any other land then that of Cathay, & from thence to turne toward India,
but after certaine dayes I found that the land ranne towards the North,
which was to mee a great displeasure. Neverthelesse, sayling along by
the coast to see if I could finde any gulfe that turned, I found the
lande still continent to the 56. degree under our Pole. And seeing that
there the coast turned toward the East, despairing to finde the passage,
I turned backe againe, and sailed downe by the coast of that land toward
the Equinoctiall (ever with intent to finde the saide passage to India)
and came to that part of this firme lande which is nowe called Florida,
where my victuals failing, I departed from thence and returned into
England, where I found great tumult among the people and preparation for
warre in Scotland: by reason whereof there was no more consideration had
to this voyage.’”
Here again the two voyages are confused; and besides, the date, 1496, is
wrong, and John Cabot is ignored. This would reflect upon the veracity
and generosity of Sebastian Cabot, were it not more than likely that the
reporter bungled, or that the accuracy of the statement suffered through
repetition. It is also to be taken into account that the interview was
had half a century after the events, and when Sebastian Cabot was an old
man.
The remainder of the interview touches briefly upon Sebastian Cabot’s
exploits of later years for Spain, and again, for England, and closes
cheerily: “... And waxing olde, I give my selfe to rest from such
travels, because there are nowe many yong and lustie Pilots and Mariners
of good experience, by whose forwardnesse I doe rejoyce in the fruit of
my labours, and rest with the charge of this office, as you see.”
The third testimony, from Ramusio’s preface to his third volume, which
was published in 1563, contrasts the Cabot voyages with those
subsequently made for the king of France, which established “New France”
in North America:
“In the latter part of this volume are put certaine relations of John de
Vararzana [Verrazzano], Florentine, and of a great captaine a Frenchman,
and the two voyages of Jaques Cartier a Briton [of Brittany], who sailed
unto the land situate in 50 degrees of latitude to the North, which is
called New France, which landes hitherto are not throughly knowen,
whether they doo joyne with the firme land of Florida and Nova Hispania,
or whether they bee separated and divided all by the Sea as Ilands: and
whether that by that way we may goe by Sea unto the countrey of Cathaia.
As many yeeres past it was written unto mee by Sebastian Cabota our
Countrey man, a Venetian, a man of great experience, and very rare in
the art of Navigation, and the knowledge of Cosmographie, who sailed
along and beyond this lande of New France, at the charges of King Henry
the seventh king of England: and he advertised mee that having sailed a
long time West by North, beyond those Ilands unto the Latitude of 67
degrees and an halfe under the North pole, and at the 11 day of June
finding still the open Sea without any maner of impediment, he thought
verily by that way to have passed on still the way to Cathaia, which is
in the East, and would have done it, if the mutinie of the shipmaster
and Mariners had not hindered him and made him to returne homeward from
that place. But it seemeth that God doeth yet still reserve this great
enterprise for some great prince to discover this voyage of Cathaia by
this way, which for the bringing of the Spiceries from India into
Europe, were the most easie and shortest of all other wayes hitherto
found out. And surely this enterprise would be the most glorious, and of
most importance of all other that can be imagined to make his name
great, and fame immortall, to all ages to come, farre more then can be
done by any of all these great troubles and warres which dayly are used
in Europe among the miserable Christian people.”
The fourth testimony is the most important of the six, being an account
by Peter Martyr drawn directly from Sebastian Cabot’s statements to him.
The Third Decade of Martyr’s history of the New World, from which
Hakluyt takes it, was first printed in Seville, in 1516. At the time of
Martyr’s writing Sebastian Cabot was in Spain, in the Spanish king’s
service, and, as the text shows, an intimate friend of Martyr’s. This
being the first printed account of the Cabot voyages, American
historians based their relations of them upon it till its several
inaccuracies were disclosed by other data. Hakluyt presents it in full
as below.
