Cabot, John, the Anglicized form of Caboto, Giovanni (c.1450–98), Italian navigator. Very little is known of his early life but it is believed that he was born in Genoa and as a boy went to Venice where he was naturalized as a Venetian citizen. He appears to have commanded a merchant ship which traded to the Levant and on one of these voyages is said to have visited Mecca where he was amazed by the market there in spices, silk, and jewels. Being told that they came overland by caravan from Asia, and knowing that the earth was a sphere, he was seized with the idea that it would be quicker to bring them to Europe by sea if he could reach Cathay and Cipangu, the names by which China and Japan were known to Europeans in the 15th–17th centuries, by crossing the western ocean. Unable to convince the European courts to the extent of equipping an expedition, Cabot brought his family to London in 1484, and tried to persuade the more important merchants of Bristol that an attempt should be made to reach Cathay by sea. They agreed to take the risk of such a voyage but stipulated that he should first go by way of Brasil and the Isle of the Seven Cities, those mythical islands which were shown on all the medieval maps of the western ocean.

Before the expedition could be organized and dispatched, news was received in England of Christopher Columbus's voyage. The British merchants now decided that time should not be spent searching for either Brasil or the Isle of the Seven Cities, but that the expedition should go direct to Asia by sailing west. Letters patent were granted by King Henry VII in March 1496 to his ‘well-beloved John Gabote, citizen of Venice … to seeke out, discover and finde whatsoever isles, countries, regions or provinces of the heathen and infidels which before this time have been unknown to all Christians’. He set sail from Bristol in May 1497 in a small ship called the Matthew, manned by eighteen men. On 24 June Cabot sighted one of the northern capes of Newfoundland, on which island he landed, and took possession of it in the name of the king. On its return the ship passed over what are now known as the Grand Banks off the Newfoundland coast where the crew caught huge quantities of cod merely by lowering baskets into the sea. It was this discovery which led directly to the development of the Newfoundland fisheries.

On his return Cabot received £10 reward from the king for having discovered the ‘new island’ which he thought, and convinced the king, was off the coast of Cathay. He proposed to Henry VII that a new expedition could not only repeat the voyage but by sailing to the south after making the coast would surely reach Cipangu and thus make London the greatest trading centre in the world for the products of the East. Cabot, after the king's promise of a second expedition, made a visit to Seville and Lisbon in an effort to recruit men who had sailed with Columbus, but appears to have had little success. Henry VII issued new letters patent on 3 February 1498 giving Cabot the power to ‘impress’ six English ships for the voyage. However, only five were taken up; they were victualled for a year, and, in accord with the king's licence, Cabot, proceeding westwards from his last discovery until he reached the coast of Cipangu, was to set up a trading factory there for spices and silks.

This second expedition, of five ships and 300 men, sailed from Bristol in May 1498 and was never heard of again. For some 450 years it got somehow mixed up with a voyage made in 1500 by Jão Fernandez, known as Llavrador (farmer), to the east coast of Greenland, which was mistakenly named Labrador (after Fernandez) in the belief that it was a new discovery, and another in 1501 by Gaspar Corte Real, which seems to have visited Newfoundland or the mainland of America thereabouts. These two voyages appear to have become amalgamated and were held by some authorities to constitute Cabot's second voyage, from which they have him returning safely to Bristol and dying there shortly after. See also exploration by sea. Harisse, H. , John Cabot (1896).
Williamson, James A. , The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Hakluyt Society, 1962).

John Cabot

John Cabot (active 1471-1498), born Giovanni Caboto, was an Italian explorer in English service. He was once thought to have been the first to bear the English flag across the Atlantic, but recent evidence shows that another voyage preceded his.

John Cabot was probably born in Genoa. Venetian historical records show that between 1471 and 1473 he was admitted as an adult to citizenship in the republic. Naturalization in Venice presumed a residence of 15 years, but Cabot may have come with his family as a minor. By 1484 he was the father of Sebastian Cabot, who would achieve fame as an explorer, and another, older son.

A London acquaintance reported in 1497 that Cabot had once been as far east as Mecca and had attempted to learn the Oriental origin of spices. In view of his Italian birth and Christianity, it seems probable that Cabot visited Jidda, the port of Mecca, rather than the forbidden holy city itself.

Cabot was in Spain in the early 1490s and reached England by 1495, determined to make a voyage to Marco Polo's Cathay. He knew by then of Columbus's discoveries and believed the new land could not be China. English merchants from Bristol had been voyaging into the Atlantic since about 1480, and one expedition, either before or after 1492, had discovered the island of "Brasile," certainly Newfoundland. Cabot believed that this was the northeast corner of Asia, south of which would be found Japan and the Great Khan's empire. For his own voyage he received letters patent from Henry VII and financial backing in Bristol.

