Cabot, John

CABOT, JOHN. - Italian navigator, naturalized Venetian in 1476. Having learned of the results of Columbus's first voyage, he organized, in the service of England, two expeditions toward the north, across the Atlantic Ocean. With the first (1497), aboard the ship Mattheu of 50 tons and with a crew of 18 men, he reached the vicinity of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Newfoundland. With the second (1498) he identified the coasts of North America south of the St. Lawrence as far as present-day New York. SEBASTIANO, son of Giovanni and more famous than his father, b. in Venice in 1482. In the service of England, he touched in 1509 the coasts of Greenland and Labrador, entered Hudson Strait and traversed it as far as the bay of the same name, which he wished to identify with the Pacific, believing he had thus found the northwest passage to Asia. Having moved to Spain, in 1518 he was named Piloto mayor and thus took part in the Junta of Badajoz (1524), which was to decide whether the Moluccas belonged to Spain or to Portugal. Seeing as vain the search by other navigators for a passage to the Pacific through Central America, he accepted the assignment of leading an expedition that would follow in Magellan's footsteps and reach the Moluccas. The expedition did not reach the strait, but, changing course, went up the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, the Paraná and the Paraguay as far as present-day Asunción (1526-30). During this expedition his envoys explored the territory on the right bank of the Paraguay as far as the Andes. Having returned in 1548 to England, his name is linked with the search for the northeast passage (1553). In his last years he devoted himself to studies on magnetic declination, to the construction of nautical instruments and to the drawing of his famous chart (1544), of which a single copy remains in the National Library of Paris. He died around 1557. He lived through the whole glorious era of the great geographical discoveries; to him England owes the beginnings of its dominion in the United States and in Canada, and Spain the colonization of the Plata.

Giuseppe Rosso