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John Cabot

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Geographers and explorers

             Giovanni Caboto
         Born c. 1450
              Genoa, Italy
      Died    c. 1499
              lost at sea
   Occupation Italian maritime explorer

   Giovanni Caboto ( c. 1450 – c. 1499), known in English as John Cabot,
   was an Italian navigator and explorer commonly credited as one of the
   first early modern Europeans to discover the North American mainland,
   in 1497.

Biography

   Giovanni Caboto was born around 1455 in Genoa, Italy according to old
   papers about his family.

   His name is also associated with Venetia, where he spent some time
   there as a boy. In fact 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. Cabot was trying to go one better.

   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.

Gallery

   Cabot Tower (Bristol), distant view

   Cabot Tower (Bristol), close up

   Cabot Tower (Bristol), extreme close up. Notice the CCCC on the turret
   (meaning 400)

   Cabot Tower (St. John's)

   Plaque inside Cabot Tower (St. John's)

   Cabot Tower (Newfoundland) postage stamp

   John Cabot Stamp.

   Letters patent for a voyage to discover new lands granted to John Cabot
   and his three sons by the king of England, Henry VII, at Westminster on
   March 5, 1496.

   A replica of the Matthew in Floating Harbour,Bristol

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cabot"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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