Was Christopher Columbus a pirate?
There are some people who believe he was a pirate but the accepted theory is that he was not a pirate. “One theory is that Christopher Columbus served under the French corsair Guillaume Casenove Coulon and took this as his surname. Then at a later date airbrushed his past, in order to hide his piracy. There is no strong evidence for this. It appears more probable that in 1476 Columbus was on a Genoese vessel in a convoy bound for Lisbon. The Spinola and Di Negro families had organized a trading venture to England. Five vessels sailed from Genoa, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, and entered the Atlantic. Near Europe’s extreme southwest point at Cape St. Vincent, they were attacked by French pirates cmmanded by a French corsair called Coulon, Colombo, or Colomb.” http://www.christopher-columbus.eu/who-was-columbus/pirate-corsair.htm A short biography of him can be found in this 1911
