Sebastian Cabot

“ According to Raimondo di Soncino, who wrote on 18 Dec. 1497, these discoveries were recorded by John Cabot on a map, and also on a globe, which are now lost (Weise, p. 192) . Nothing is known of the termination of this second voyage, and from this period the history of John Cabot ceases.
It is much to be feared, from the ambiguous and often contradictory accounts of the voyages of 1497 to 1499 in contemporary chronicles, that nearly if not all the discoveries that are usually assigned to Sebastian Cabot are really those of his father. According to Stow (p. 862) Sebastian (?) ”

“ He saw no human beings, so that the story of men dressed in bear-skins and otherwise described in the Legend must have been seen by Sebastian Cabot on a later voyage. The extensive sailing up and down the coast described by chroniclers from conversations with Sebastian Cabot many years afterwards, though apparently told as occurring on the voyage of discovery,—as only one voyage is ever mentioned,—must have taken place on a later voyage. ”

“ On 21 April 1550 the privy council in England replied, ‘that as for Sebastian Cabot, he of himself refused to go either into Spain or to the emperor, and that he being of that mind, and the King of England's subject, no reason or equity would that he should be forced or compelled to go against his will’ (Harl. MS. 523, fol. 6) . This application was renewed in the reign of Queen Mary on 9 Sept. 1553, but without result. Hakluyt records (iii. pref.) that King Edward, in addition to his pension, advanced him to be grand pilot of England. ”

“ This was evidently a scheme of colonization. Peter Martyr says, if this is the voyage which he is describing, that Sebastian Cabot—for he never speaks of John—furnished two ships at his own charge, and Sebastian Cabot, in Ramusio, says that the King furnished them, and the Bristol merchants are supposed to have furnished three others; and they took out three hundred men. [132] The Fabian manuscript quoted by Hakluyt says they sailed in the beginning of May; and De Ayala says they were expected back by September. There is no doubt that Sebastian Cabot accompanied his father on this voyage. ”

“ To those who, in the teeth of contemporary evidence, prefer the claims of Sebastian, the following extracts may be offered; the first from Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, who wrote in the early sixteenth century, the second from Ramusio. Martyr writes:
"These north seas have been searched by one Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian born, whom, being yet but in matter an infant, his parents carried with them into England, having occasion to resort thither for trade of merchandises, as is the manner of the Venetians to leave no part of the world unsearched to obtain riches. ”

“ In the same year, 1555, the Marian attack on English heretics began and the sea became safer than the land for those who held strong anti-Papal views. The Royal Navy was neglected even more than it had been lately by the Lord Protector. But fighting traders, privateers, and pirates multiplied. The seaports were hotbeds of hatred against Mary, Philip, Papal Rome, and Spanish Inquisition. In 1556 Sebastian Cabot reappears, genial and prosperous as ever, and dances out of history at the sailing of the Serchthrift, bound northeast for Muscovy. ”

“ But Ramusio, as has been shown, was not very careful as to his facts, and Sebastian Cabot may well have been in a boasting mood when he wrote his letter to him. Sebastian was undoubtedly prone to misstatements on minor points, such as the place of his birth and his discoveries in the art of navigation, and in this respect he was neither above nor below the general standard of morality displayed by the adventurers of his time. With this exception, the above analysis shows that Ramusio’s ‘Mantuan gentleman’ is responsible for practically all the demonstrably impossible elements in the story. ”

“ G. E. Weare, Cabot’s Discovery of North America, 1897; C. R. Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot, 1898; G. P. Winship, Cabot Bibliography, 1900; H. P. Biggar, Voyages of the Cabots and Corte Reals, 1903. Of these authors Mr. Winship is the only one who takes the view that there were three voyages, and he inclines to the belief that Sebastian’s voyage took place in 1508–9.
69. One of these three Portuguese is in all probability the ‘labrador’ mentioned by Santa Cruz as having taken intelligence of discoveries to Henry VII.
70. ”

