John Cabot lands in Newfoundland and claims it for England
A Bristol expedition finds a fishery that will draw European ships for centuries
Quick facts
- Ship
- The Matthew, out of Bristol
- Crew
- About 18 men
- Landfall
- 24 June 1497, likely Cape Bonavista
- Sponsor
- King Henry VII of England
What happened
In May 1497, the Venetian-born navigator John Cabot sailed from Bristol in the small ship Matthew with a crew of about 18 men, seeking a westward route to Asia under a charter from King Henry VII. After roughly five weeks at sea he sighted land, most likely near Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, on 24 June 1497. No log survives from the voyage; everything known about it comes from second-hand accounts, including an Italian merchant's letter reporting that Cabot described the surrounding waters as 'swarming with fish, which can be taken not only with the net, but in baskets let down with a stone.' Cabot coasted the shore, likely saw Beothuk or Innu people from a distance, and returned to England within weeks.
Why it matters
Cabot's landfall became the legal foundation of England's later claim to North America and alerted European fishing fleets to the vast cod stocks of the Grand Banks, drawing Portuguese, French, Basque, and English boats to Newfoundland's waters for the next several centuries, decades before any permanent European settlement in Canada.
How we know
No firsthand account or ship's log from Cabot survives. Historians rely on secondhand reports, including a December 1497 dispatch by the Milanese ambassador to England and later Bristol customs and pension records, which the Dictionary of Canadian Biography and the Canadian Encyclopedia both note as thin, secondhand documentation for a voyage of this consequence.
Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia. John Cabot · Reputable sourcethecanadianencyclopedia.ca · The domain "thecanadianencyclopedia.ca" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Dictionary of Canadian Biography. CABOT, JOHN · Primary source (author-declared)biographi.ca · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The Age of Exploration → · Cabot's voyage sits inside the wider wave of European Atlantic exploration that reshaped world trade and empire from the 1490s onward