Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today, we are
opening a file on a man who is simultaneously
one of the most famous figures in history. And,
well, a complete ghost. You know the name. You
probably learned it in, what, fourth grade. He's
the guy on the postage stamp. The man who found
North America for the English. That's the one.
Exactly. John Cabot, 1497. New world. End of
story. But as I was reading through the... The
stack of research you sent over for this, the
letters, the custom rolls, the chronicles, I
realized that almost everything I thought I knew
about this guy was just, it was two -dimensional.
Oh, absolutely. The reality is, well, it's messier.
And frankly, it's so much more interesting. We're
talking about a man who was a fugitive from debt,
a failed civil engineer. And potentially a bit
of a con artist. He was certainly a hustler.
And you're right. The textbook version of Cabot
is incredibly sanitized. When you dig into the
primary sources like the John Day letter or the
recent work by the Cabot Project at the University
of Bristol, you find a figure who is just. He's
desperate. He's ambitious, and he's operating
in this world of high -stakes industrial espionage.
And that's our mission today. We are going to
look past the statue in the park and try to find
the real human being. We need to talk about his
real name, his money problems, and a massive
historical mystery. The mystery. A mystery involving
a historian who's spent 35 years studying him
and then destroyed her own work. That story about
Al and Ruddock is truly one of the most heartbreaking
tragedies in modern academia. You'll definitely
get there. But let's start with the basics. The
name. We call him John Cabot. I mean, that wasn't
his name, was it? No, not at all. If you walked
up to him in 1390 and shouted John, he probably
wouldn't have turned around. In the Italian records,
he is Giovanni Caboto. In the Venetian dialect,
he actually signed his own name, Zuan Caboto.
Zuan, Z -U -A -N. Exactly. And later, when he's
trying to... you know hustle up work in spain
he shows up in the documents as john cabot montecaluna
montecaluna that sounds like he's trying to sound
like nobility or something or at least trying
to blend in and this brings up a key insight
about the era identity in the 15th century was
it was fluid especially for a merchant okay there
was a european tradition of nativizing names
it's the same reason we might call a historical
figure named jacques james in english history
books or why charles becomes coral in german
So he wasn't necessarily hiding his identity.
He was just marketing himself. Exactly. He was
a chameleon. When he was in Venice, he was Zwan.
When he dealt with his Italian banker in London,
his banker called him Giovanni. And then when
he was petitioning the king of England, he became
John. He became whoever he needed to be to close
the deal. So let's look at where Zwan came from.
We know he was born around 1450, maybe in Genoa
or Gaeta. But the paper trail really starts when
he becomes a citizen of Venice in 1476. Right.
Now, in your notes, you flag this as a massive
deal. Why? I mean, today's citizenship is just
a passport. It was so much more than a passport
back then. In 15th century Dennis, citizenship
was a commercial license. It was an exclusive
club. So not just a piece of paper. Not at all.
To get full citizenship, you had to prove you
had lived in the city for 15 years. That is a
very, very high bar for an outsider. For 15 years?
Just to get the paperwork. 15 years of residency.
And the reason you would do that, the return
on that investment, was that only citizens could
engage in the maritime trade with the East. Oh,
okay. If you weren't a citizen, you couldn't
captain a ship to Alexandria or Beirut to pick
up spices. You were just shut out of the most
lucrative trade on the planet. So by getting
that citizenship, he wasn't just saying, I love
Venice. He was getting his union card. He was.
He was entering the big leagues. Precisely. He
was trading in silks, spices, gems, all the goods
that made Venice the richest city in Europe,
and we have proof he was there. There is a document
from 1483, a receipt essentially, that places
him in Crete. And this is where we see the grim
reality of the time, though. He wasn't just selling
nutmeg. No. The document records him selling
an enslaved woman. He had acquired her while
he was in the territories of the Sultan of Egypt.
