Cabot, whose Italian name was Giovanni Caboto, left Bristol in May 1497 with a crew of about 18, hoping to reach Asia by sailing west. After some five weeks he went ashore, raised the banners of England and the pope and claimed the land for Henry VII. The exact spot is unknown: Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island both claim it. Cabot returned believing he had reached Asia. He set out again in 1498 with five ships and was never heard from again.
Cabot had tried to find backers for a westward voyage in Spain and Portugal before coming to England, where Bristol merchants already sent ships into the Atlantic in search of fishing grounds. Henry VII granted him letters patent in 1496 to sail "to all parts, regions and coasts of the eastern, western and northern sea".
The Matthew was a small ship, perhaps 50 tons. It left Bristol around May 20, 1497, and made landfall on June 24, the feast of St John the Baptist. Cabot stayed ashore only briefly. His party found a trail, a snare and the remains of a fire, but met no people. He noted that the sea was so full of cod that they could be caught by lowering baskets.
Back in England in August, Cabot was rewarded with £10 and a pension and dressed in silk, according to a Venetian observer. His second voyage of 1498 vanished. England did little to follow up his claim for decades, but it later served as the basis for English claims in North America. The date of the landing is recorded in a later chronicle entry and accepted by historians.
Key people: John Cabot, Henry VII of England