The Magnificent Voyage of Christopher Columbus, a two-hour documentary on PBS, airs October 8 and will recount the history and epic adventure of Columbus' first Atlantic crossing, as a modern-day crew retraces Columbus' voyage, sailing replicas of his famous fleet.

Produced by WGBH in Boston, the film will be broadcast in high definition and is adapted from the critically acclaimed seven-part series, Columbus and the Age of Discovery (1991).

Check your local listings at www.pbs.org

The following is a Q&A with Executive Producer and Director Zvi Dor-Ner.

Q. Why did you focus on the First Voyage?

A. For me, that was an obvious decision. The first voyage of Christopher Columbus, in which he reached America for the first time, is arguably the most important voyage of discovery ever.

While other Europeans reached America before him, it was Columbus who brought the message back and triggered not only the European conquest of the Americas, but also an explosion of voyages of exploration and exploitation that created the European hegemony over the globe that lasted for half a millennium.

It is not by default that this voyage has become a symbol, a metaphor, if you will, for a grand venture and exploration.

Q. What was Columbus’ motivation for making the voyage?

Commercial opportunity… greed… Contrary to popular perception Columbus did not see himself as a scientist. He did not organize his voyages as a means to acquire new knowledge. He always intended the voyages to be an enterprise, a commercial venture, to find and exploit new efficient ways to trade with China - thus the idea of going east by sailing west.

As we followed his route and his logs on our sailing ship in the Caribbean, we were impressed by the degree in which greed was a constant in his attitude toward the newly discovered land and people he met. He was clearly taken by the beauty of the island and was full of admiration for the natives’ gentleness and generosity. But it was always coupled with plans to dominate and exploit. The Caribbean natives did not have a chance.

Q. How different was the experience of the recreated voyage from Columbus’ original venture?

A. The ocean is the same, alternatively benign and cruel, always indifferent to man’s acts and his intention. But everything else was different. For this crossing we successfully recreated the appearance and the sailing technology of Columbus’s time. The Pinta and the Nina were wonderful, little sailing ships and preformed as Columbus described (the replica of Santa Maria is a different story), but here the similarity ends. The replicas had big engines in addition to sails, GPS navigation instruments, maps and, if all else fails, a Spanish Navy escort. But even more important were the differences in the crews’ mindset. Columbus’ crew could not even imagine the world, as we know it today. Our modern crew could not forget or ignore all they knew about the world. As a result the emotional experience of the two crews was totally different. It remained a task for the filmmaker to recreate not only the voyage but also the emotional world of Columbus and his men.

Q. So, why was it important to recreate Columbus’ voyage at all?

A. For us, here at WGBH, it was a necessity. We needed vivid images to tell the story. Sailing in Columbus’s wake made it possible to bring to the viewers not only many of the images Columbus saw, but also, what you can see today, and how it changed as a result of his exploits.

When we where sailing to Baracoa on the North Eastern coast of Cuba we approached and entered the harbor exactly as he described it in his log, even locating the very spot where he erected a wooden cross at the harbor entrance and possibly the cross itself.

In addition, by sailing his route, we gained concrete information we could not have gotten from book research alone. Several debated questions such as where precisely did he land, where and how did the Santa Maria sink, and why did he make such a poor choice for the location of the first European settlement in America, could be better answered because our own voyage provided direct insight.

Q. What was Cuba to Columbus, and what was it like for you to be sailing into Cuba?

A. For us Cuba was a forbidden land. Sailing our American flagged schooner to Cuba we had to overcome the apprehension of two governments. Even as we drew near the shore we hadn’t yet received the confirmation from the Cuban authorities that we were welcome. And we were unable to reach anybody in Giabara (the port of entry for both us and Columbus) on the radio. So we were bringing a large sailing vessel into a small, poorly mapped harbor, with huge swells and breaking sea at the entrance to the bay. I think we were as tense as Columbus there.

For Columbus Cuba was Japan. That is why he so desperately looked for the Pagodas, for gold, and for Chinese trading ships, about all of which he read in the accounts of Marco Polo.

Columbus never realized where he really was. Till his death he was convinced that he discovered islands and land off the cost of Asia, “the Indies” in his parlance. The name we use now for the Caribbean “The West Indies,” is a leftover from his confusion.

But it was there, in the backwaters of Cuba, in the largely undeveloped Oriente Province, that I found the New World as Columbus saw it. It was the same beautifully lush yet gentle landscape reveled in the log. Exactly the same boat sheds that Columbus described with admiration still built by the locals today, and the same houses made of royal palm beams thatched with palm leaves that both Columbus and I marveled at.

Posted: September 18, 2007