Which would be modern day Israel, Syria, Lebanon,
that sort of area. That region, yes. And this
is important for understanding his mindset. He
later claimed to the Milanese ambassador that
he had been all the way to Mecca. To Mecca. Now,
we can't verify if he actually set foot in Mecca,
but we know he was embedded in that eastern supply
chain. He saw the caravans coming in. He saw
the goods arriving from the Silk Road. Right.
He understood the geography of value. He knew
that the spices were coming from somewhere far,
far to the east, and they were traveling this
long, expensive overland route. He realized that
if someone could cut out the middlemen. The caravans.
Cut out all of it, they would make an absolute
fortune. So he's basically a supply chain expert.
He sees the inefficiency in the market. Yep.
But then, the bottom falls out. We think of these
explorers as noble adventurers, but Cabot leaves
Venice in 1488 because he's broke. Broke is putting
it mildly. He was insolvent. The hustle had failed.
The date is November 5, 1488. He leaves Venice.
And he doesn't just leave, he flees. He had to.
His creditors were absolutely furious. They had
filed what was called a Lettera di Raccomandazione
a Giustizia. Okay, what's that? In English, that's
a recommendation to justice. It was basically
an order to the authorities to find this man,
arrest him, and throw him in prison until he
paid up. So the great John Cabot. the hero of
the British Empire, started his career as a fugitive
running from debt collectors. It completely changes
how you view him, doesn't it? This wasn't just
curiosity driving him. It was pure desperation.
He couldn't go home. He needed a new patron.
He needed a big win to wipe the slate clean and
restore his status. So where does a bankrupt
Venetian merchant go to reinvent himself? Naturally,
he goes to Spain. This is the 1490s. Columbus
is there. The Portuguese are active. But here's
the curveball. He doesn't go there to sail. No.
He goes there to build stuff. This is a fascinating
detour that usually gets left out of the history
books. He shows up in Valencia and he's pitching
himself as a civil. An engineer. A civil engineer,
yes. He proposes this plan to improve the harbor
there. And how did that go for him? They rejected
him flat out. So he moves on. He goes to Seville
in 1494. And this time, he actually gets a contract.
He is hired to build a stone bridge over the
Guadalquivir River. I'm just picturing this space
merchant standing on a riverbank in Seville,
holding a blueprint, trying to tell stonemasons
how to build a bridge. I mean, did he even know
how to build a bridge? The evidence suggests.
Probably not. The project was a complete disaster.
It lasted five months before the city council
realized nothing was happening and they cut his
funding. So he's 0 for 2 in Spain. He's failed
at trade. He's failed at engineering. And he's
running out of time. You have to remember, he's
in Seville and Lisbon during the exact moment
Christopher Columbus is getting his funding and
setting sail. Right. The timing is critical.
Cabot was likely pitching his own Atlantic voyage
to the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, but he
was late to the party. Spain had Columbus. Portugal
had their route around Africa. There was just
no room for a Venetian with a bad credit rating.
So he looks north. He realizes if the south is
taken, he has to try England. He arrives in Bristol
around 1495. Now, for the listener who might
not know 15th century English geography, why
Bristol? Why not London? London was the political
capital, sure, but Bristol was the Silicon Valley
of exploration. It was the second largest seaport
in England, and it was facing west, right into
the Atlantic. Right. But more importantly, the
merchants there were obsessed with a legend,
the legend of High Brazil. High Brazil. It sounds
like the country in South America, but it's different,
right? Completely different. High Brazil was
a mythical island from Celtic folklore. It was
supposed to be somewhere out in the Atlantic,
shrouded in mist. A ghost island. Pretty much.
But the Bristol merchants didn't think it was
a fairy tale. They thought it was a commercial
opportunity. What were they looking for on this
mythical island? Brazil wood. It's a type of
wood that produces a very, very valuable red
dye. In the textile industry of the time, red
dye was liquid gold. Since about 1480, Bristol
merchants had been sending ships out into the
Atlantic looking for this island. And this brings
us to one of the most controversial and exciting
parts of your research notes. Yeah. We mentioned
the historian Alwyn Ruddock earlier. She had
a theory that just blows the timeline of discovery
wide open. Oh, yeah. She believed the Bristol
sailors didn't just look for the island. She
believed they found North America before Cabot.