“ Strange is it that of all those who sought this coast, the name of John Cabot, the first adventurer who landed upon it, should be so seldom mentioned: and History, called by a philosopher a Splendid Lie, should prove its title to mendacity, by giving all the glory of the land, "primum visa" to his son, Sebastian. To John Cabot, a Venetian, then a merchant of Bristol, England, in the reign of the Seventh Henry, is all the honor to be ascribed of setting the first European foot upon the then desert wilds that now bloom, the Garden of the United States ”

“ No date is given, and but one voyage is spoken of. It may be said that Peter Martyr is not here writing a history of the voyage or voyages of the Cabots; that the account is merely brought into his narrative incidentally, as it were, to illustrate a subject upon which he was then writing,—namely, on a “search” into “the secret causes of Nature,” or the reason “why the sea runneth with so swift course from the east into the west;” and that he cites the observations of Sebastian Cabot, in the region of the Baccalaos, for his immediate purpose. ”

“ The passage already cited concludes [24] thus in the Latin: “And also from the experience and practice of long sea-service of the most excellent John Cabot, a Venetian by nation, and of my author [the map is here made to speak for itself] Sebastian his son, the most learned of all men in knowledge of the stars and the art of navigation, who have discovered a certain part of the globe for a long time hidden from our people.” ”

“ A modern writer suggests in excuse that he feared to excite the jealous displeasure of the King of Spain, in whose service he then was, by attracting attention to the prior discovery of a continent which his Catholic majesty would fain claim as his own. Perhaps, however, as the conversation was transcribed not at second, but at third hand, the indictment may be best taken with the proverbial grain of salt; and, certainly, both on Sebastian's portrait and on his famous "Mappamundi," the claims of the elder Cabot are acknowledged. ”

“ About two years afterwards, Sebastian Cabot, the son, again sailed for Labrador, by way of Iceland, and thence proceeding southward 4along the shores of the new country advanced into a more hospitable climate, until want of provisions compelled him to return. On a subsequent voyage, steering still to his favourite north, in search of a north-west passage, he entered Hudson’s Bay, but was now compelled to return in consequence of insubordination among his crews. ”

“ Untruthful and covetous of honours and gold, Sebastian has been proved; but that he was also kindly, gentle, and humane, there is no doubt; while his mode of treating the natives may be gathered from his "Instructions" for the ordering of a similar expedition in later years.
While in the employ of Spain, Cabot made his "Mappamundi," or Map of the World. This famous map, which not only presented his own and his father's discoveries, but those of Spain and Portugal down to his own time, was drawn on parchment and illuminated with gold and colours. ”

“ The brief references in the manuscript of Alonzo de Santa Cruz effectually clear up one point, namely, the suggestion that Sebastian tried to deceive his contemporaries in Spain by claiming his father’s exploits as his own. There could never have been much probability in such a charge, in view of the number of persons who must have been living during the period 1512–47 with personal recollections of all the circumstances; and it is 95definitely and finally swept away by Santa Cruz’s allusion, as a matter of common knowledge, to the explorations of John Cabot. ”

“ His account of a temperate climate suitable for growing dye-wood, of forest trees, and of a country so fair that it seemed the gateway of the enchanted lands of the East, is quite unsuited to the bare and forbidding aspect of Labrador. Cape Breton island was probably the place of Cabot's landing. Its balmy summer climate, the abundant fish of its waters, fit in with Cabot's experiences. The evidence from maps, one of which was made by Cabot's son Sebastian, points also to Cape Breton as the first landing-place of English sailors in America. ”

“ Soon after receiving this commission from the king, John Cabot died; and his son Sebastian, who was also a skilful navigator, set sail in 1497, with the express view of discovering a north-west passage to the eastern spice islands. Directing his course by his father's journals to the same point, he proceeded beyond the 67th degree of north latitude; and it is affirmed, that he would have advanced farther, had not his crew turned mutinous and ungovernable, and obliged him to return to the degree of latitude 56. ”

