“On the 15th of July [25th of July N.S.] ships ... [belonging to ?] ... and John Jay junior, of 80 tons burthen, sailed out of the port of Bristol [to navigate] as far as the island of Brazil [“insulam de Brasylle”] on the west side of Ireland, ploughing the seas by ... and ... Thlyde [Thomas Lyde or Lloyd ?] is the most expert seaman in the whole of England, and on the 18th of September [27th of September N.S.] the news reached Bristol that after having sailed the seas for about 9 months they had not discovered the island, but on account of storms had returned to the port ... in Ireland to allow the ships and men to rest.”
Parts of the MS. being illegible, it does not appear whether John Jay, junior, was one of the leaders of the expedition or (as Harrisse thinks) one of the owners of the ships, but in any case we must suppose that the Thomas Lyde mentioned above was the actual leader or navigator. The “nine months” (“9 menses”) must either be a clerical error for two months or for nine weeks, either of which would fit the dates given, while nine months is meaningless. This must at any rate have been a serious attempt to find lands in the west, twelve years before Columbus’s discovery of the West Indies; and this was not the last attempt made from Bristol to find this happy land, for in 1497 Ayala, the Spanish Minister in London, writes:
“For the last seven years the Bristol people have equipped every year two, three, or four caravels to go in search of the islands of Brazil and of the Seven Cities,[281] following the imagination of this Genoese.”
Giovanni Caboto
“This Genoese” is Giovanni Caboto, or John Cabot, as he was called in England. We find only a few casual statements about this man, who was to give England the right of discovery to a new continent, and who, together with his fellow townsman, Columbus, forms the great turning-point in the history of discovery; for the most part an impenetrable obscurity rests upon his life and activity.[282] As he is often called, e.g., in letters from the contemporary Spanish Ambassadors in London, “this Genoese,” or “a Genoese like Columbus,” we must suppose that he was born in Genoa; but from existing State documents of the republic of Venice it appears that Joanni Caboto obtained his freedom in Venice on March 28, 1476, after having lived there fifteen years, which was the legal period necessary to enable a foreigner to become a citizen of the republic.[283] From the statements of contemporaries we must conclude that John Cabot was a capable seaman and navigator, with a good knowledge of charts and cartography; he also constructed a globe to illustrate his voyages. This is no more than was to be expected of a Genoese, trained in the Venetian school, which at that time was the foremost in seamanship. It may, therefore, be regarded as probable that John Cabot was familiar with the leading ideas of the geographical world of his time. Thus, while still living at Venice, he may have heard of the idea of reaching Eastern Asia by sailing to the west, which was put forward, notably by Toscanelli, as early as 1474, and in this way it is possible that, independently of Columbus, he may have thought of accomplishing this voyage to the fabulous riches of the East by a shorter route than that which the Portuguese sought to the south of Africa. In support of this it may be mentioned that in 1497 he himself told the Minister of Milan in London, Raimondo di Soncino, that
“he had once been at Mecca, whither spices were brought by caravans from distant lands, and that those who brought them, when asked where the said spices grew, answered that they did not know, but that other caravans came to their home with this merchandise from more distant lands, and these [other caravans] again say that it is brought to them from other regions situated far away.” Soncino adds that “Cabot reasons thus—that if the eastern people tell those in the south that these things come from places far distant from them, and so on from hand to hand, then, granting the earth to be round, the last people must obtain them in the north-west; and he says it in such a way that, as it does not cost me more than it costs, I too believe it....”[284]
It is not improbable that Cabot may have thought that as, on account of the spherical form of the earth, the circumference of the lines of latitude decreases towards the north, the shortest way over the western ocean to the east coast of Asia must lie along the northern latitudes (cf. Posidonius, vol. i. p. 79). But we cannot lose sight of the fact that Cabot did not advance this until long after the first voyage of Columbus, and it is, therefore, uncertain whether the idea occurred to him before or after that time. When this journey to Mecca took place we do not know.
Pedro de Ayala, the Spanish Minister in London, says in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in 1498, that Cabot is “another Genoese like Columbus, who has been in Seville and Lisbon, endeavouring to obtain help for this discovery” [i.e., of land in the west]. The question is whether this “who” refers to Columbus or Cabot. The latter appears more likely, as it seems superfluous for the Minister to inform Ferdinand and Isabella that Columbus had been in Seville. But here again we do not learn when Cabot may have made this journey to Spain and Portugal, whether before or after Columbus’s voyage in 1492. In any case it may point to his having been occupied for a long time with plans of this sort.
John Cabot arrives in England, circa 1490 ?
Nor do we know when John Cabot came to England; but perhaps it was about 1490 that he settled in Bristol. If he really came there with ideas of making for Asia across the western ocean, he certainly found a favourable soil for such plans in the port which had already sent out ships in 1480 to look for the island of Brazil. But it is also very possible that these plans occurred to him after he had heard of this expedition, and had become familiar at first hand with the ideas of western lands which dominated the minds of the sailors of Western Europe (Englishmen and Portuguese) of that time. With the many fresh arguments he brought with him from Italy and the Mediterranean countries, it cannot have been difficult for him to induce the merchants of Bristol to make fresh attempts to find these countries in the west or north-west; and, to judge from Ayala’s letter of 1497 about the expeditions sent out annually for the previous seven years, he seems to have been persistent.