man, an Icelander, could speak a language that Sinclair could understand. The Icelander told them they could not have permission to land. Through the interpreter, Sinclair learned that the “king” of Icaria refused to engage in commerce with any foreigners, and at best he would allow one of them to stay. The rest of the group could either leave Icaria without harm, which they did, or face a battle in which every inhabitant of Icaria was ready to fight to the death. Sinclair was further informed that Icaria was made up of those who had fled before religious persecution and Viking plundering, and they were not ready to flee again. The expedition had no desire to engage in warfare.

Sinclair instructed his ships to circle the island to avoid the hostile inhabitants and find a suitable landing. The islanders persisted, however, following Sinclair’s ships as they circled the island. It was decided that the expedition would press on without supplies. From Icaria the expedition sailed directly past Cape Race on the coast of Greenland, where Norse ships in the past had stopped to take on supplies. Zeno reports that while they were now running low on supplies, they did not believe they had far to travel before reaching a safer landfall.