Talk:John Cabot

Nationality

• From Gaeta, please. If it can be disputed, however, I never heard I came from Genoa. --Attilios 15:32, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

• Cabot was not italian, Italy was created four hundred years after he was born.

Try to be more helpful. What was "Italy" called in Cabot's day? - Adrian Pingstone 21:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see any sources that claim he called himself Italian. He did come from what we now know as Italy, but he would never have called himself an Italian. We do have a source that says he was Venetian. Why the change from Venetian to Italian? Benkenobi18 21:21, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Italy didn't exist at the time, of course; but, would you call Hegel, Fichte or Kant Baden-Wurttemburgish, Saxon (why not Lusatian!!!) or Prussian philosophers, respectively, for the same reason? "Nationality" is a broader meaning than mere anagraphic registration. --Attilios (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

• Definitely, he WAS not born in Venice. Where else, is disputed. Castiglione Chiavarese and Gaeta are the two disputed places I found in sources. --Attilios (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

• What is wrong with Italian? It wasn't a political region, but it was a geographic region. It was commonly referred to as Italy. Think of terms like Italian Renaissance, Italian Papacy, Italian city-states. The language spoken was Italian after all. Was George Washington not an American until the Declaration of Independence?

Malachi is survivin (talk) 23:38, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

• It seems Joan (John, in Catalan) Cabot acquired Venetian citizenship on 28th March 1478, thanks (according to a Catalan source) to the fact that his wife was Venetian.

• Catalan sources point to the fact that his son Sebastian's map of the world includes the name of a tiny village in Catalonia, Canet de Mar. To this day, in the same district as Canet live 39% of the 1028 people in Catalonia whose surname is Cabot.

• Someone seems to have added a bit of text stating that Cabot "is thought" to have Dalmatian Slav origins. The source provided is some guy's website, wherein said guy states "I think he was Croatian," and cites a book that, according to the website, mentions where Cabot lived in Venice, and that a lot of people of Croatian origin lived there. I think this is quite a leap with little evidence, no? Vertigo963 (talk) 04:40, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. We'd need a reliable source for such speculation, and I've removed it. Dougweller (talk) 08:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Newfoundland

John Cabot: The English King's Italian Navigator First Voyage May 2, 1497 - August 6, 1498

On his first voyage, Cabot reached the east coast of North America, probably landing on Newfoundland or Cape Breton Copyright/Source King Henry VII finally gave Cabot permission to travel. On June 24, 1497, Cabot reached the east coast of North America, probably Newfoundland or Cape Breton. Cabot claimed the land in the name of Henry VII. They did not meet any Native peoples.

They travelled along the coast for 30 days. The Matthew returned to England and Cabot was rewarded with the sum of £10 by the king. This was not a lot of money -- he would have been given much more if he had come back with spices or gold.

Playing it Safe

Historians haven't decided exactly where Cabot landed on June 24, 1497. It was probably Newfoundland, Labrador, Cape Breton or perhaps Prince Edward Island. Following a trail leading away from the shore, Cabot and some of his men came across an abandoned campsite. The site may have belonged to the Beothuk, a tribe that became known for hiding itself from Europeans. Cabot took on fresh water, and then nervous that he might be attacked when he only had 18 men with him, he returned to his ship.

A 16th-century map showing areas with lots of cod Copyright/Source Never Return Empty-Handed Rather than return to England with nothing to show for his voyage, Cabot filled the holds of his ships with cod. He reported that "the schools of cod in the waters off Newfoundland were so thick that they slowed the ship." Jackson, Lawrence. Newfoundland and Labrador. Markham, Ont.: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1998, ©1995. p. 23

Cabot's news of the cod set off a fishing frenzy. Europeans loved to eat cod and soon the French, Portuguese and Spanish were fishing Newfoundland's waters. Today, the cod has been all but fished out. In 1991, the Canadian government banned cod fishing to give the cod stocks time to recover.

Academy

John Cabot also has a Academy named after him in Kingswood, Bristol. It has recently been renamed John Cabot Academy after originally being called John Cabot Technology College.

Friend's Name ID

In the article, Cabot's favorite friend (mispelled) is a Nguyen Ly. Any other info on this individual's involvement with Cabot ? (No other specific reference to this 15th century individual found in Wikipedia) PFSLAKES1 (talk) 20:18, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Was vandalism, since removed. -- Alexf^(talk) 16:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Meaning of North America, sources, questions

I changed the claim of Cabot being "commonly credited as the first European to discover North America" to "commonly credited as the first European to discover the mainland of North America", as that is how the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it. Note the (fairly) common meaning of North America includes Central America and the Caribbean where Columbus made his discoveries in 1492. The North America pages makes this clear, while noting alternate meanings. Of course even this claim is troublesome if Cabot landed on Newfoundland, since that it not the mainland. Still, the mainland statement is sourced, so. Actually the Catholic Encyclopedia takes it further, saying Cabot was "discoverer of the American mainland"--not just North America. But as the page Americas (terminology) points out, the term "American" is rather vague and problematic. So I left it as North America. Also, there is a paragraph, entirely within parentheses, which I added a "citation needed" tag too:

• (Like his contemporary, King Francis I of France, who would send Giovanni da Verrazzano to reconnoiter even more of the Atlantic coastline, Henry VIII was in part motivated by the perceived insolence of the division of the world into two halves by Pope Alexander VI in the Bull Inter Caetera following the success of Columbus's first voyage. One half of the globe was for Portugal and the other half for Spain.)

I don't doubt the Inter Caetera, but am skeptical that King Francis I of France and King Henry VIII of England were "in part motivated by the perceived insolence" of this papal bull. My understanding is that the Inter Caetera was never intended to be anything other than an arrangement between Spain and Portugal "brokered" by the Papacy. It applied only to Spain and Portugal. France, England, and all other nations were not bound by it--although Spain tried (and rapidly failed) to persuade other nations to recognize Spanish rights to the New World based on the Inter Caetera. I am skeptical that Francis I or Henry VIII found the papal bull insolent. They might have, and if so it might have played a part in Henry's support of Cabot. But, well, I checked the references listed here and found no such information. Thus "citation needed". Pfly (talk) 06:33, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Flags

It is known that Cabot left two flags on the American soil, one of Britain and one of Venice. Is that worth of mention? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.184.203.199 (talk) 11:01, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

but they knew there was no Northwest passage (Sponsorship)

Un-sourced and illogical. How would they have known?Dankarl (talk) 14:12, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Has any news been discovered on how John Cabot disappeared.I know in a book written about how the name America came about, it was implied that he sailed down the coast of North America and ran into the Spanish in South America, where he was killed.TepidTangent (talk) 18:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)