CABOT, JOHN One fine May morning in 1497 there sailed from the harbor of Bristol, England, a tiny little ship with a crew of 18 men. The ship was not much larger than one of our fishing boats, but it was setting out on one of the most momentous voyages in the history of the world. The captain was John Cabot, an Italian born in Columbus' own city of Genoa; but he was sailing under the flag of the king of England, to make a voyage of discovery to the strange New World which Columbus had reached five years before. Henry VII of England had most unwisely refused to help Columbus when he was trying to fit out his expedition, and so now he was delighted to give his permission for Cabot's voyage.
Boldly Cabot steered his little ship northwestward across the boisterous Atlantic. On June 24, 1497, after several weeks of peril and hardship he sighted the coast of North America—the first European to reach the shores of that continent, since the days of the old Northmen. The land he discovered was prob ably Cape Breton Island and the nearby island we call " New-found-land." When Cabot returned with the news of his eventful discovery, the king, being a miserly sovereign, gave him only ten pounds as a reward, but made up for this niggardliness by raising Cabot to the post of admiral.
The next year Cabot set out on a second voyage with two ships and 300 men, and apparently dis covered the barren shores of Labrador and sailed as far south as Maryland before returning to England.
Soon after returning to England John Cabot died.
The importance of his discoveries became evident later, when England laid claim to the whole of North America on the ground that Cabot was the first discoverer to reach the mainland.
John Cabot's son Sebastian (1476-1557) is thought by some to have accompanied his father on these expeditions. At all events he became a renowned map-maker and navigator and commanded a Spanish expedition to South America in 1526, which explored the region around the La Plata, Parana, and Paraguay rivers. Later he returned to the employ of the English sovereigns, for whom he tried to find a passage to Asia by the northeast route (north of Asia) , and thus did much to open up trade between England and the land later called Russia.