"These North Seas have bene searched by one Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian
borne, whom being yet but in maner an infant, his parents caried with
them into England, having occasion to resort thither for trade of
marchandise, as is the maner of the Venetians to leave no part of the
world unsearched to obtaine riches. Hee therefore furnished two ships in
England at his owne charges, and first with 300 men directed his course
so far towards the North pole, that even in the moneth of July he found
monstrous heapes of ice swimming on the sea, and in maner continuall day
light, yet saw he the land in that tract free from ice, which had bene
molten by the heat of the Sunne. Thus seeing such heapes of yce before
him, hee was enforced to turne his sailes and follow the West, so
coasting still to the shore, that he was thereby brought so farre into
the South, by reason of the land bending so much Southward, that it was
there almost equall in latitude, with the sea Fretum Herculeum [Straits
of Hercules], having the Northpole elevate in maner in the same degree.
He sailed likewise in this tract so farre towards the West, that hee had
the Island of Cuba on his left hand, in maner in the same degree of
longitude. As hee traveiled by the coastes of this great land (which he
named Baccalaos) he saith that hee found the like course of the waters
toward the West, but the same to runne more softly and gently then the
swift waters which the Spaniards found in their Navigations Southward.
Wherefore it is not onely more like to be true, but ought also of
necessitie to be concluded that betweene both the lands hitherto
unknowen, there should be certaine great open places whereby the waters
should thus continually passe from the East unto the West: which waters
I suppose to be driven about the globe of the earth by the uncessant
moving and impulsion of the heavens, and not to bee swallowed up and
cast up againe by the breathing of Demagorgœn, as some have imagined,
because they see the seas by increase and decrease to ebbe and flowe.
"Sebastian Cabot himselfe named those lands Baccalaos, because that in
the Seas thereabout hee found so great multitudes of certaine bigge
fishes much like unto Tunies (which the inhabitants call Baccalaos) that
they sometimes stayed his shippe. He found also the people of those
regions covered with beastes skinnes, yet not without the use of reason.
He also saith there is great plentie of Beares in those regions which
use to eate fish: for plunging themselves into ye water, where they
perceive a multitude of these fishes to be, they fasten their clawes
into their scales and so draw them to land and eate them, so (as he
saith) the Beares being thus satisfied with fish, are not noisome to
men. Hee declareth further, that in many places of these Regions he saw
great plentie of Copper among the inhabitants.
“Cabot is my very friend, whom I use familiarly, and delight to have him
sometimes keepe mee company in mine owne house. For being called out of
England by the commandement of the Catholique King of Castile, after the
death of King Henry the seventh of that name King of England, he was
made one of our councill and Assistants, as touching the affaires of the
new Indies, looking for ships dayly to be furnished for him to discover
this hid secret of Nature.”
The fifth testimony, out of Gomara’s “General History,” is the following
extract from a history of the West Indies published in 1552–1553.
Francisco Lopez de Gomara was a priest, sometime chaplain of Hernando
Cortes, and was one of the most distinguished historical writers of
Spain in his time.
"The testimonie of Francis Lopez de Gomara, a Spaniard, in the
fourth Chapter of the second Booke of his generall history of
the West Indies concerning the first discoverie of a great part
of the West Indies, to wit, from 58 to 38 degrees of latitude,
by Sebastian Cabota out of England.
“He which brought most certaine newes of the countrey & people of
Baccalaos, saith Gomara, was Sebastian Cabote a Venetian, which rigged
up two ships at the cost of K. Henry the 7 of England, having great
desire to traffique for the spices as the Portingales did. He carried
with him 300 men, and tooke the way towards Island [Iceland] from beyond
the Cape of Labrador, untill he found himselfe in 58 degrees and better.
He made relation that in the moneth of July it was so cold, and the ice
so great, that hee durst not passe any further: that the dayes were very
long, in a maner without any night, and for that short night that they
had, it was very cleare. Cabot feeling the cold, turned towards the
West, refreshing himselfe at Bacalaos: and afterwards he sayled along
the coast unto 38 degrees, and from thence he shaped his course to
returne into England.”
