Great Exploration Hoaxes

Chapter 1 Sebastian Cabot and the Northwest Passage In 1508, Sebastian Cabot set sail from Bristol with three hundred men in two ships. He crossed the Atlantic quickly, visited the great fishing grounds of the Newfoundland Banks, familiar to Bristol men for about a decade, and made a landfall. Cabot had more serious exploratory ambitions, however, and soon pushed on toward the northwest, coasting along the shores of Labrador. He found the ice-clogged passage that would come to be called Hudson Strait, drifted through it, and entered the open water of Hudson Bay, a full century before Henry Hudson would "discover" it. Cabot wanted to push on, but his men were on the verge of mutiny. He turned back, sailed south past the Newfoundland Banks, and continued along the coast of the present United States, still searching for a westward passage through the American landmass. He may have wintered along this coast. Having explored the Atlantic shore all the way to the tip of Florida, he turned home, arriving in Bristol in April 1509 to find that his monarch, Henry VII, had died and a new Henry, who would turn out to be far less interested in geographical discovery than his father, was on the throne. Though he had not found a route to Cathay, Sebastian Cabot had completed the most significant voyage yet undertaken by English ships. Or had he? The leading 20th-century Cabot expert, James A. Williamson, believes that the 1508-9 expedition took place much as described above. But there are strong grounds for concluding-and sound scholars who argue-that Cabot's whole voyage was fictitious, that in fact he never left England. To a modern observer, it may seem incredible that the true facts about a voyage of such importance remain so conjectural. Surely such a pioneering venture would be bound to leave in its wake dozens of authentic records, even eyewitness accounts. Surely no man, no matter how clever, could fake a voyage that had supposedly involved three hundred men under the patronage of the king of England. The uncertainty about Cabot's Northwest expedition originates in two sources. One is primarily historical. Although the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the Italians took pains to chronicle their great nautical voyages during the late 15th and early 16th centuries, on the whole the English did not-until Richard Hakluyt began to collect and publish firsthand accounts of his countrymen's discoveries in 1582. Before Hakluyt, English voyages were recorded mainly in the memories of living seamen or in obscure Continental compendia of knowledge. Many great deeds and adventures slipped irrevocably into the dark hiding places of historical ignorance. Of the great mariner John Cabot, Sebastian's father, on whose 1497 voyage England's whole claim to North America rested, no portrait exists today, nor a single scrap of his handwriting. By the middle of the 16th century the facts of John Cabot's life had passed completely out of common memory. The second cause of confusion surrounding Sebastian's Northwest expedition lies in the very makeup of the man's character. Whether or not the 1508 voyage was a hoax, Sebastian Cabot seems to have been a thoroughgoing confidence artist. He managed to build successful careers in both Spain and England as an adviser on northern navigations mainly by fostering the illusion that he was the sole possessor of vast funds of secret geographical lore. He seems to have taken full credit for everything his father accomplished, letting John Cabot's reputation dwindle to that of a mere merchant, while his own burgeoned as the man who had discovered North America. At the peril of his own life, he played the conflicting interests of Spain, England, and Venice off against each other, entering into cabals and intRoberts, David is the author of 'Great Exploration Hoaxes', published 2001 under ISBN 9780679783244 and ISBN 0679783245.