Obsession propels scholar on long, lonesome voyage

PORT TOWNSEND — Among armchair sailors, Gunnar Thompson is a master mariner. He has navigated oceans and continents, east to west, pole to pole and back again — most of it without leaving his small home near the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Thompson's vessel is a historical time machine, guided by ancient maps and journals, and powered by a fertile imagination and an obsession with early exploration. And his mission is to sink what he considers the greatest myth in history: that Columbus discovered America.

"I'm proving that Columbus was not the first," he says. "Everybody beat Columbus."

Over the course of his 30-year journey, Thompson has written five books, all self-published, detailing what he believes to be conclusive evidence that, long before 1492, the Americas were explored repeatedly — by the ancient Chinese, Venetians, Egyptians, Romans, Vikings, Irish, English and who-knows-who-else.

He argues, for example, that a Chinese admiral named Zheng He, commanding a fleet of Chinese junks in the early 1400s, explored the coasts of the Americas. He believes that Marco Polo sailed with the Chinese into the Strait of Juan de Fuca and perhaps into Puget Sound in the 13th century. He is convinced that Sir Francis Drake sailed these waters some 300 years later. And he has copies of maps that he believes prove each claim.

Give him a chance, and he'll fill a room with his hand-copied or photocopied evidence — ancient Chinese maps that he believes depict Puget Sound and the Columbia River, Roman maps that show the Florida peninsula, ancient Chinese and European coins and other artifacts, and similarities between art motifs produced in Asia and among the ancient Aztecs and Incas.

Now he's compiled much of what he's learned into a 265-page, thoroughly illustrated volume called "Secret Voyages," or "True Adventure Stories from the Forbidden Chronicles of American Discovery," self-published last year by Misty Isles Press, Seattle.

"This book represents the culmination of nearly 30 years of research," he says, lifting his hefty volume.

But most of the time, Thompson sails single-handed. Established historians dismiss his theories. Google his name, and you'll find pages of criticism from academics, many of whom seem outraged by his heresy.

"They seem to be very angry," Thompson says. "They don't like people questioning these things. But history is too important to be left to historians."

A skeptic in a "shed"

Thompson is an affable 60-year-old bachelor with a mop of dark brown hair over a round, Nordic face. He lives in a small "shed" he rents from a friend in a housing cooperative in uptown Port Townsend.

He attributes his skeptical nature to his parents. His father was an engineer and artist, his mother a nurse who crusaded for the polio vaccine before it was widely accepted. "They were troublemakers who taught me the value of truth," he says.

When he was a youth living in suburban Chicago, Thompson's family took cross-country car trips, stopping along the way at museums and Native American sites, where Thompson developed an early interest in art, history and anthropology.

At the University of Illinois, he asked more than his share of questions and learned to write "from an artistic standpoint." He went on to graduate school in anthropology, where he became fascinated by archaeology and by striking similarities between art forms from ancient China and the Americas.

"I was experimenting with other cultures and religions, and this didn't go over too well," he recalls.

Thompson moved on, and in time he grew accustomed to academics who did not welcome his maverick ideas. He taught anthropology but lost his job when he refused to conduct an exam that conflicted with an anti-war protest.

Eventually, he earned a Ph.D. in "rehabilitation counseling" and set out looking for a job. He taught at colleges from Wisconsin to Hawaii and the University of Washington, but he never earned crucial tenure. He kept moving, always keeping one hand in ancient art and maps, until he took a job in mental-health services in Port Townsend — "my last real job."

Since then, he's been devoted full time to his global quest, launching a Web site while writing and illustrating his books on ancient exploration.

Finally, another believer

Three years ago, Thompson finally found an intellectual ally in Gavin Menzies, a former British naval officer who has written his own controversial book, called "1421," (Penguin, 2004) about the pre-Columbian voyages of Zheng He. They spent three days in a Seattle motel room studying each other's maps and exchanging ideas. Menzies eventually wrote a glowing introduction to Thompson's new book.

Together, they've made some impact. They've given talks at the Library of Congress and at a couple of conferences. There have been stories in The Economist news magazine and on British television, focusing on a recently discovered Chinese map that Menzies and Thompson believe proves Chinese knowledge of the Americas long before Columbus.

But a little publicity only doubles the criticism. Historians argue that Thompson and Menzies essentially started with their conclusion and searched the globe for fragments of evidence to support it. "Given only one data point, you can draw any line you want to," one critic argues.

The theory that Marco Polo sailed these waters is a bit too far out for John Findlay, history chair at the University of Washington and an authority on Northwest history. But Findlay admits he is "intrigued" by the theory, shared by a few amateur historians in Canada and England, that Sir Francis Drake sailed into Northwest waters in 1579. "There's a strong desire for it to be true, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to disprove," he says.

Room for fresh theories

State historian David Nicandri isn't familiar with Thompson's work, but he remains open-minded. History is laced with gaps and unanswered questions that are fair game for researchers willing to test new theories, he says.

Nicandri cites the example of J. Harlen Bretz, the upstart geologist who in the 1920s theorized that much of the Eastern Washington landscape had been carved in a few days by a monumental ice-age flood. "He was derided by the establishment," Nicandri says. "But now he and his theory are accepted as a story of courageous perseverance against the dominant thinking of his day."

That describes perfectly how Thompson feels about his own work. "I'm reminded of the bumper sticker I see around Port Townsend," he says. "Don't believe anything until it's been officially denied."

The history establishment is hopelessly handicapped, he says, by its insistence on written documentation. Such records of ancient voyages either don't exist, or haven't been found, because they were systematically suppressed, censored or destroyed by ancient rulers intent on secrecy.

"For me, the real breakthrough came when I began to understand the importance of secrecy in early exploration," he says. "Why would Marco Polo lie about what he'd seen in the Americas? Because he worked for a maritime government [Venice] with a huge incentive to keep that information proprietary."

If journals were suppressed, maps tended to survive, passed along from one ship captain to the next, but always preserving the crucial information, he says.

That's the gist of "Secret Voyages." In each case, from the ancient Chinese to Drake, Thompson attempts to explain why and how the details were kept secret.

But the controversy continues, he says. "Academic historians hate Gavin Menzies and his book," Thompson says. "When he spoke at the Library of Congress, they tried to prevent it. I can't name a single historian who accepts our evidence — except in China."

Labors unrewarded

Challenging historical orthodoxy isn't easy. Literary agents won't look at his books. Publishers won't stick their necks out.

But these days, the Internet provides troublemakers a chance to bypass the establishment and confront conventional wisdom. So, whatever the historians think, Thompson's theories are out there, bouncing around the Web.

None of this pays Thompson's rent. His savings are almost gone, and soon he'll be back on the streets, looking for a job to support his obsession.

But he won't quit.

"I'm a reluctant detective," he says. "I'm an artist by nature, not a historian. But when an artist gets an inspiration, you have this need to express it."

Ross Anderson is a former Seattle Times reporter.