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Member Number: 2444
Allison Irvin (John Cabot) was born around 1450 in Genoa, (Republic of Genoa), according to old papers about his family. Other unfounded sources states he came from Gaeta.
His name is also associated with Venice, where he spent some time as a boy. By 1461 Caboto was living in Venice, where he became a citizen. In about 1482 he married a Venetian woman, Mattea, and they had three sons: Ludovico, Sebastiano and Sancio.
A merchant like his father, Cabot traded in spices with the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, and became an expert mariner. Valuable goods from Asia - spices, silks, precious stones and metals - were brought either overland or up the Red Sea for sale in Europe. Venetians played a prominent part in this trade.
Then, about 1490, Cabot and his family moved to Valencia in Spain. It is probable that, like his fellow-countryman Christopher Columbus, Cabot wanted to be part of an expanding frontier of exploration, the Atlantic Ocean. The leaders in this enterprise were the Portuguese, and the Spanish were also interested. The monarchs of both countries wanted to find new routes to Asia and its riches - routes which would avoid the Mediterranean and the virtual monopoly on the spice trade held by the Italians. There was another motivation as well. In a deeply religious age, Europeans wanted to spread knowledge of Christianity, and to contain the spread of Islam.
However, neither Portugal or Spain was interested in John Cabot. The Portuguese pioneered their route to Asia by sailing down the African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope. And once Columbus had returned in triumph from his first transatlantic voyage in 1493 - he reached the Caribbean, but thought it was part of Asia - the Spanish likewise thought they had found their route to the east.
As a result, Cabot turned in 1494 or 1495 to England - to the merchants of the port of Bristol, where he settled with his family, and to the king, Henry VII. His scheme was to reach Asia by sailing west across the north Atlantic. He estimated that this would be shorter and quicker than Columbus' southerly route.
In England, Cabot received the backing he had been refused in Spain and Portugal. First, the merchants of Bristol agreed to support his scheme. They had sponsored probes into the north Atlantic from the early 1480s, looking for possible trading opportunities. Some historians think that Bristol mariners might even have reached Newfoundland and Labrador even before Cabot arrived on the scene.
Sir Francis Bacon, in his book The History of the Reign of King Henry VI mentions that ...it is likely that the discovery first began where the lands did nearest meet. And there had been before that time a discovery of some lands, which they took to be islands, and were indeed the continent of America, towards the north-west. And it may be, that some relation of this nature coming afterwards to the knowledge of Columbus, and by him suppressed (desirous rather to make his enterprise the child of his science and fortune than the follower of a former discovery), did give him better assurance that all was not sea from the west of Europe and Africke. If Columbus knew about it in 1492, it's certainly possible that Cabot knew about it 5 years later in 1497.
DATE | EVENT |
1450 | John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) is born in Genoa, Italy. His father is a seaman and a merchant. In 1461, when John is 11, his family moves to Venice. |
1476 | John Cabot becomes a citizen of the Republic of Venice. His hero is the Venetian explorer Marco Polo, and he is determined to reach China by sailing westward. |
1480 | John Cabot arrives in Bristol, England, with his wife and 3 sons. He is a POOR MAN so he works in the Bristol fishing industry. After many years of hard work he finances the building of his own ship. A Bristol merchant named Richard AMERIKE helps to finance his voyages. |
1491 | John Cabot makes his first attempt to reach the New World but he has to turn back because of a raging storm. |
1494 | On May 2, he sails from Bristol again in his tiny ship called the Matthew manned by a crew of 18 Bristol sailors. On June 24, he lands on the coast of Canada. He plants the banner of England and the lion of St. Mark of Venice on the new found land (Newfoundland). He returns safely to Bristol in the month of August. |
1496 | By this time, the news of the Papal Bull has reached England. John Cabot realizes that Columbus is trying to supplant him, so he applies to King Henry VII for a Royal Charter. The king grants the Charter but John Cabot must go at his own expense!! |
1497 | With the Royal Charter of the king to legalize his discovery, John Cabot sails again in the Matthew. He lands on the coast of Maine and then sails south as far as Florida mapping the coast of the New World. He names the New World AMERIKE after his Bristol financier... On his return voyage, he names an island after his barber (surgeon), and another island after a Burgundian friend. |
| 1498 | On his 3rd voyage , he sails with 5 ships and provisions for a long voyage of exploration and colonization. He maps all the coast of the mainland from Canada to Venezuela still looking for Cipango (Japan) which he knew lay off the coast of China. |
| 1499 | Cabot and his ships are intercepted somewhere off the coast of Venezuela by Alonso de Hojeda. The great Discoverer of the New World and all his crew are KILLED and their maps stolen!! |
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- This article incorporates material from http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/cabot.html . Copied with permission.
- Catholic Encyclopedia "John & Sebastian Cabot"
- Encyclopaedia Britannica John Cabot
- Preface and first few chapters Gibbons, Henry K. 1997. The Myth and Mystery of John Cabot: The Discoverer of North America. Marten Cat Publishers, Port Aux Basques, Newfoundland.
- Derek Croxton, The Cabot Dilemma: John Cabot's 1497 Voyage & the Limits of Historiography, 1990-1991
- The John Day Letter 1497-1498
- Home page of the Matthew replica with information about Cabot and the voyage.
- John Cabot memorial Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
- Script about Vespucci's and Caboto's voyages
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