The Book of the Ocean

by Ernest Ingersoll

Never was a voyage of discovery, the consequences of which were so far-reaching, entered upon with less pomp or flourish of trumpets. So little note of it was made at the time that the very name of John Cabot narrowly escaped being lost altogether, and the record of his work came very near being replaced by a confused account of the doings of his son Sebastian; for it was not until certain letters had been found—and that within a very few years—in the contemporary archives of Spain and other European countries, that we were able to give any sure account of the matter.

It is now plain that John Cabot, in the Matthew, leaving Bristol early in May, 1497, and having passed Ireland, shaped his course toward the north, then turned to the west and proceeded for many days until he came to land, where he disembarked on June 24, and planted an English flag.

There seems to be no doubt that this was the mainland of North America, and the general opinion has prevailed that his landfall was the extremity of Cape Breton. Cabot stayed some days, but how far he traced the coast, and whether he learned of Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island, are matters of conjecture. At any rate, he soon turned homeward, and arrived in Bristol probably on August 6.

We can imagine with what eagerness his story was listened to, as he told of the fair, temperate, well-wooded land, its people and animals and fruitfulness, that he had seen. But the thing that impressed the Bristol men most was the report of the enormous abundance of codfish there. This was something these canny men could see without any illusions, and possess themselves of regardless of papal bulls; and they at once abandoned their northern fishing-grounds and began to resort to the Banks of Newfoundland, whither they were quickly followed by large annual fleets of Norman, Breton, Spanish, and Portuguese fishermen. John Cabot intended to go again the next year and make his way onward to Japan, as he believed he could do, for, like the others, he thought what he had found was only a remote eastern part of Asia; and in 1498 he actually did sail westward from Bristol with five ships, victualed for a year. None of these ships ever returned, and no evidence exists that they ever reached their goal; and with them John Cabot, to whom England owed her early supremacy in North America, disappears from view.

Sebastian Cabot was a son of John Cabot, and a skilful map-maker. Whether he went with his father on the first voyage is disputed; there seems no direct evidence that he did so. That he did not go on the second voyage is plain, for he had a long subsequent career, of which accurate knowledge is a late acquisition; here it is only necessary to add that by his statements to Peter Martyr and others he allowed the erroneous impression to pass into history, if he did not directly authorize the lie, that it was he, and not his father, who discovered America and the fishing-grounds.

Now that the way across the Atlantic was learned, chivalrous sailors hurried to add what they could to the map. Corte-Real, a Portuguese of rank, struck northwest, and hit upon and named Labrador as early as 1500. The next voyage of prominence introduces the French as competitors, Francis I sending the Florentine Verrazano, a typical sea-rover of the period, who had already been to Brazil and the East Indies and was finally hanged as a pirate, to find out what he could about northern America. He steered west from the Madeira Islands in January, 1524, found land near Cape Fear (North Carolina), and claimed to have traced the coast as far north as Nova Scotia, besides entering a large bay (either New York or Narragansett). His whole story, however, rests on certain letters and maps the authenticity of which has been hotly disputed; and at any rate little, if anything, came of this voyage.

It was far different with the next one, however,—that one sent from France in 1534, under the command of Jacques Cartier, who sailed from St. Malo in two tiny vessels to Newfoundland, and learned of the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Then, like all the other captains, none of whom could stay over winter in America, because their vessels were too small to store provisions, and because they were beset by fears, not only of visible savages, but of invisible hobgoblins, he returned to France. The next year found him back again, however, this time steering his vessels up the St. Lawrence to “Hochelaga” (Montreal), and later carrying home an account that led to so immediate a movement on the part of France that Canada was the scene of the earliest colonization of the New World, properly speaking, for the Spanish settlements in the south were thus far nothing but military stations. France, indeed, dreamed of obtaining the whole of North America for herself, and attempted soon after to colonize Florida and the Carolinas; but these attempts failed, and she was able to hold only the valley of the St. Lawrence and the shore of its gulf. These things happened later, however, and for many years the Atlantic coast of North America was left unclaimed by any one, while the English and Dutch were busy in the far north, the Spanish were rioting in the tropics, and the Portuguese turned their attention to the southern and eastern quarters of the globe. It is one of the most striking curiosities of the history of the development of civilization on the globe, following the stagnation of the middle ages and the desolation of the plague-ridden thirteenth century, that the most remote, unprofitable, unhealthy regions were so fiercely struggled for, while the best parts of the New World were left until the last.

Having found Brazil, both Spaniards and Portuguese proceeded to trace the continent southward, hoping to find a practicable way to Peru around it. Several experienced navigators worked southward, the best known of whom is Juan Diaz de Solis, who entered the La Plata River and was killed there by the Indians in 1516. Columbus had not been a moment too soon to be first. Nevertheless it was left to a stranger in those waters, the indomitable Magellan (Fernão de Magalhães), to reap the reward of success. The Pope and all the bishops still declared that the earth was flat; but so little was this now believed, even by themselves, that Magellan, who had just quitted the service of Portugal, dared to propose to “his most Catholic majesty” the King of Spain to sail west instead of east to the Moluccas, just as though the earth were globular and might be circumnavigated; and the king not only dared to listen, but approved of the proposition, which seemed entirely practicable if South America could be passed. That was the problem Magellan set himself to solve. Should he succeed, could the Moluccas be reached by sailing westward, then they would fall into that half of the earth given by the Pope to Spain, and Portugal’s present claim to them would be overthrown. Thus the experiment was well worth making in behalf of politics as well as knowledge, and Magellan was furnished with five ships, carrying two hundred and thirty-seven men. The Trinidad was the admiral’s ship; but the San Vittoria was destined for immortality.

He struck boldly for the Southwest, not crossing the trough of the Atlantic as Columbus had done, but passing down the length of it, his aim being to find some cleft or passage in the American continent through which he might sail into the Great South Sea. For seventy days he was becalmed under the line. He then lost sight of the North Star, but courageously held on toward the “pole antarktike.” He nearly foundered in a storm, “which did not abate till the three fires called St. Helen, St. Nicholas, and St. Clare appeared playing in the rigging of the ships. In a new land, to which he gave the name Patagoni, he found giants of “good corporature”.... His perseverance and resolution were at last rewarded by the discovery of the Strait named by him San Vittoria, in affectionate honor of his ship; but which, with a worthy sentiment, other sailors soon changed to the Straits of Magellan. On November 25, 1520, after a year and a quarter of struggling, he issued forth from its western portals, and entered the Great South Sea, shedding tears of joy, as Pigafetta, an eye-witness, relates, when he recognized its infinite expanse.... Admiring its illimitable but placid surface, and exulting in the meditation of its secret perils soon to be tried, he courteously imposed upon it the name it is forever to bear—the Pacific Ocean....

And now the great sailor, having burst through the barrier of the American continent, steered for the northwest, attempting to regain the equator. For three months and twenty days he sailed on the Pacific, and never saw inhabited land. He was compelled by famine to strip off the pieces of skin and leather wherewith his rigging was here and there bound, to soak them in the sea, and then soften them with warm water, so as to make a wretched food; to eat the sweepings of the ship and other loathsome matter; to drink water that had become putrid by keeping; and yet he resolutely held on his course, though his men were dying daily. As is quaintly observed, “their gums grew over their teeth, and so they could not eat.” [This was scurvy, the dread of all mariners in those times and long afterward.] He estimated that he sailed over this unfathomable sea not less than 12,000 miles.