Sebastian Cabot (Italian and , ; , Gaboto or Cabot; – ) was a Venetian explorer, who at various times was in the service of the Kingdom of England, the Crown of Aragon and the Holy Roman Emperor. Cabot was likely born in the Venetian Republic and as such may have been a Venetian citizen, however this has never been confirmed. Cabot himself gave varying accounts of his national origins to different audiences, such as claiming to have been born in Bristol, England. He was the son of Venetian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) and his Venetian wife Mattea and he grew up in England during his youth.
After his father's death, Cabot conducted his own voyages of discovery, charting the Eastern American seaboard and seeking the Northwest Passage on behalf of England. He later sailed for Spain, traveling to South America, where he explored the Rio de la Plata and established two new forts.
Early life and education Accounts differ as to Sebastian Cabot's place and date of birth. The historian James Williamson reviewed the evidence for various given dates in the 1480s and concluded that Sebastian was born not later than 1484, the son of John Cabot, a Venetian citizen credited with Genoese or Gaetan origins by birth, and of Mattea Caboto, also Venetian.James A. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Hakluyt Society, 2nd Series no 120, 1962), pp. 33-6 Late in life, Cabot himself told Englishman Richard Eden that he was born in Bristol, and that he travelled back to Venice with his parents at four years of age, returning again with his father, so that he was thought to be Venetian.C. Raymond Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot (London and New York, 1898), p.77 At another time, he told the Venetian ambassador at the court of Charles V, Gasparo Contarini (who noted it in his diary), that he was Venetian, educated in England. In 1515 Sebastian's friend Peter Martyr d'Anghiera wrote that Cabot was a Venetian by birth, but that his father (John Cabot) had taken him to England as a child. His father had lived in Venice from 1461, as he received citizenship (which required 15 years' residency) in 1476. The Caboto family moved to England in 1495 if not before.
Sebastian, his elder brother Ludovico and his younger brother Santo were included by name with their father in the royal letters patent from King Henry VII of March 1496 authorizing their father's expeditions across the Atlantic.O. Hartig, "John and Sebastian Cabot", The Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent, 1908), accessed 24 April 2015 They are believed by some historians, including Rodney Skelton, still to have been minors since they were not mentioned in the 1498 patent their father also received. John Cabot sailed from Bristol on the small ship Matthew and reached the coast of a "New Found Land" on 24 June 1497. Historians have differed as to where Cabot landed, but two likely locations often suggested are Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
1494 Cabot scouting expedition According to Cartografía Marítima Hispana,Luisa Martin Merás, Cartografía Marítima Hispana (1993, Madrid) Sebastian Cabot included a handwritten text in Latin on his famous map of North America (published in Antwerp, 1544) claiming to have discovered North America with his father in 1494, three years before his father's voyage.The only copy, found in Bavaria in 1843, is kept in the French National Library, Dept. of Maps, Res. Ge. AA 582 (A facsimile of a portion of the map related to South America is available at ) Sancho Gutierrez repeated this text in Castilian on his 1551 map.Downloadable hi-res image of Gutierrez map from 1551: Esta Carta General en plano hizo Sancho Gutierrez cosmographo ..., onb.ac.at (in German)Gutierrez 1551 map, Europeana website, The European Library
Placed next to the border of North America, the text reads: This land was discovered by Johannes Caboto, venetian and Sebastian Caboto, his son, in the year of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ MCCCCXCIV, 24th of June in the morning. They put to it the name 'prima terra vista' and [...] This big island was named Saint John, as it was discovered on Saint John holiday. People there wander wearing animal furs. They use bow and arrow to fight, javelins and darts and wooden batons and slings. This is a very sterile land, there are a lot of white bears and very big deers, big as horses, and many other animals. As well there are infinite fish: plaices, salmons, very long soles, 1 yard long and many other varieties of fish. Most of them are called cod. And there are also black hawks, black as ravens, eagles, partridges and many other birds.
The year is stated as MCCCCXCIV (1494) in both hand-written versions. There cannot be confusion with the commonly accepted date for the Cabots' voyage, in 1497. Two suppositions can explain this. Sebastian Cabot and Sancho Gutiérrez may have changed the date in the middle of the sixteenth century. Intentional changes and inaccuracies were very common among geographers at the time, depending on the political interests of their sponsors. As Cabot was funded at the time of the map by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain, he may have been interested in showing that the first travel to North America was in 1494 and thus funded by Castilians or by Portuguese, and not by English or French. By the time Cabot was sponsored by Germany and Spain, both England and France had started claiming shares of the New World in competition with Spain and Portugal.
If Cabot and Gutiérrez stated the correct year, it would mean the Cabots sailed to North America on their own account, before proposing their services to England in 1496. No contemporaneous documentation for this has survived.