This is the pre -discovery theory. It's huge.
Ruddock claimed she found evidence in the Italian
archives that Bristol merchants had reached the
New World. Probably Newfoundland sometime before
1470. Before 1470. That's more than 20 years
before Columbia. Exactly. More than 20 years.
That is wild. But if they found it, why didn't
they claim it? Why didn't they put it on a map?
Why keep it a secret? Because they were merchants,
not glory hunters. If you find a massive untapped
fishing ground or a new source of timber, the
last thing you want to do is announce it. You
want to keep it to yourself. You want to keep
it a trade secret. You don't want the French
or the Spanish or, frankly, your own king to
know about it and start taxing it. So Cabot arrives
in Bristol in 1495, pitching a voyage to Asia
via the West. And he walks into a community that
might be sitting there thinking, Well, we know
there's land out there. Let's see what this Italian
can do. Precisely. He provides the veneer of,
you know, scientific respectability and the royal
connection. He's the front man for a project
that's already kind of in motion. So let's talk
about that royal connection. He needs permission,
right? You can't just sail off and claim land
without a king's backing. In 1496... He gets
the royal patent from King Henry VII. The paperwork
is crucial. Henry VIII issues a patent to Cabot
and his three sons, Ludovico, Sebastian, and
Sancto. It grants them the right to sail with
five ships to all parts of the eastern, western,
and northern sea. I looked at the terms of this
deal. It is very... Henry VII, he was known for
being famously tight with money. Right. Very
tight. The king basically said, you have my permission
to go, but you pay for everything yourself. Good
luck. Don't ask me for money. Pretty much. However,
the potential upside was huge. The king granted
them a monopoly. Any trade from these new lands
had to come through Bristol, and Cabot would
get the profits. And the king. The king, of course,
would take a 20 % cut right off the top. Classic
venture capital deal. The king takes equity for
zero risk. But if Cabot is broke and the king
isn't paying, who funded the ships? This is where
the modern detective work by the Cabot Project
really shines. For centuries, we just didn't
know. But they followed the money trail, and
it leads back to the Italians. Specifically,
the Barty family. The Florentine bankers. Yeah.
In London. Yes. The Barty family had a branch
in London. Records show they gave Cabot 50 nobles,
that's a unit of currency, to find the new land.
50 nobles? Is that a lot of money? It wasn't
enough to fund an entire expedition, but it was
significant seed money. It gave him credibility.
And he had another important backer, Father Giovanni
Antonio de Carbonarius. The papal tax collector.
It sounds like a joke set up, doesn't it? A Venetian
debtor, a Florentine banker, and a papal tax
collector walk into a bar in Bristol. Right.
But Carbonarius is a key figure. He was an Augustinian
friar and a diplomat. Ruddock believed he was
the one who actually got Cabot the audience with
the king. So it's this whole international coalition.
You have Italian money, church influence, and
English sailors. Exactly. It's a multinational
startup. So they have the cash. They have the
permit. They set sail in 1496. And they fail.
We often skip this part because it's a bit embarrassing.
But yes, the 1496 voyage was a total disaster.
It happened. He had one ship. He ran into bad
weather. He was short on supplies. And the chronicles
say the crew was... Confused is a very polite
way of saying mutinous, isn't it? Probably. Or
just terrified. I mean, you're sailing into the
complete unknown. Cabot decided to turn back
before things got really ugly. That must have
been humiliating. He's been talking this big
game about reaching the markets of Asia, and
he comes back to Bristol with his tail between
his legs. The pressure for the next trip must
have been immense. It was make or break. Absolutely.
