page_title: John Cabot
section_title: Final voyage
hierarchical_section_title: John Cabot / Expeditions / Final voyage
caption_attribution_description: English: The replica of John Cabot's ship The Matthew. Photographed at its home berth, adjacent to the SS Great Britain in Bristol harbour.
context_page_description: John Cabot was an Italian navigator and explorer. His 1497 voyage to the coast of North America under the commission of Henry VII of England is the earliest known European exploration of coastal North America since the Norse visits to Vinland in the eleventh century.
  To mark the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Cabot's expedition, both the Canadian and British governments elected Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, as representing Cabot's first landing site. However, alternative locations have also been proposed.
context_section_description: On return to Bristol, Cabot rode to London to report to the king. On 10 August 1497, he was given a reward of £10 – equivalent to about two years' pay for an ordinary labourer or craftsman. The explorer was fêted; Soncino wrote on 23 August that, similar to Christopher Columbus, Cabot "is called the Great Admiral, and vast honour is paid to him and he goes dressed in silk, and these English run after him like mad". Such adulation was short-lived, for over the next few months the king's attention was occupied by the Second Cornish Uprising of 1497, led by Perkin Warbeck. Once Henry's throne was secure, he gave more thought to Cabot. On 26 September, just a few days after the collapse of the revolt, the king made an award of £2 to Cabot. On 13 December 1497, the explorer was awarded a pension (or salary) of £20 per year. This was to be payable from customs receipts collected in Bristol. The pension was backdated to March 1497, to make clear that Cabot was in the king's service at the time of his expedition. Despite the royal grant, Bristol's customs officers initially refused to pay Cabot his pension, forcing the explorer to obtain an additional warrant from the king.   On 3 February 1498, Cabot was given new letters patent covering the voyage and to help him prepare a second expedition. In March and April, the king also advanced a number of loans to Lancelot Thirkill of London, Thomas Bradley, and John Cair, who were to accompany Cabot's new expedition.
  The Great Chronicle of London (1189–1512) reports that Cabot departed with a fleet of five ships from Bristol at the beginning of May 1498, one of which had been prepared by the king. Some of the ships were said to be carrying merchandise, including cloth, caps, lace points and other "trifles". This suggests that Cabot intended to engage in trade on this expedition. The Spanish envoy in London reported in July that one of the ships had been caught in a storm and been forced to land in Ireland, but that Cabot and the other four ships had continued on.
  For centuries, no other records were found (or at least published) that relate to this expedition; it was long believed that Cabot and his fleet were lost at sea. But at least one of the men scheduled to accompany the expedition, Lancelot Thirkill, is recorded as living in London in 1501.
  It is not known if Cabot died during the voyage, or returned safely and died shortly after.
  The historian Alwyn Ruddock worked on Cabot and his era for 35 years. She suggested that Cabot and his expedition successfully returned to England in the spring of 1500. She claimed their return followed an epic two-year exploration of the east coast of North America, south into the Chesapeake Bay area and perhaps as far as the Spanish territories in the Caribbean. Her evidence included the well-known world map of the Spanish cartographer Juan de la Cosa. His chart included the North American coast and seas "discovered by the English" between 1497 and 1500.
  Ruddock suggested that Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis and the other friars who accompanied the 1498 expedition had stayed in Newfoundland and founded a mission. If Carbonariis founded a settlement in North America, it would have been the first Christian settlement on the continent, and may have included a church, the only medieval church to have been built there.
  The Cabot Project at the University of Bristol was organized in 2009 to search for the evidence on which Ruddock's claims rest, as well as to undertake related studies of Cabot and his expeditions. The lead researchers on the project, Evan Jones and Margaret Condon, claim to have found further evidence to support aspects of Ruddock's case, including some of the information she intended to use to argue for a successful return of the 1498 expedition to Bristol. These appear to place John Cabot in London by May 1500, albeit Jones and Condon have yet to publish their documentation.
  The project is collaborating on an archaeological excavation at the community of Carbonear, Newfoundland, located at Conception Bay and believed the likely location
caption: A replica of the Matthew in Bristol
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot A20", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2004:08:01 18:03:32", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "184", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1464", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4585", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2004:08:01 18:03:32", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2004:08:01 18:03:32", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "203/32", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "97349/32768", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "333/200", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "211/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1024", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "768", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "512000/103", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "153600/31", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "1024", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "768", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1316"}