Early career with England and Spain In 1504 Sebastian Cabot led an expedition from Bristol to the New World, using two ships: Jesus of Bristol and Gabriel of Bristol. These were mastered by Richard Savery and Philip Ketyner, respectively, and fitted out by Robert Thorne and Hugh Elyot. They brought back a certain amount of salted fish, which suggests the voyage was at least partly commercial and that other expeditions may also have included fishing. Cabot was granted an annuity of £10 on 3 April 1505 by Henry VII for services "in and aboute the fyndynge of the new founde landes".
In 1508–09 Cabot led one of the first expeditions to find a North-West passage through North America. He is generally credited with gaining "the high latitudes", where he told of encountering fields of icebergs and reported an open passage of water, but was forced to turn back. Some later descriptions suggest that he reached as far as the entrance of Hudson Bay. According to Peter Martyr's 1516 account Sebastian then sailed south along the east coast of North America, passing the rich fisheries off the coast of Newfoundland, going on until he was "almost in the latitude of Gibraltar" and "almost the longitude of Cuba". This would imply that he reached as far as the Chesapeake Bay, near what is now Washington, D.C.Evan T. Jones and Margaret M. Condon, Cabot and Bristol's Age of Discovery: The Bristol Discovery Voyages 1480-1508 (University of Bristol, 2016), pp. 67-70. Returning home "he found the King dead, and his son cared little for such an enterprise".'Marcantonio Contarini's Report on Sebastian Cabot's Voyage, 1536'. James Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 270. This suggests Sebastian arrived back in England shortly after the death of Henry VII in April 1509 and the accession of Henry VIII, who did indeed show much less interest in the exploration of the New World than his father.
By 1512 Cabot was employed by Henry VIII as a cartographer, supplying the king with a map of Gascony and Guienne.James Williamson, Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Cambridge University Press, 1962), p.281; Heather Dalton, Merchants and Explorers: Roger Barlow, Sebastian Cabot, & Networks of Atlantic Exchange 1500-1560 (Oxford 2016), p. 34 In the same year he accompanied the Marquess of Dorset's expedition to Spain, where he was made captain by Ferdinand V. Cabot believed that Spain was more interested in major exploration, but his hopes of getting Ferdinand's support were lost with the king's death. In the turmoil afterward, no plans would be made for new expeditions, and Cabot returned to England.
The scholar and translator/civil servant Richard Eden, who came to know Cabot towards the end of his life, ascribed to the explorer 'the governance' of a voyage of c.1516 under English flag.Sebastian Münster, translated Richard Eden, A treatyse of the newe India (1553), preface This has been accepted and elaborated by a number of English writers, particularly of the turn of the nineteenth century.Thomas Southey, Chronological History of the West Indies, Longman, et al., (1827) p. 127; Sir Harry Johnston, Pioneers in Tropical America, Read Books, 2006, p. 101 ; Robert Kerr, A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, W. Blackwood, 1824, pp. 11–12 Rodney Skelton, author of Cabot's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, connected Eden's text to a known expedition of 1517 which indeed aborted, but is not known to have involved Cabot;David Beers Quinn, England and the Discovery of America 1481-1620 (London, 1974), pp. 163-9 while the historian Alwyn Ruddock transferred Eden's story of the opposition to Cabot's plans of Thomas Spert, future master of the king's ship Mary Rose, to the explorer's voyage of 1508–9.
Cabot's effort's in 1521 to bring together and lead an English discovery voyage to North America are well attested. He had the support of Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey, and some offers of backing in money and ships from both Bristol and London merchants. But the Drapers Company expressed their distrust of Sebastian, and offered only limited funds. The response of other livery companies is unknown. The project was abandoned, and Cabot returned to Spain.David Beers Quinn, England and the Discovery of America 1481-1620 (London, 1974), pp. 144-7
Service to Spain In 1512, believing that King Ferdinand II of Aragon was offering more financial support for exploration than the English crown, Cabot moved from England to Spain.William Goldsmith, The Naval History of Great Britain from the Earliest Period, J. Jaques, 1825, p. 51 King Ferdinand’s death in 1516 brought this period of Spanish exploration to a halt, prompting Cabot to return to England.
By 1522, Cabot was again in Spanish service, this time as a member of the Council of the Indies and holding the title of Pilot Major, responsible for overseeing naval training and the instruction of navigators. Around this time, he secretly contacted the Council of Ten in Venice, offering to search for the Northwest Passage to China on Venice’s behalf if they would receive him.
In March 1525, Cabot was commissioned as captain general of a Spanish fleet. His mission was to determine, through astronomical observations, the precise demarcation line of the Treaty of Tordesillas between Spanish and Portuguese territories. He was also tasked with transporting settlers to the Molucca Islands to strengthen Spanish claims in the Pacific. Officially, the voyage was described as an expedition to discover Tarshish, Ophir, Eastern Cathay, and Cipango (Japan). The fleet consisted of four ships and 250 men, departing Sanlúcar de Barrameda on 3 April 1526.