And that brings us to 1497. The voyage that changed
the map. Let's set the scene. May 1497. He has
a ship called the Matthew. Now when I hear exploration
ship, I think of a galleon. But the Matthew was
tiny, right? Oh, it was tiny. Just 50 tons. To
give you a sense of scale, that's about 70 feet
long. It's the size of a modern tugboat or a
large yacht. And he packs 18 to 20 men onto this
tugboat for an Atlantic crossing. It would have
been incredibly cramped, smelly. constantly wet,
and the crew list is pretty interesting. We know
there were Bristol sailors, but also a Burgundian
and a Genoese barber -surgeon. I love that job
title, barber -surgeon. I can give you a trim
and amputate your gangrenous toe. It was a necessary
duality. You needed someone who could pull teeth,
stitch wounds, and cut hair. There was no space
on that boat for a specialist. So they sail west,
they go past Ireland out into the open Atlantic,
and on June 24, 1497, they spot land. Now, this
is the subject of endless arguments in Canada,
I gather. Where exactly did they land? It is
a huge debate. If you ask someone from Newfoundland,
they will tell you with absolute certainty it
was Cape Bonavista. If you ask someone from Nova
Scotia, they will fight you and say it was Cape
Breton Island. There is even a theory that he
landed as far south as Maine. So what does the
actual evidence say? The best evidence we have
is that John Day letter we mentioned. John Day
was a merchant writing to, we think, Christopher
Columbus reporting on Cabot's voyage. Right.
He gives specific latitude details. And based
on that analysis, the most likely landing is
indeed somewhere in Newfoundland or the northern
tip of Cape Breton. So they hit land. They drop
anchor. Do they storm the beach? Do they plant
a flag? What happens? They were extremely cautious.
In fact, paranoid might be the better word. The
sources say they landed only once. Just once.
Just one time. And here's the detail that really
sticks with me. They did not advance beyond the
shooting distance of a crossbow. That is such
a vivid image. They get off the boat, but they
stay within bow shot of the water of their escape
route. They were terrified. They didn't know
what was in those woods. They found signs of
life, a fire that had been recently burning,
a human trail, some nets, a wooden tool for working
with nets. But they didn't see any people. It's
like a horror movie setup. The campfire is still
warm, but the campsite is empty. It suggests
the indigenous people, likely the Beothuk or
the Mi 'kmaq, were watching them. They were staying
hidden, observing these strange visitors. And
Cabot, for his part, didn't take any chances.
He didn't try to make contact. So what did he
do? He seized these signs of life and... He did
the legal bare minimum. He took on fresh water.
He raised the banner of St. Mark for Venice and
the banner of the Pope, claiming the land for
England and the church. And he got right back
on the boat. A touch and go. Basically, they
spent a few weeks sailing along the coast, mapping
it from the safety of the water, observing the
massive, massive schools of codfish, and then
they turned around and headed home. They arrived
back in Bristol on August 6th, 1497. So he's
back. He thinks he's found the outskirts of Asia.
He rides to London to see the king. He presents
his findings. And Henry VII gives him 10 pounds.
10 pounds. I have to stop you there. 10 pounds.
He found a new continent. He opened a door to
the future of the British Empire, and he got
10 pounds. It sounds incredibly insulting to
our modern ears, doesn't it? But we have to contextualize
the currency. 10 pounds was a lot of money for
a regular person. It was about two years' wages
for a skilled craftsman or a laborer. Okay, okay,
so it's a decent bonus. But it's not exactly,
I found America money. No, it's not. It was a
job well done cash gift. But the king did follow
up. Later, Cabot was granted a pension of 20
pounds a year. Now that was a... Proper gentleman's
salary. It was enough to live very comfortably.
But there was a catch with that pension, wasn't
there? Something in the fine print. There's always
a catch. The king didn't pay it from his own
pocket. He ordered it to be paid out of the customs
receipts of the port of Bristol. Meaning Cabot
had to go down to the docks and collect his own
salary from the tax collectors. Exactly. And
we have records showing the customs officers
in Bristol actually refused to pay him at first.
