John Cabot

Italian explorer

• Born: c. 1450
• Birthplace: Genoa? (now in Italy)
• Died: c. 1498
• Place of death: Unknown

Cabot, the first of a long and continuous line of European explorers of North America, persuaded the English to explore new lands beyond the western horizon and laid the foundations of England’s claim to and eventual control of the North American continent.

Early Life

John Cabot (KAB-eht) was born probably in Genoa and was given the name Juan Caboto. By the early 1460’s, he had moved to Venice, and in the late 1470’s he became a citizen and married a Venetian named Mattea. Venice was then the center for Asian goods, especially spices, entering the European market. Thus Caboto became a merchant in the spice trade. He learned what he could about the trade by reading the works of Marco Polo. A desire for direct knowledge and a willingness to venture his life prompted the young merchant to disguise himself as a Muslim and make the pilgrimage to Mecca. It is doubtful the knowledge he gained through reading or travel helped him. He was the only person in a city of wealthy merchants engaged in a trade that was already beginning to diminish, thanks to the Turkish control of the eastern Mediterranean.

Seeking broader economic opportunity, Caboto and his family settled in Valencia in 1490. Juan Caboto, the Venetian, as he became known, developed a reputation as a cartographer and navigator. In 1492, Caboto presented local officials with a proposal for harbor improvements. The project material was forwarded to King Ferdinand, then residing in Barcelona two hundred miles along the coast above Valencia. Caboto had several audiences with the ruler to discuss the harbor proposal. That royal approval followed suggests how persuasive the arguments and the plans of the foreign expert could be. Unfortunately, the project was later abandoned. What is important about this incident is that it brought Juan Caboto to Barcelona at the time when Christopher Columbus entered to announce that he had reached the land of the great khan.

Caboto was skeptical. There was no evidence that Columbus had reached the densely populated and highly cultivated lands described by Marco Polo. Caboto tried to persuade potential backers in Seville that Columbus had reached only an island partway to his destination. Thus the wealth of the Indies could yet be attained by organizing an expedition under Caboto. While some Spaniards shared the doubts of Caboto, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella did not. Besides, given the choice between two men from Genoa, it made sense to support the one who had already crossed the Atlantic Ocean and had returned with gold. Like Columbus, Caboto decided to move to where support for his project might be found.

In the late fifteenth century, Bristol was, after London, England’s most active port, and its venturesome spirit was unmatched anywhere. Its ships carried local wool to Iceland and returned with dried codfish. Bristol merchants dominated the wine trade with Spain and Portugal. Always ready to try new trades, the merchants had sent ships to the eastern Mediterranean and to the islands of the Atlantic especially Madeira. From the 1480’s, Bristol ships made voyages of discovery seeking the legendary Isle of Brasil in the western Atlantic. The men of Bristol, both merchants and mariners, had more experience in the waters of the Atlantic than any men in any country. Naturally, John Cabot, as he was known thenceforth, selected Bristol as his new home and base of exploration.

Life’s Work

Soon after his arrival in 1495, Cabot persuaded several Bristol merchants to try the westward route to Asia. A westward course in the high latitudes would bring a ship to the northeast part of Asia, which, Cabot argued, was much closer to Europe than the tropical region reached by Columbus. Cabot constructed a globe to demonstrate the advantages of his route. Like Columbus, Cabot reduced the size of the earth and increased the eastward limits of Asia to shorten the western route. The Cabot proposal was sent to King Henry VII .

King Henry was famous for persuading reluctant subjects to make large contributions to the royal treasury. To such a ruler, Cabot’s proposal was quite attractive. It was a second chance for the ruler who had rejected, in 1489, a similar scheme by Bartholomeo Columbus on behalf of his brother Christopher. Still, Henry VII was not about to risk his own money in a doubtful venture. He granted a patent to Cabot in March, 1496, to discover islands in the world unknown to Christians. Cabot would govern and receive the revenue (minus one-fifth for Henry VII) of the towns and islands he could “conquer, occupy and possess.”

With the royal patent and the financial backing of some Bristol merchants, Cabot put to sea, only to return a short time later. Officially he returned because of a shortage of provisions. Unofficially, the crew probably lacked confidence in the foreign expert and decided to end the voyage. Masters of ships at this time had limited powers and generally acceded to the wishes of their crew. On his next voyage, for example, Cabot followed the wrong course and made his landfall on the French coast because his crew did not trust the more northerly (and correct) heading proposed by Cabot.

In May, 1497, Cabot tried again. His small ship was named Matthew probably an Anglicized version of his wife’s name, Mattea. Cabot and his crew of eighteen men sailed toward the southwest tip of Ireland and then headed directly west. The passage was swift, thanks to smooth seas and fair winds. Land was sighted on June 24, only thirty-three days after leaving Ireland. As late as the eighteenth century, ships might take three or four months to make the same passage. Some scholars believe that Cabot’s speed is attributable to the fact that he timed his departure and course to coincide with favorable weather patterns learned by earlier voyagers from Bristol. Cabot probably made landfall at the northern tip of Newfoundland. That particular site had been settled briefly by Vikings nearly five hundred years earlier. The crew of the Matthew went ashore and raised the standards of Henry VII, the pope, and Venice. Cabot claimed possession of the land but wisely kept his men near the water’s edge; they had found evidence of local inhabitants. This brief ceremony was the only time that the men ventured ashore.