The sixth is this brief passage from the Chronicle of Robert Fabian,
“sometime alderman of London,” which Hakluyt received in manuscript from
John Stow, the famous London antiquarian and annalist:
"A note of Sebastian Cabots first discoverie of part of the
Indies taken out of the latter part of Robert Fabians Chronicle
not hitherto printed, which is in the custodie of M. John Stow a
diligent preserver of Antiquities.
“In the 13 yeere of K. Henry the 7 (by meanes of one John Cabot a
Venetian which made himselfe very expert and cunning in knowledge of the
circuit of the world and Ilands of the same, as by a Sea card and other
demonstrations reasonable he shewed) the king caused to man and victuall
a ship at Bristow [Bristol] to search for an Island which he said hee
knew well was rich, and replenished with great commodities: Which shippe
thus manned and victualed at the kings cost, divers Marchants of London
ventured in her small stocks, being in her as chiefe patron the said
Venetian. And in the company of the said ship, sailed also out of
Bristow three or foure small ships fraught with sleght and grosse
marchandises, as course cloth, caps, laces, points & other trifles. And
so departed from Bristow in the beginning of May, of whom in this Maiors
[mayor’s] time returned no tidings.”
The following mention, by “the foresaid Robert Fabian,” “of three
Savages which Cabot brought home and presented unto the King in the
foureteenth yere of his raigne,” is given as a sort of supplementary
testimony (the authenticity of which is questioned by Richard Biddle,
Sebastian Cabot’s biographer, who charges this kidnapping of natives
upon a later navigator):
“This yeere also were brought unto the King three men taken in the
Newfound Island that before I spake of, in William Purchas time being
Maior: These were clothed in beasts skins, & did eate raw flesh, and
spake such speach that no man could understand them, and in their
demeanour like to brute beastes, whom the King kept a time after. Of the
which upon two yeeres after, I saw two apparelled after the manner of
Englishmen in Westminster pallace, which that time I could not discerne
from Englishmen, til I was learned what they were, but as for speach I
heard none of them utter one word.”
And the whole is preceded by that legend of the first discovery of the
West Indies by Madoc the Welshman, in the year 1170, which is cast in
apparently for what it may be worth.
VIII
VENTURES IN THE CABOTS’ TRACK
In the illustrious year of 1498, which witnessed Sebastian Cabot’s
westward discoveries along North America, and Columbus’s sighting of
South America, Vasco da Gama, pursuing his eastward navigations, crossed
the Indian Ocean, dropped anchor off the city of Calicut, on the Malagar
coast, and set up on shore a marble pillar as proof of his discovery of
India by an ocean highway. Thus Portugal offset Spain’s claim to the
West Indies by priority of discovery, with a claim through first
discovery to the East Indies, and stood ready to assert it, while
England allowed her right, by the same token, in the North American
continent to lapse.
Spain and Portugal continued in sharp rivalry during the half decade
immediately following. In 1499 the coast of South America was touched at
about Surinam by the Spaniard Alonzo de Ojeda and the Florentine Amerigo
Vespucci, sailing for Spain. The same year the coast of Brazil was
discovered by a Portuguese navigator, Vincente Yarez Pinzon. He had been
a companion of Columbus. The next year possession of Brazil was taken
for the crown of Portugal by Pedro Alvarez Cabral, a Portuguese
commander, who was driven to its coast by adverse winds when making a
voyage to India by Vasco da Gama’s course. Three years later a
settlement was begun there by Amerigo Vespucci, now in the service of
Portugal. In 1500 Gaspar de Cortereal, Portuguese, attempted to follow
the Cabots’ track of discovery opened in the northwest. Coming upon the
coast of Labrador he explored it for six hundred miles. He discovered
Nova Scotia, the St. Lawrence, and also Hudson’s Strait. Then he
returned to Lisbon with his two caravals freighted with natives—men,
women, and children—whom he had captured and brought home for slavery.
