Several dramatic events in other parts of Europe suddenly revived Spanish interest in those far-off islands of the Indies. From Portugal came the news that a fleet of four ships had set out under the command of Vasco da Gama to reach the Indies by the long and difficult way around Africa. The Portuguese were not about to leave all the glory to Spain. And the Spanish ambassador in England informed his Sovereigns that “a person had come, like Colon, to propose to the king of England an enterprise like that of the Indies.” Ferdinand and Isabella instructed their ambassador to warn Henry VII that such an enterprise would infringe on the rights of Spain and Portugal. But before that message could be delivered, Henry VII had already issued a patent to one John Cabot, authorizing him “to sail to the east, west and north . . . to seek and discover all the islands, countries, regions or provinces of pagans in whatever part of the world.”
John Cabot, who thus became the actual discoverer of North America, is a shadowy figure at best. A few dates, a few references in letters of the period, and a few details here and there make up the sum total of what is known about him. There is no record at all of what he looked like, when or precisely where he was born, or in what sort of business he had been engaged. Like Christopher Columbus, he apparently was born in Genoa, and after living in Venice for some time, had arrived in England about 1490, and there changed his name from his native Giovanni Caboto to John Cabot. He and his family made their home in Bristol, then the principal seaport in England and the center of the Iceland fisheries. The merchants of Bristol had become very active in maritime enterprises, and their ships often made voyages far out into the Atlantic. They may even have been familiar with the Norsemen’s Vinland stories; at any rate, from a letter by the Spanish ambassador in London it would appear that as early as 1491 several expeditions had already sailed from Bristol at the instigation of that same John Cabot in search of the legendary islands of Brazil and Antilla.
The news of Columbus’ first voyage stirred up great excitement among the friends of Cabot in England, and it was quickly decided to try a similar expedition. Under the subsequent patent from Henry VII, this voyage seems to have been made with a single ship named the Matthew. A contemporary manuscript, still preserved in the British Museum, says there were three or four others, but “to this present moneth came nevir knowledge of their exployt.” There were less than twenty men aboard the small Matthew, and Sebastian, John Cabot’s oldest son, probably accompanied his father when they sailed from Bristol in May 1497.
There are few facts about this Atlantic crossing. They sailed north and west, touching Ireland, and then headed west across the Atlantic. Just as Columbus had tried to sail along 28 degrees latitude, hoping to hit Cipango, so Cabot tried sailing along a high, short latitude, hoping to reach Cathay, northern China. On June 24, they made landfall on the coast of the “terrytory of the Great Cham.” But by the end of July they were already back again in Bristol, and on August 10, thrifty Henry VII gave “hym that founde the new isle the munificent largess of 10 pounds” with which to celebrate the achievement. Henry had been king for only twelve years, but he had already begun to hoard secretly and systematically the enormous amounts of funds which on his death provided his son with £ 1,800,000, an incredible wealth in those days. It is typical of the man that out of this amazing hoard he could spare no more than ten pounds for this skillful mariner who had brought him the prospect of an Eastern empire of untold wealth. But Henry VII did promise his support for a larger expedition in 1498.
The population of England, however, celebrated the event as if Cabot had already discovered the islands of Brazil and Antilla and all the wealth of the kingdom of the Great Khan. A Venetian visitor to London wrote in August 1497, that “honors are heaped upon Cabot; he is called the Grand Admiral; he is dressed in silk, and the English run after him like madmen.”
In February 1498, Henry VII issued a patent for a second voyage, granting “to Our well-beloved John Kaboto, Venician,” the power to impress six English ships and to enlist any English sailors who would sign on willingly. Early in May of that year, five ships departed Bristol, and the Spanish ambassador informed his royal masters that the fleet was expected back by September. In that month, one of the ships took refuge in an Irish port, but the other four never returned. A contemporary historian wrote, somewhat uncharitably, that Cabot “found his new lands only in the ocean’s bottom, to which he and his ships are thought to have sunk, since, after that voyage, he was never heard of more.”
The few notes that exist of the Cabots during these years do not reveal very much about the part of the American continent they had visited. A map, made after a drawing by Sebastian Cabot, has at the north of the island of Cape Breton the words “prima terra vista” – the first land seen. Starting from this point, the ships might have passed the Prince Edward Islands, coasted around the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and passed out through the Strait of Belle Isle to the northern coast of Newfoundland. But since the Matthew was back in Bristol by the end of July, it is doubtful that so long a voyage could have been made in only five weeks.
But England wasted a great opportunity. Nothing was ever done to colonize or further explore the lands that Cabot had found. While rival Spain was about to achieve world leadership through the wealth which was to pour from the Central and South American regions, the Tudor monarchs made only the feeblest attempts to follow up on Cabot’s voyages. But if Cabot, like Columbus, did not survive to see the results of his discovery, England much later made his voyages the basis for British claims to the entire North American continent.