Two (Not One) Voyages of the Cabots

If Sebastian Cabot had not been so much wrapped up in his own vainglory, we might have had a full record of the eventful voyage.

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

At the threshold of an inquiry into the “prima tierra vista” or landfall of 1497, it is before all things necessary to distinguish sharply, in every recorded detail, between the first and second voyages. I venture to think that, if this had always been done, much confusion and controversy would have been avoided. It was not done by the older writers, and the writers of later years have followed them without sufficiently observing that the authorities they were building upon were referring almost solely to the second voyage. Even when some occasional detail of the first voyage was introduced, the circumstances of the second voyage were interwoven and became dominant in the narrative, so that the impression of one voyage only remains upon the mind. We must therefore always remember the antithesis which exists between them. Thus, the first voyage was made in one small vessel with a crew of eighteen men, the second with five ships and three hundred men. The first voyage was undertaken with John Cabot’s own resources, the second with the royal authority to take six ships and their outfit on the same conditions as if for the King’s service. The first voyage was a private venture, the second an official expedition. The first voyage extended over three months and was provisioned for that period only; the second was victualled for twelve months and extended over six months at least, for how much longer is not known. The course of the first voyage was south of Ireland, then for a while north and afterward west, with the pole star on the right hand. The course of the second, until land was seen, was north, into northern seas, toward the north pole, in the direction of Iceland, to the cape of Labrador, at 58° north latitude. On the first voyage no ice was reported; on the second the leading features were bergs and floes of ice and long days of arctic summer. On the first voyage Cabot saw no man; on the second he found people clothed with “beastes skynnes.” During the whole of the first voyage John Cabot was the commander; on the second voyage he sailed in command, but who brought the expedition home and when it returned are not recorded. It is not known how or when John Cabot died; and, although the letters-patent for the second voyage were addressed to him alone, his son Sebastian during forty-five years took the whole credit in every subsequent mention of the discovery of America, without any allusion to his father. This antithesis may throw light upon the suppression of his father’s name in all the statements attributed to or made by Sebastian Cabot. He may always have had the second voyage in his mind. His father may have died on the voyage. He was marvelously reticent about his father. The only mention which occurs is on the map seen by Hakluyt, and on the map of 1544, supposed, somewhat rashly, to be a transcript of it. There the discovery is attributed to John Cabot and to Sebastian his son, and that has reference to the first voyage. From these considerations it would appear that those who place the landfall at Labrador are right; but it is the landfall of the second voyage — the voyage Sebastian was always talking about — not the landfall of John Cabot in 1497.

If Sebastian Cabot had not been so much wrapped up in his own vainglory, we might have had a full record of the eventful voyage which revealed to Europe the shores of our Canadian dominion first of all the lands on the continents of the western hemisphere. Fortunately, however, there resided in London at that time a most intelligent Italian, Raimondo di Soncino, envoy of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, one of those despots of the Renaissance who almost atoned for their treachery and cruelty by their thirst for knowledge and love of arts. Him Soncino kept informed of all matters going on at London, and especially concerning matters of cosmography, to which the Duke was much devoted. From his letters we are enabled to retrace the momentous voyage of the little Matthew of Bristol across the western ocean — not the sunny region of steady trade-winds, by whose favoring influence Columbus was wafted to his destination, but the boisterous reaches of the northern Atlantic — over that “still vexed sea” which shares with one or two others the reputation of being the most storm-tossed region in the world of ocean. That the land discovered was supposed to be a part of Asia appears very clearly from the same letters. It was in the territory of the Grand Cam. The land was good and the climate temperate; and Cabot intended on his next voyage, after occupying that place, to proceed farther westward until he should arrive at the longitude of Japan, which island he evidently thought to be south of his landfall and near the equator.

It should be carefully noted that, in all the circumstances on record which are indisputably referable to this first voyage, nothing has been said of ice or of any notable extension of daylight. These are the marks of the second voyage; for if anything unusual had existed in the length of the day it would have been at its maximum on Midsummer’s Day, June 24th, the day he made land. Nothing is reported in these letters which indicates a high latitude. Now Labrador is a cold, waste region of rocks, swamps, and mountains. Even inside the Straits of Belle-Isle it is so barren and forbidding as to call forth Cartier’s oft-cited remark that “it was like the land God gave to Cain.” The coast of Labrador is not the place to invite a second voyage, if it be once seen; but the climate of Cape Breton is very pleasant in early summer and the country is well wooded.

From the contemporary documents relating specially to the first voyage, it is beyond question that Cabot saw no human being on the coast, though he brought back evidences of their presence at some previous time. It is beyond doubt, also, on the same authority, that the voyage lasted not longer than three months, and that provisions gave out, so that he had not time to land on the return voyage. It was, in fact, a reconnoitering expedition to prepare the way for a greater effort, and establish confidence in the existence of land across the ocean easily reached from England. The distance sailed is given by Soncino at four hundred leagues; but Pasqualigo, writing to Venice, gives it at seven hundred leagues, equivalent to two thousand two hundred twenty-six miles, which is very nearly the distance between Bristol and Cape Breton as now estimated.

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