The next year Cortereal departed on a second voyage for further
discovery and presumably more slaves, and was never more heard from. His
brother, Michael de Cortereal, sailed in search of him, and also was
lost. Then two armed ships were sent out by the king of Portugal to
search for both brothers; but no trace of either could be found. It was
finally assumed that both fell victims to the vengeance of the natives
for the thefts of their people. Upon the strength of Gaspar de
Cortereal’s voyages Portugal attempted to establish a claim to the
discovery of Newfoundland and the adjacent coast of North America. But
in this she was not successful. Spain, however, held firmly to all of
her American possessions, indefinitely defined.
England remained passive till 1501, when a new movement was started in
the Cabots’ home city of Bristol. Three Bristol merchants—Richard Ward,
Thomas Ashehurst, and John Thomas—and three Portuguese mariners—John
Fernandus, Francis Fernandus, and John Gundlur—came together for a
venture in the track of the Cabots. A patent was obtained from King
Henry, under date of March 19, 1501, which conferred upon them the same
powers that had originally been given the Cabots, and was in terms
similar to the Cabot patents. Whether they sent out an expedition that
year is not known. The next year, however, the personnel of the company
had changed, with the dropping of Ward and Thomas and the substitution
of Hugh Eliot in their place; and under this organization, probably in
1503, a voyage was made which resulted in discovery at Newfoundland and
along the Labrador coast. The only record of this voyage is given by
Hakluyt in the following excerpt from the merchant Robert Thorne’s
“Booke” of 1527, addressed to the English Ambassador at the court of
Spain:
"A briefe extract concerning the discoverie of Newfound-land
taken out of the booke of M. Robert Thorne, to Doctor Leigh &c.
“I reason that as some sickenesses are hereditarie, so this inclination
or desire of this discovery I inherited from my father, which with
another marchant of Bristol named Hugh Eliot, were the discoverers of
the Newfound-lands; of the which there is no doubt (as nowe plainely
appeareth) if the Mariners would then have bene ruled, and followed
their Pilots minde, but the lands of the West Indies, from whence all
the golde commeth, had bene ours; for all is one coast as the Card
appeareth, and is aforesaid.”
The “card” here referred to was a rude map of the world on which, along
the line of the coast of Labrador, was written the inscription in Latin,
“This land was first discovered by the English.” A short time after this
voyage the fisheries about Newfoundland had become well known to
Frenchmen, and were being frequented by the hardy fishermen of Brittany
and Normandy. Hence the later name of the isle of Cape Breton.
No further patents for English navigations were issued for more than
half a century. Still English interest in maritime discovery and
commercial advancement was not altogether stagnant during this period.
Early in Henry the eighth’s reign quite a promising enterprise was set
on foot by Sebastian Cabot, then back in England, and in high standing
for his knowledge in cosmography. He had been in Spain for seven years
(having entered Spain’s service three years after the death of Henry the
seventh, which occurred in 1509), acting part of that time as one of the
council of the Indies, and latterly completing plans for a new
expedition for the search of the Northwest passage under the Spanish
flag, which he had been compelled to abandon by Ferdinand’s death, in
1516. Returned to England he had found Henry the eighth hospitable to
his scheme and had induced him to fit out a small squadron for its
pursuit. The supreme command, however, was given to another,—Sir Thomas
Pert, at that time vice-admiral of England,—and this proved disastrous
to the enterprise; for, it is recorded, Sir Thomas’s “faint heart was
the cause that the voyage took none effect.” All that the expedition
accomplished was a visit to the coast of Brazil, to San Domingo, and to
Porto Rico, whence it returned to England. Hakluyt gives a narration
which he supposes to relate to this voyage, written by the Spanish
historian Gonzalo de Oviedo, and reprinted by Ramusio, from whom he
translates it:
“In the yeere 1517 an English Rover under the colour of travelling to
discover, came with a great shippe unto the parts of Brasill on the
coast of the firme land, and from thence he crossed over unto this Iland
of Hispaneola, and arrived neere unto the mouth of the haven of this
citie of S. Domingo, and sent his shipboate full of men on shoare and
demaunded leave to enter into this haven, saying that hee came with
marchandise to traffique. But at that very instant the governour of the
castle, Francis de Tapia, caused a tire of ordinance to be shot from the
castle at the ship, for she bare in directly with the haven. When the
Englishmen sawe this, they withdrew themselves out, and those that were
in the shipboate got themselves with all speede on shipboord. And in
trueth the warden of the castle committed an oversight: for if the
shippe had entred into the haven the men thereof could not have come on
lande without leave both of the citie and of the castle. Therefore the
people of the ship seeing how they were received sayled toward the Iland
of S. John, and entring into the port of S. Germaine, the English men
parled [parleyed] with those of the towne, requiring victuals and things
needefull to furnish their ship, and complained of the inhabitants of
the city of S. Domingo saying that they came not to doe any harme but to
trade and traffique for their money and merchandise. In this place they
had certaine victuals and for recompense they gave and paid them with
certaine vessell of wrought tinne and other things. And afterward they
departed toward Europe....”