For the next month Cabot coasted along the foreign shore. Circumstances suggest that the Matthew sailed along the eastern coast of Newfoundland and then headed southwest past Nova Scotia to Maine. The southwest heading of the land mass matched the one Cabot had predicted for the easternmost area of Asia. The ship then turned home, crossed the Atlantic in fifteen days, and arrived at Bristol on August 6, 1497.

Cabot wasted no time. He left Bristol within hours of his arrival, bound for London and Henry VII. Four days later the king received Cabot and presented him with honors and a pension (the latter to be paid by the Bristol Customs House). There was general agreement that Cabot had reached the northwest corner of Asia and that the next voyage would reach the Indies and the much-desired spice trade. Bristol merchants were also excited over the vast quantities of fish reported off the “new found land.” Whatever became of the western passage, Bristol now possessed a new source of fish to replace the declining trade with Iceland. Thus Cabot’s brief voyage of 1497 promised rich returns to merchants prepared to risk the trade with Asia and fish to men of more modest means and ambitions.

There was no shortage of backers for the follow-up voyage. Henry VII outfitted a large ship, and London and Bristol furnished four more vessels. This was not a voyage of exploration. Cabot expected to establish an island base to service British ships making the long passage to the Indies. If Cabot failed to build and hold such a base, then he possessed nothing and lacked a claim to any revenue from the Asian trade. Discovery entailed more than simply finding a site: One had to inhabit the site. (Columbus met this requirement when his flagship was wrecked and its crew built a camp ashore to await their leader’s return from Spain.) Cabot’s fleet departed in May, 1498. A storm struck the fleet, and one damaged ship entered an Irish port. There was no more news of the fleet.

There have been many guesses about the fate of Cabot’s fleet. The discovery by Portuguese explorers in 1501 of Newfoundland Indians with several items of Italian origin provides a possible clue. Perhaps Cabot did establish his base during the mild Newfoundland summer. If so, then no one would have been prepared for the Arctic winter conditions common to the northern part of the island.

Significance

Cabot, whose activities gave Great Britain its claim to North America, remains almost unknown to this day. There are few references to him. Unlike Columbus, Cabot left no journals to detail his work. Whereas Columbus had sons who preserved and enlarged their father’s claim to fame, Cabot had Sebastian, a scoundrel who claimed his father’s work as his own.

Cabot was not the first European to set on the North American continent. The Vikings certainly came earlier, and in turn they may have been preceded by Romans and Greeks a thousand years before. Cabot’s arrival, however, was different. He was the first of a constant stream of European explorers. Cabot ended the ancient isolation of the North American continent. The charts he made during the voyage of 1497 have long since disappeared. His contemporaries, however, made use of the charts. Juan de La Cosa’s famous world map of 1500 shows a series of Tudor banners along the coast visited by Cabot.

It is customary to note the similarities in the lives and careers of Cabot and Columbus. Both were born in the same Italian city at about the same time (although in Cabot’s case, place of birth is not certain), and both convinced foreign monarchs to back a search for a westward route to Asia. While Columbus achieved greater fame and fortune, he lived long enough to suffer greater disgrace. Cabot the explorer simply disappeared and left all controversy behind. He died an explorer’s death

Bibliography

Davis, Ralph. The Rise of the Atlantic Economies. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1973. Although only the first chapter of this book deals with fifteenth century exploration, the author’s description and analysis of the maritime trades that used the Atlantic Ocean is unequaled.

Firstbrook, Peter. The Voyage of the Matthew: John Cabot and the Discovery of North America. London: BBC Books, 1997. Book chronicling the re-creation of Cabot’s 1497 voyage by a modern crew sailing in an exact replica of the Matthew. Combines narrative of the first journey with a narrative of the journey commemorating it. Includes bibliographic references and index.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. The most famous maritime scholar and the leading authority on Columbus presents detailed chapters on all known explorers. The book is distinguished by excellent charts and photographs of the possible landfalls of the various explorers.

Parry, J. H. Discovery of the Sea. New York: Dial Press, 1974. The preeminent maritime historian discusses the development of skills and technologies that opened up maritime exploration in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Parsons, John. On the Way to Cipango: John Cabot’s Voyage of 1498. St. John’s, Nfld: Creative, 1998. A meticulously researched attempt to reconstruct Cabot’s final voyage and determine what really happened to the explorer and his crew. Includes illustrations, maps, and bibliographic resources.

Penrose, Boles. Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952. A fascinating study of how scholars and navigators, from the time of ancient Greece to fifteenth century Europe, viewed the world.

Pope, Peter Edward. The Many Landfalls of John Cabot. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1997. In-depth study of the historical disputes over the exact location of Cabot’s landfall in North America. Looks at the various plausible candidates for Cabot’s landing point, as well as the competing national traditions that attempt to appropriate Cabot for their own purposes. Includes illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Quinn, David Beers. England and the Discovery of America: 1481-1620. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. Though working with very limited sources, the author presents a strong case for the discovery of North America by English seamen before Columbus.

Skelton, R. A. Explorers’ Maps: Chapters in the Cartographic Record of Geographical Discovery. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958. An outstanding description of how the discoveries of explorers were incorporated into the rapidly changing world maps of sixteenth century cartographers.

Williamson, James A. The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery Under Henry VII. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962. In addition to presenting the best balanced account of Cabot’s work, the author has assembled all known documents about the explorer so that readers may draw their own conclusions.