In 1497 Cabot sailed from Bristol in the little Matthew with 18 men. From the midpoint of Ireland he went as directly west as possible and made a North American landfall June 24. This was evidently Newfoundland again, perhaps Cape Race. Cabot then followed the coast in regions not precisely identified, but it is thought that he traversed part of Nova Scotia and possibly Maine. He returned to Bristol August 6. The amazing speed of the entire voyage has caused some scholars to doubt the accuracy of the computation, but it must be remembered that Cabot intended this only as a reconnaissance.

When the discoverer reached London, the city hailed him. King Henry, then on rather good terms with Spain, felt that the newly found lands lay far enough northward to be outside any legitimate Spanish sphere. The King granted Cabot a yearly pension of £20 and gladly gave his consent to a new voyage which would penetrate south of the regions already discovered.

In May 1498 Cabot sailed from Bristol again in command of five ships, and here knowledge of him virtually ends. Several of the vessels returned but the one in which Cabot traveled did not; those returning seemed not to know where or when Cabot's ship had been lost. Spanish evidence suggests that one English ship did reach the Caribbean, bearing out the fact that the intention had been to follow the American continent southward.

Further Reading

The most authoritative work on Cabot is James A. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (1962). This partly supersedes Williamson's earlier study, The Voyages of the Cabots and the English Discovery of North America (1929). An important contribution, in Italian, is Roberto Almagià, Gli Italiani: Primi esploratori dell'America (1937), which contains a long chapter on both John and Sebastian Cabot. Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America (1971), discusses John Cabot. □

Cabot, John (d. 1498) and Sebastian (1474–1557). Much obscurity surrounds the lives of the Cabots, father and son, and their precise roles in the discovery of the Americas. But they discovered and defined the north-east American coast as part of a continent and Sebastian set the British on the long and fruitless search for polar passages to the Orient. Genoese born, but working for Venice and Spain, John came to Bristol in 1493 and was inspired by Columbus to try to cross the Atlantic. After one failure, he reached Cape Breton and Newfoundland in the Matthew in 1497, thinking initially that he had reached Cathay. He died on an attempted repeat voyage. Sebastian may have been with him in 1497 but certainly attempted the North-West Passage to the Orient in 1508. Possibly he reached the entrance to Hudson's Bay before navigating to a disputed extent southwards along the North American coast. With a decline in English interest, Sebastian sailed with a Spanish expedition to the river Plate in 1526–30 and was influential as a cartographer and trainer of pilots. In 1547, he returned to English service, advised on maritime matters, and helped to found the Company of Merchant Venturers which, in searching for a North-East Passage, opened up trade with Russia.

Roy C. Bridges

John Cabot fl. 1461-98, English explorer, probably b. Genoa, Italy. He became a citizen of Venice in 1476 and engaged in the Eastern trade of that city. This experience, it is assumed, was the stimulus of his later explorations. Like Columbus (though there is no evidence that either influenced the other), he apparently believed that the riches of East Asia might be more easily reached by sailing west. He went to England, probably in the 1480s, and resided chiefly at Bristol, a port then promising as a base for discovery. Under a patent granted by Henry VII (Mar. 5, 1496), Cabot sailed from Bristol in 1497 and discovered the North American coast, touching at Cape Breton Island or Newfoundland. In 1498 he again sailed for America to explore the coast. The fate of the expedition is unknown, although there is presumptive evidence that it reached America and that some of its members returned. The English claims in North America were based on his discovery. His son was Sebastian Cabot .

Bibliography: See C. R. Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot: The Discovery of North America (1964); R. C. Howard, Bristol and the Cabots (1967); D. Goodnough, John Cabot and Son (1979).

Cabot, John (d. 1498) and Sebastian (1474–1557). Much obscurity surrounds the lives of the Cabots, father and son. But they discovered and defined the north‐east American coast as part of a continent and Sebastian set the British on the fruitless search for polar passages to the Orient. Genoese‐born, but working for Venice and Spain, John came to Bristol in 1493 and was inspired by Columbus to try to cross the Atlantic. After one failure, he reached Cape Breton and Newfoundland in the Matthew in 1497, thinking initially that he had reached Cathay. He died on an attempted repeat voyage. Sebastian certainly attempted the North‐West Passage to the Orient in 1508. Possibly he reached the entrance to Hudson's Bay before navigating southwards along the North American coast.

Cabot, John (Italian name Giovanni Caboto) (c.1450–c.1498) Italian explorer and navigator. He and his son Sebastian (c.1475–1557) sailed from Bristol in 1497 with letters patent from Henry VII of England in search of Asia, but in fact discovered the mainland of North America. The site of their arrival is uncertain (it may have been Cape Breton Island, Newfoundland, or Labrador). John Cabot returned to Bristol and undertook a second expedition in 1498. Sebastian made further voyages of exploration after his father's death, most notably to Brazil and the River Plate (1526).

Cabot, John (c.1450–98) Italian navigator, b. Giovanni Caboto. Backed by Henry VII of England, he sailed in search of a w route to India, and reached Newfoundland (1497). His discovery served as the basis for English claims in North America. His account of the Newfoundland fisheries encouraged fishermen from European Atlantic ports to follow his route.

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