The epic of the Cabots, the forgotten explorers
During the era of European expansion in the New World, Italian navigators had a decisive influence not only in maritime exploration, but also in the study of the New Continent from an ethnic, social and naturalistic point of view.
The five great Italian navigators were: Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Giovanni and Sebastiano Caboto and Giovanni da Verazzano.
Everyone had to look for jobs outside Italy, given that the rulers of the time did not understand the real added value that these navigators could bring to their territories (and even less to the whole of Italy, understood as a nation). Unfortunately, even today many excellent minds choose to emigrate in search of countries that can give them a future, countries that have a vision, and that enhance the added value that a trained person can bring to society.
Giovanni Caboto was born in Genoa in 1450, and moved to Venice very early. There, at a very young age, he married Donna Mattea and had three children, including Sebastiano, who probably followed him on his first journey.
Cabot made some attempts to obtain ships and vehicles from the Republic of Venice, but his requests were not accepted. He then went to Valencia, Spain, where he directed the works to expand the port, just at the time when Columbus returned triumphant from his first voyage.
Caboto, enthusiastic about those discoveries, proposed to Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon on an exploratory voyage towards the West, following a more northern route than that followed by the Admiral. However, he received a refusal and so, in 1496 he went to England to convince King Henry VII to support his project. To catch up with Spain and Portugal, the latter hastened to grant authorization to organize the expedition. Here is the permission of the king of England Henry VII to John Cabot, March 5, 1496:
I grant you full and free authority, permission and power to sail in every region and coast of the East and West Seas under our banners, flags and ensigns, with five cargo ships of the quality he wishes, with all men that he wishes to take with him in those ships, at his own expense, for the purpose of finding, discovering, exploring and investigating, be they islands, countries, regions or provinces of pagans and infidels, be they in the parts of the world which before that time were unknown to all Christians.
However, the lack of resources and the difficulty of finding the crew delayed Cabot's departure until May 1497, when he set sail with the Matthew, a 50-ton ship, with only 18 crew members. On June 24, the caravel landed on the island of Cap Breton (or the island of Newfoundland), then touching a virgin land on the continent, which was called Nova Scotia. The Italian navigator took possession of these new territories in the name of Henry VII.
June 24, 1497 was a very important day for the historiography of European colonization of the New World: first of all, well before 1498, the year of Columbus' third voyage, when the Genoese admiral set foot on the South American continent for the first time. Furthermore, on the same day, according to the letters of Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine touched South American land on his first voyage (see my article Origin of the name America). It should be noted, however, that Amerigo Vespucci was the first Westerner to set foot on the American mainland and recognize it as such, as Giovanni Caboto arrived on 24 June 1497 on the island of Cap Breton (or on the island of Newfoundland), and not on the mainland.
The Matthew returned to England in August and her arrival was celebrated with great celebration. In 1498 the king of England authorized another venture, in which six sailing ships with 200 crewmen participated, with the aim of colonizing the discovered lands, considered Asian islands. The expedition left in the summer of 1498 but Giovanni Caboto never returned to Europe.
Various hypotheses have been made about the failure of the voyage but the most probable is that some boats, seeking passage to Cipango, went too far north, colliding with icebergs.
In the years to come, England did not organize any other ventures, nevertheless the explorations of the Italian Giovanni Caboto laid the foundations for the future English colonization of the New World.
In the years following the conquest of Mexico, John Cabot's son Sebastian was the commander of an important voyage to South America. Sebastiano, who was born in Venice in 1484, followed in his father's footsteps, learning the art of sailing from a young age. Furthermore, his passion for geography led him to hone his skills as a cartographer. He served at the English court in this capacity until 1512, when he traveled to Spain.
He was named Piloto Mayor de Castilla and assumed the title of captain general in 1525.
King Charles V of Spain authorized him to organize an expedition to explore the Rio de la Plata, because it was believed that the legendary country of Birú (Peru) was easily reachable by going up the river. The fleet, made up of three ships and 150 crewmen, left Cadiz on 5 April 1526. After three months of navigation, the convoy reached the estuary of the great river and began to move inland. Caboto sailed to the Yacareta-Apipe waterfalls, where he had to stop when faced with steep waterfalls. In the area of today's Argentine province of Santa Fe he founded a village and a fort, called Santo Spirito.
The Venetian remained in the area for years, sending expeditions nearby, studying the morphology of the land and personally exploring the Paraguay and Pilcomayo rivers. Its officers Francisco Cesar, Francisco de Rojas, Martin Mendes and Miguel de Rodas left, with a contingent of soldiers, on an exploratory journey into the interior of the continent, in search of Birú and its fabulous secrets (from Francisco Cesar's surname later gave rise to the legend of the City of the Caesars). At the same time, the village that had been founded was destroyed by the natives, so the Venetian decided to return to Europe.
Once in Spain, at the court of Charles V, Caboto asked to be recognized as Adelantado and governor of the discovered lands, and to be able to leave again in command of a larger fleet. But the Crown, which in those years had given Francisco Pizarro the concession for the conquest of Peru via the Panama route, did not listen to the requests of the Venetian, who was even imprisoned for abandoning his lieutenants. A year later he was freed and served the Crown of Spain as Piloto Mayor until 1547.
In the following years he again attempted to enlist in the service of the King of England but to no avail. He had contacts with the Venetian authorities, with whom he was planning a trip to China with the aim of establishing commercial relations, but these attempts also led to nothing concrete.
He died in London in 1557, while organizing further voyages of exploration on behalf of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, a company whose aim was to search for the legendary Northwest Passage to reach China by a more direct route.
His explorations in the southern cone of the American continent had the merit of describing and drawing up maps of new territories of the Rio de la Plata, which were colonized in the following years.
Yuri Leveratto
