John Cabot and Newfoundland

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

One of the better publications to appear in observation of the 500th
anniversary of John Cabot’s voyage of discovery in 1497, this fine
treatment of the explorer’s life and times was commissioned by the
Newfoundland Historical Society and written by a former head of the
Department of Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The opening chapters provide judicious examination of the arguments in
support of such pre-Cabot voyagers as St. Brendan and Prince Henry
Sinclair, the possibility that the Norse experience in trans-Atlantic
voyaging was known to Cabot and his contemporaries, and the reasons why
Cabot’s voyages in 1496, 1497, and 1498 all began in Bristol. Williams
gives a very good account of Cabot’s voyages—where he sailed, where
he made landfall, and the interpretation of the subsequent cartographic
impact of the voyages—and offers lucid summaries of the several
landfall debates. The closing chapters recount how Cabot was
commemorated in 1897 and how he has become part of our culture. The book
is supported by only a few reference notes, but the bibliography is
excellent.