Cristoforo Cristoforo (Italian Cristoforo Colombo, Spanish Cristóbal Colón) (1451-1506), Italian-Spanish navigator who sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a route to Asia but reached fame landing instead in the Caribbean Sea. Columbus was born in Genoa, Italy. His father was a weaver and Christopher is believed to have taken up this trade as a young man. Information about the beginning of his seafaring career is uncertain, but the independent city-state of Genoa had a busy port and he may have sailed as a commercial agent in his youth. In the mid-1470s he made his first trading voyage to the island of Khíos (or Chios), in the Aegean Sea. In 1476 he set sail with a convoy bound for England. Legend has it that the fleet was attacked by pirates off the coast of Portugal, where Columbus' ship was sunk, but he swam ashore and took refuge in Lisbon. Having settled there, where his brother Bartolomeo Colombo worked as a cartographer, he married in 1479 the daughter of the governor of the island of Porto Santo. Diego Columbus, the only child of this marriage, was born in 1480. Based on information acquired during his travels, and by reading and studying charts and maps, Christopher concluded that the earth was 25% smaller than previously thought , and composed mainly of earth. Based on these false beliefs he decided that Asia could be reached quickly by sailing west. In 1484 he submitted his theories to John II, King of Portugal, asking him to finance a westward crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. His proposal was rejected by a Royal Maritime Commission because of his faulty calculations and because Portuguese ships were already rounding Africa. Shortly thereafter, Columbus moved to Spain, where his plans gained the support of several influential people and he secured an introduction, in 1486, to Isabella I, Queen of Castile. Around this time, Columbus, then a widower, met Beatriz Enriquez, who became his lover and mother of his second son, Ferdinand Columbus. In Spain, as in Portugal, a royal commission rejected his plan. Columbus continued to seek support, however, and in April 1492 his tenacity was rewarded: Ferdinand V, King of Castile, and Queen Isabella agreed to sponsor the expedition. The signed contract provided that Columbus would become viceroy of all the territories identified by him; other rewards included a hereditary peerage and a tenth of all precious metals found in his jurisdiction.