Cabots’ Second Voyage

It must be remembered that John Cabot took the time to go on shore at his landfall, and planted the banners of England and St. Mark there.

Continuing Cabots Discover North America Mainland,
our selection from Voyage of the Cabots 1497-1498 by Samuel Edward Dawson published in 1894. The selection is presented in six easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Cabots Discover North America Mainland.

Time: 1497
Place: Newfoundland

And now we may pass on to the consideration of the second voyage; and first among the writers, in order of time as also in order of importance, is Peter Martyr of Anghiera, who published his Decades of the New World in 1516. Sebastian Cabot had then been in Spain for four years, high in office and in royal favor. Peter Martyr was his “familiar friend and comrade,” and tells the Pope, to whom these Decades were addressed as letters, that he wrote from information derived from Cabot’s own lips. Here, I venture to think, many of the writers on this subject have gone astray; for the whole question changes. Martyr knows of only one voyage, and that was beyond doubt the voyage of 1498; he knows of only one discoverer, and that the man from whose lips he writes the narrative. The landfall is far north, in a region of ice and perpetual daylight. At the very outset the subject is stated to be “those northern seas,” and then Peter Martyr goes on to say that Sebastian Cabot furnished two ships at his own charges; and that, with three hundred men, he sailed toward the north pole, where he saw land, and that then he was compelled to turn westward; and after that he coasted to the south until he reached the latitude of Gibraltar; and that he was west of the longitude of Cuba. In other words, he struck land far in the north, and from that point he sailed south along the coast as far as Cape Hatteras. That Labrador was the landfall seems clear; for he met large masses of ice in the month of July. These were not merely the bergs of the western ocean, but masses of field-ice, which compelled him to change his course from north to west, and finally to turn southward. The same writer states that Cabot himself named a portion of the great land he coasted “Baccalaos,” because of the quantity of fish, which was so great that they hindered the sailing of his ships, and that these fishes were called baccalaos by the natives. This statement has given rise to much dispute. As to the quantity of fish, all succeeding writers concur that it was immense beyond conception; and probably the swarming of the salmon up the rivers of our Pacific coast may afford a parallel; but that Cabot did not so name the country is abundantly clear. A very exhaustive note on the word will be found at page 131 of Dr. Bourinot’s Cape Breton.

Bearing in mind the preceding considerations, the study of the early maps will become profitable, and I would now direct attention to them to ascertain what light they may throw upon the landfall of John Cabot and the island of St. John opposite to it. It must be remembered that John Cabot took the time to go on shore at his landfall, and planted the banners of England and St. Mark there. At that time of year and in that latitude, it was light at half-past three, but it was five when he saw land, and he had to reach it and perform the ceremonies appropriate for such occasions; so the island opposite could not be far away. The island, then, will be useful to identify the landfall if we find it occurring frequently on the succeeding maps.

Don Pedro de Ayala, joint Spanish ambassador at London, wrote, on July 25, 1498, to his sovereigns that he had procured and would send a copy of John Cabot’s chart of his first voyage. This map of Juan de la Cosa is evidence that Ayala fulfilled his promise. It is a manuscript map made at the end of the year 1500, by the eminent Biscayan pilot, who, if not the equal of Columbus in nautical and cosmographical knowledge, was easily the second to him. Upon it there is a continuous coast line from Labrador to Florida, showing that the claim made by Sebastian Cabot of having coasted from a region of ice and snow to the latitude of Gibraltar was accepted as true by La Cosa, whatever later Spanish writers may have said. Recent writers of authority have arrived at the conclusion that, immediately after Columbus and Cabot had opened the way, many independent adventurers visited the western seas; for there are a number of geographical facts recorded on the earliest charts not easy to account for on any other hypothesis. Dr. Justin Winsor shows that La Cosa, and others of the great sailors of the earliest years of discovery, soon recognized that they had encountered a veritable barrier to Asia, consisting of islands, or an island of continental size, through which they had to find a passage to the golden East. Their views were not, however, generally accepted.

That La Cosa based the northern part of his map upon Cabot’s discoveries is demonstrated by the English flags marked along the coast and the legend “Mar descubierto por Ingleses,” because no English but the Cabot expeditions had been there; and what is evidently intended for Cape Race is called “Cavo de Ynglaterra.” The English flags mark off the coast from that cape to what may be considered as Cape Hatteras. Cabot, as before stated, confidently expected to reach Cathay. He sailed for that as his objective point, and he was looking for a broad western ocean, so that narrow openings were to him simply bays of greater or less depth. The sailors of those early voyages coasted from headland to headland, as plainly appears from many of the maps upon which the recesses of the sinuosities of the coast are not completed lines, and it must be borne in mind that in sailing between Newfoundland and Cape Breton the bold and peculiar contours of both can be seen at the same time. This is possible in anything like clear weather, but, in the bright weather of Midsummer Day, Cape Ray would necessarily have been seen from St. Paul’s, and the opening might well have been taken for a deep indentation of the coast. Between “Cavo descubierto” and “Cavo St. Jorge” such an indentation is shown on the map, but the line is closed, showing that Cabot did not sail through.

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