Cabot officially became a Venetian citizen in and began conducting trade in the eastern Mediterranean. Records indicate that he got into financial trouble and left Venice as a debtor in November During this time, Cabot became inspired by the discoveries of Bartolomeu Dias and Christopher Columbus. In , Cabot traveled by sea from Bristol to Canada, which he mistook for Asia. Like Columbus, Cabot believed that sailing west from Europe was the shorter route to Asia.
Hearing of opportunities in England, Cabot traveled there and met with King Henry VII, who gave him a grant to "seeke out, discover, and finde" new lands for England. In early May of , Cabot left Bristol, England, on the Matthew , a fast and able ship weighing 50 tons, with a crew of 18 men.
Cabot and his crew sailed west and north, under Cabot's belief that the route to Asia would be shorter from northern Europe than Columbus's voyage along the trade winds. On June 24, , 50 days into the voyage, Cabot landed on the east coast of North America.
Others believe he may have landed at Newfoundland, Labrador or even Maine. Though the Matthew 's logs are incomplete, it is believed that Cabot went ashore with a small party and claimed the land for the King of England. We do not even know precisely when and where he was born. It is likely, though, that he was born around in Gaeta, near Naples, and was the son of a merchant. His name is also associated with Genoa, and he may have spent some time there as a boy.
But by Cabot was living in Venice, where he became a citizen. In about he married a Venetian woman, Mattea, and they had three sons: Ludovico, Sebastiano and Sancio.
A merchant like his father, Cabot traded in spices with the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, and became an expert mariner. Valuable goods from Asia — spices, silks, precious stones and metals — were brought either overland or up the Red Sea for sale in Europe. Venetians played a prominent part in this trade. Then, about , Cabot and his family moved to Valencia in Spain.
It is probable that, like his fellow-countryman Christopher Columbus, Cabot wanted to be part of an expanding frontier of exploration, the Atlantic Ocean. After a month, he discovered a 'new found land', today known as Newfoundland in Canada.
Cabot is credited for claiming North America for England and kick-starting a century of English transatlantic exploration.
He had read of fabulous Chinese cities in the writings of Marco Polo and wanted to see them for himself. He hoped to reach them by sailing west, across the Atlantic. Like Christopher Columbus, Cabot found it very difficult to convince backers to pay for the ships he needed to test out his ideas about the world. After failing to persuade the royal courts of Europe, he arrived with his family in , to try to persuade merchants in London and Bristol to pay for his planned voyage.
Before he set off, Cabot heard that Columbus had sailed west across the Atlantic and reached land. Cabot, although rewarded for his findings with permission to take another expedition, never returned to the land he'd discovered. He left England again in only to become lost at sea with all five of his vessels. From to Cabot's son Sebastiano carried out explorations of his own, sailing with support from Bristol merchants.
His journeys took him to the north of those found in First Contact Biography of John Cabot. Biography of John Cabot John Cabot was in his early to mid forties when he set foot on the soil of Newfoundland, claiming the territory for Christianity in the name of the English crown.
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