News 30. 1. 2016

The forgotten voyager – the story of an Irishman who discovered America

To this day St Nicholas’ Church in Galway is known to have been visited by Columbus in 1477 and it was supposedly here that Guillermo met Columbus and inspired him with tales of lands to the west that he had visited himself.

The legend of Saint Brendan’s voyage were said to have provided extra fuel for Columbus’ dreams. It is certainly not impossible that Guillermo could have reached America before 1492 as Leif Erikson and his band of Norsemen had already discovered America 500 years beforehand. Tim Severin’s reenactment of St. Brendan’s voyage proved that the 6th century monk may have even reached America centuries before that. So why not Guillermo? Unfortunately, the voyage of 1492 was to be his last.

Guillermo’s name can be seen on the list of 38 people left behind on what is now modern day Haiti to form the first European settlement in the New World. Although the Galway man lived in peace with the natives for a time, by Christmas of 1492 the locals rebelled and the entire garrison is believed to have been slaughtered. However, in the records of the Guillermo Herries League, a rumor persists of a daring escape in the pinnace of the Santa Maria by the Irishman and several others to the coast of Mexico, where they were shipwrecked near the mouth of the Mississippi river, in the vicinity of the present day city of New Orleans.

Despite the hopes of the league that championed his name, Herries never did provide the name for the new bridge in Chicago and the honor went to Leif Erikson. The facts, fiction and mysteries of this little-known Irish explorer remain in the archives of Galway University and, although we may never know how Guillermo died, we can be proud of the fact that he was part of such a significant event in world history.

Amanda Driscoll @irishcentral

Václav Bernard