You're kidding. No. He had to go back to the
king and get a special warrant, a mercy, forcing
them to hand over the cash. Even the great admiral
has to deal with local bureaucracy. It really
humanizes him. but despite the cash flow issues
for a few months he was a superstar the milanese
ambassador wrote that cabot was being called
the great admiral he was dressing in silk people
were running after him in the streets like he's
a rock star he had finally made it the hustle
paid off for a moment but fame is fleeting and
this is where the story takes a dark turn we
move to 1498 the final voyage this was supposed
to be the big one right the first trip was reconnaissance
This was business. Correct. He had five ships
this time. And crucially, the cargo manifests
show they were carrying merchandise, cloth, lace
points, and what the records just call trifles.
Trifles. What does that mean? Small, cheap goods
intended for trade. Trinkets. This tells us they
fully expected to meet people this time. They
weren't just mapping. They were planning to barter.
They thought they were going to Japan or China
to trade English wool for spices. So they leave
in May 1498. One ship gets damaged in a storm
and limps into Ireland. The other four ships,
they just vanish. That has been the standard
history for 500 years. Lost at sea, Cabot and
his ship sail into the mist and are never seen
again. A tragic end to a bold explorer. This
is where we have to talk about Owen Ruddock again.
Because she didn't buy the Lost at Sea story
at all. This is the part of the deep dive that
really blew my mind. Owen Ruddock was a formidable
scholar. I mean, she was the authority on the
Bristol trade. She spent 35 years researching
Cabot, and she claimed she had found evidence
that completely overturned the entire narrative.
She claimed Cabot came back. Yes. She argued
that the 1498 voyage wasn't a failure. It was
actually a partial success. She believed Cabot
returned to England in the spring of 1500. Two
years later. Two years later. She argued that
the fleet explored the entire east coast of North
America, all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay,
and maybe even into the Caribbean. That is huge.
That would mean the English were poking around
in Spanish territory way, way earlier than we
thought. Correct. And she pointed to a specific
piece of evidence. The famous map by Juan de
la Cosa. He was Columbus's cartographer. Okay.
His map dated around... shows a coastline roughly
corresponding to North America with English flags
on it and a label that says, Sea Discovered by
the English. So the Spanish knew the English
had been there. Ruddock argued this map is the
proof of Cabot's long coasting voyage of 1498.
But here's the tragedy. Ruddock died in 2005.
She'd been working on a massive book that was
going to reveal all this proof. But in her will.
It's painful just to say it. In her will, she
ordered all of her research notes to be destroyed.
70 bags of refuse. Decades of work. Shredded
or burned. But why? Why would a historian destroy
her life's work? We don't know for sure. Was
it a kind of extreme perfectionism? She hadn't
finished the book and didn't want anyone else
to finish it for her? Was it a desire to control
her legacy? It remains a complete mystery. And
it left modern scholars like Evan Jones and Margaret
Condon with a massive headache. A huge one. They
have been trying to reconstruct her research
from scratch. They are basically reverse engineering
her discovery, trying to refine the documents
she found. And one of the things she claimed,
and this is the most tantalizing what if, involves
that friar we mentioned earlier, Father Carbonaris.
This is the settlement theory, and it's wild.
Ruddock believes she found evidence that Father
Carbonaris didn't just go for the ride. She believed
he stayed behind. Stayed behind in Newfoundland.
In 1498. Yes. She believed the friar and a small
group of settlers founded a mission there. If
she is right, that would be the first Christian
settlement in North America. We are talking about
a medieval church built in Canada over a century
before the pilgrims or Jamestown. Is there any
physical proof of this? I mean, have we found
the church? Archaeology is ongoing. There is
a town in Newfoundland called Carbonear. Carbonear?
Yeah. Carbonearis. The name sounds suspiciously
similar, doesn't it? Archaeologists have been
digging there since 2011. They have found Spanish
coins from the period and evidence of early trade,
but they haven't found the smoking gun, the foundations
of a 1498 church. Not yet, anyway. It just makes
you wonder, what was in those 70 bags of trash
that Ruddock destroyed? Did she have the proof?