“ In the year 1497 John Cabot, a Venetian, and his son Sebastian discovered on the 24th of June, about five in the morning, that land to which no person had before ventured to sail, which they named Prima Vista or first seen, because, as I believe, it was the first part seen by them from the sea. The inhabitants use the skins and furs of wild beasts for garments, which they hold in as high estimation as we do our finest clothes. ”

“ It cannot be denied that he showed a strange want of generosity on the point, his first recorded reference to them being found in the map of 1544. But the neglect to mention a fact which is common knowledge is not so serious a fault as the withholding a secret generally unknown. From the references 102to John Cabot made by Alonzo de Santa Cruz, it would seem that Charles V was perfectly aware that John, and not Sebastian, was the original discoverer, as indeed any one who troubled to inquire into the matter could hardly fail to be when so many contemporaries of the fact were still living. ”

“ What we do know without room for doubt, is that John Cabot came to London to occupy himself with commerce, and that he soon settled at Bristol, then the second town in the kingdom, in one of the suburbs which had received the name of Cathay, probably from the number of Venetians who resided there, and the trade carried on by them with the countries of the extreme East. It was at Bristol that Cabot's two youngest children were born, Sebastian and Sancho, if we may rely upon the following account given by the old chronicler Eden. ”

“ At Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo, and San Sebastian they had carried by open assault fortified towns whose strength made the intrenchments of the Americans seem like the mud walls built by children, though these towns were held by the best soldiers of France. With such troops to follow him, and with such victories behind him in the past, it did not seem possible to Pakenham that the assault of the terrible British infantry could be successfully met by rough backwoods riflemen fighting under a general as wild and untrained as themselves. ”

“ But if Cabot could once get on the air and adjust the Formian sending set to the wave-length of Luno Castle, or run it through all its available wave-lengths, he could broadcast to the Cupian nation the fact that he was alive and well, and would return again—though he knew not how—to lead them. Such news should strengthen the hearts of the loyal Cupians to rally to the cause of his wife, the Princess Lilla, and his son, the baby king. ”

“ Formians are no swimmers, having a horror of water. There were plenty of boats along the shore of Lake Luno, but he was certain that his enemies would not venture out in the night, for fear of a spill. The only danger was that they might send some of their Cupian allies across; but he doubted this, in view of the fact that they probably thought him still armed with the rifle and respected his marksmanship. No, he was fairly safe for the present.
Darkness had completely enveloped the planet as Cabot pulled himself wearily upon the beach of his own island. ”

“ In 1526, when commanding a Spanish expedition from Seville, he sailed to Brazil, which had al [Pg 49] ready been annexed to Portugal by Cabrera, explored the River La Plata and ascended part of the Paraguay, returning to Spain in 1531. After his return to England, King Edward VI had some interviews with Cabot, one topic being the "variation of the compass." He received a royal pension of 250 marks, and did special work in relation to trade and navigation. The great honor of Cabot is that he saw the American continent before Columbus or Amerigo Vespucci. ”

“ There is in this kingdom a Venetian fellow, Master John Caboto by name, of fine mind, greatly skilled in navigation, who seeing that those most serene kings, first he of Portugal, and then the one of Spain, have occupied unknown islands, determined to make a like acquisition for his Majesty aforesaid.425-3 And having obtained royal grants that he should have the usufruct of all that he should discover, provided that the ownership of the same is reserved to the crown, with a small ship and eighteen persons he committed himself to fortune ”

“ This was the last public appearance of Cabot, or the last of which mention is made in the chronicles, although he lived for a year longer. His death occurred probably in London in 1557, sixty-one years after the first commission issued to the Cabots, John and his sons, from Henry the seventh. As in the case of his father, neither the exact date of his death nor the place of his burial is known, and Englishmen and Americans alike much regret that no monument marks the graves of these discoverers of our continent of North America. ”