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When Giovanni Caboto set sail from Bristol England on May 2,
1497, he was not expecting to bump into the New Founde Land. Unable
to scrounge up enough financial support for the trip in his home
town of Venice Italy, Cabot came calling on the court of King Henry
VII of England.
He fronted the cash for a voyage that was supposed to find a
route to the spices and riches of the exotic Far East.
While Cabot sailed with dreams of gold and spices, his path
was blocked by the vast undiscovered coast line of North America.
And while he didn't report back with tales of wonder from the land
of the Great Khan, Cabot did convince the King that he at least
discovered something worthwhile.
He told of waters teeming with life, where a bucket could be
cast over the side of a ship and pulled back aboard loaded with
fish. At the time the Europeans may have been preoccupied with the
eastern land of spices, but they knew a good thing when they heard
it.
Cabot's stories of the abundant seas marked the beginning of
500 years of fishing activity in the waters off Newfoundland that
continues to this day, despite the continuing ecological crisis in
the cod stock.
But did Cabot really discover Newfoundland, and if he did, where did he anchor his ship, the Matthew? Some people like the idea that the explorer came ashore at Cape Bonavista to claim his discovery for God and King. He could have landed anywhere along the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The site of the landfall is so important and such a point of pride that generations of Newfoundlanders have bitterly argued against Nova Scotia's claim that the Venetian sailor actually stepped ashore in Cape Breton.
Wherever it was he landed, the discovery impressed Henry VII and the king agreed to finance another Cabot voyage. A year after his great discovery, John Cabot sailed out of Bristol England in May, 1498.
This time there was no repeat of the great discovery and only one of the five ships in Cabot's flotilla made it back home across the treacherous North Atlantic.
John's son Sebastian also sought the glory of discovery and lead an expedition on a search for a northwest passage to Cathay in 1508. After a voyage to South America in 1526, Sebastian Cabot retired from the hands-on side of exploring and lived out his remaining years as a 16th century consultant to English explorers who continued the search for the elusive northwest passage.
If John Cabot really did walk the shores of Newfoundland on May 2 1497, we know that he wasn't the first to mark the ground with European footprints. The Vikings beat him to it by 500 years when they attempted to colonize L'Anse aux Meadows on the Great Northern Peninsula.
But the adventures of the Norse explorers was long forgotten by 1497 and Cabot's landfall in Newfoundland captured the imagination of an Old World on the verge of a new age of discovery.