The location? We may never know. But even without
Ruddock's lost notes, the modern researchers
did find something huge in the archives. They
found a new hero. A guy named William Weston.
This is a great example of how history is always
changing. Until, what, 2009? William Weston was
just a footnote, a name on a list. But then Evan
Jones found a letter that changed everything.
Oh, was he? He was a Bristol merchant. A local
boy. And the letter shows that King Henry VII
suspended legal action against Weston because
he was about to go to the newfound land. Wait,
suspended legal action? Was he in trouble too?
It seems like everyone in this story is running
from the law. It seems exploring was a popular
career choice for people with legal issues. But
here's the key. Weston led an expedition in 1499.
This makes him the first Englishman born and
bred to lead an expedition to North America.
Remember... Cabot was Italian. Weston was English.
And get this, the king paid him too. He did.
In 1500, Weston received a reward of 30 pounds.
30 pounds. That's three times what Cabot got
for the initial discovery. It implies that Weston
achieved something really significant. Maybe
he mapped more of the coast. Maybe he found better
fishing grounds. Maybe he pushed further north
looking for that Northwest Passage. We don't
know exactly what he did, but the king thought
it was worth more than Cabot's first trip. And
yet, I have never heard of him until today. He's
not on any postage stamps. History tends to focus
on the first. Cabot got the glory of the first
landfall. Weston was just the guy who followed
up. But his story proves that the Bristol merchants
weren't just passive passengers on Cabot's ship.
They were active, independent explorers. So we
have Cabot, the Italian hustler. We have the
lost friar, potentially building a church. We
have William Weston, the forgotten Englishman.
And then there's one more character who just
muddies all the waters. Sebastian Cabot. Ah,
the son. Sebastian seems to be the reason a lot
of this history is so confusing. He really is.
Sebastian was one of John's sons listed on that
original patent. He went on to become a famous
explorer in his own right, working for both Spain
and England later in the 16th century. But he
had a habit of, let's just say, spinning the
narrative. He took credit for his dad's work.
He often spoke about the voyages in a way that
made it completely unclear whether he or his
father was in charge. In some accounts he gave
later in life, John Cabot almost disappears and
Sebastian becomes the hero of the 1497 voyage.
He was just building his own personal brand.
The original influencer. Exactly. It took historians
centuries to untangle Sebastian's tall tales
from the actual records of his father. For a
long, long time, people thought Sebastian was
the one who discovered North America. So as we
wrap up this deep dive, what is the takeaway?
We started with this man of many names, a debtor,
an engineer, an explorer, who might have died
at sea or might have come back. If we zoom out,
John Cabot Giovanni Caboto, he's the bridge.
He connects the old world of the Mediterranean
spice trade, the world of Venice and caravans
and slave markets, with the new Atlantic world.
He represents that exact moment where the focus
of Europe shifted from the east to the west.
And even though he didn't bring back spices or
gold, he gave England its legal claim to the
continent. Without Cabot's voyage in 1497, the
history of North America looks completely different.
There is no British North America without that
patent and that one landing. He laid the legal
groundwork for everything that came later, the
colonies, the trade, the English language in
the New World. He failed to find Asia, but he
accidentally founded the modern Atlantic economy.
And yet there is that lingering question, the
final thought I want to leave everyone with.
If all in rhetoric was right. If she really saw
evidence that Father Carbonara has built a mission,
then somewhere in the rocky soil of Newfoundland,
buried under 500 years of earth and moss, there
might be the foundations of a medieval church,
a Gothic church in Canada. It gives you chills.
It means history isn't finished. The answers
might still be in the ground waiting for an archaeologist's
trowel. And if you are ever in Bristol or in
Bonavista, you can go see the replica of the
Matthew. You can stand on that tiny deck and
imagine crossing the Atlantic with 18 other guys,
a barber surgeon, and just no idea what was on
the other side. I highly recommend it. Just don't
expect a private cabin. Thanks for listening
to this deep dive. Stay curious, and we'll catch
you on the next one.