[Illustration:
KING HENRY VIII.
From a photograph, copyrighted by Walker and Boutall, of a painting.
]
Hakluyt resents Oviedo’s use of the term “Rover” in this account and his
assumption that the object of the expedition was other than discovery
and traffic, remarking tartly that Spanish and Portuguese writers
“account all other nations for Pirates, rovers, and thieves who visit
any heathen coast that they have once sailed by or looked on.”
With the failure of this enterprise Cabot again left England and
reëntered the service of Spain, taking the post of “pilot major.”
IX
THE NORTHEAST PASSAGE
Later in Henry the eighth’s reign, in 1527, a larger expedition,
composed of “divers cunning men,” set out for Northern discovery, but
with no more satisfactory results. Their enterprise was impelled by the
weighty reasoning of Robert Thorne, the observant Bristol merchant, then
in Seville (whom Hakluyt terms a “notable member and ornament of his
country”), in his “large discourse” of that year to Dr. Ley, the English
ambassador in Spain, urging the immediate need of English discovery in
the north parts, “even to the North pole,” to overcome the advantages
gained by Spain and Portugal in their discoveries of “all the Indies and
seas Occidental and Oriental,” so “by this part of the Orient and
Occident” compassing the world. Who were the “divers cunning men”
composing this expedition Hakluyt endeavoured to ascertain through much
enquiry among “such as by their years and delight in Navigation” might
inform him. He learned, however, of one only, and his name he could not
get—a certain canon of St. Paul’s in London, a “great mathematician, and
indued with wealth,” apparently the leader. Two “fair ships” formed the
squadron, one of them called “The Dominus Vobiscum.” They set forth out
of the Thames on a mid-May day. When sailing “far northwestward” one of
the ships was cast away as it entered into “a dangerous gulph about the
great opening between the North parts of Newfoundland and the country
lately called by her Majestie Meta Incognita.” Thereupon the other ship,
“shaping her course toward Cape Briton and the coaste of Arambec, and
oftentimes putting their men on land to search the state of those
regions, returned home about the beginning of October.” So this story
lamely ends.
Six years later an enterprise for discovery in the same parts was
projected by certain London men, with the king’s “favour and good
countenance,” under the leadership of one “Master Hore,” a “man of
goodly stature and of great courage, and given to the studie of
Cosmographie.” Master Hore’s “persuasions” were so effective that he
soon drew into the scheme “many gentlemen of the Inns of court and of
the Chancerie, and divers others of good worship, desirous to see the
strange things of the world.” Two “tall ships” were obtained for the
venture, the “Trinitie,” of one hundred and forty tons, which was
designated the “admiral” (flag-ship) of the fleet, and the “Minion.” The
company numbered about sixscore persons, of whom thirty were gentlemen.
Among the latter were enrolled one Armigil Wade, “a very learned and
vertuous gentleman,” afterward clerk of the councils of Henry the eighth
and his successor, Edward the sixth; one Joy, subsequently gentleman of
the king’s chapel; and Oliver Dawbeny, a merchant of London. All were
“mustered in warlike manner” at Gravesend. After receiving the Sacrament
they embarked and sailed away at the end of April, 1536. The adventures
of these gentlemen-explorers were rare and tragic.