Cabot, cod and the colonists When John Cabot crossed the Atlantic 500 years ago he was seeking a route to the Orient. But the merchants who were paying for his voyage were after something less exotic — cod. That conflicted journey shaped the history of Newfoundland By Heather Pringle ILL GILBERT clambers up a steep slope cov- ered in springy heath and turns, gazing Bdown at the tiny Newfoundland harbour that once cradled Sea Forest Plantation. Along the cove below, tiny spruce trees sprinkle the lowlands; rust-red heath and low-bush blueberry carpet the rocky ground. Tidy houses, each painted a fresh white, dot the harbour’s edge. The water shimmers like foil. Zipping up his polar fleece against the cold, Gilbert surveys the little harbour where mer- chants sought their fortunes nearly 400 years ago. “I think the brewhouse was probably down around there somewhere,” he says softly, pointing to a small saltwater pond. “And they were building boats, so there would have been some sort of ship- yard or boatyard.” Founded in 1610, a decade before the Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Sea Forest Plantation, also known as Cupers Cove, was Canada’s first official English colony. Financed by the London and Bristol Company, a small co- terie of merchants from England’s two greatest ports, the fledgling plantation became a small out- post in a wild land, the culmination of more than a century of searching for new fishing grounds to feed a hungry Europe. Long lost to time and mem- ory in the modern village of Cupids, tucked on the northern shore of the Avalon Peninsula, the colony remained for centuries little more than an entry in the history books. Two years ago, however, Gilbert and his crew unearthed the first traces of its ruins: the corner of a 17th-century wooden house com- plete with a massive stone fireplace. Most of Bristol’s blue bloods turn out to wish John Cabot well in this fanciful version, imagined in 1906 by the English historical painter Ernest Board, of the voyager’s May 1497 CITY OF BRISTOL MUSEUM & ART GALLERY/BRIDGEMAN LIBRARY departure for the lands that became Canada. 30 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC JULY/AUGUST ’97 CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 31 Over the past two summers, the unassuming archeologist is gradually being revealed. It is a tale woven from a host of England’s first Canadian colony and his team of eight have exhumed thousands of relics — seemingly unrelated threads — the Catholic calendar in me- was at Cupers Cove, pieces of early 17th-century smoking pipes, case bottles (an dieval Europe, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the market now Cupids, Nfld., early form of glass bottle made in England), handmade iron for olive oil in the Mediterranean, and the Spanish quest for established in 1610 and probably, nails, trade beads and coarse English earthenware. While the gold in the New World. according to experts colonists at Cupers Cove experimented with mineral explo- Far from being the first European to reach North America, like Memorial University ration, fur trading, agriculture and sawmilling, their lives de- say researchers such as Newfoundland geographer Gordon archeologist Bill Gilbert (LEFT) pended on the harbour and the ocean beyond. “In order to Handcock, Cabot likely sailed with some knowledge of the continuously occupied since. survive here,” says Gilbert, “they really needed to fish.” New World gleaned from earlier English mariners. Moreover, Excavations have turned up But by the time these first settlers were wandering the while the famous Italian navigator undertook his historic 1497 thousands of 17th-century primeval forests of the coast, European ships had been har- voyage to scout a route to the wealth of Cathay and Cipango artifacts including the hearth vesting cod in the seas off Newfoundland for more than a in Asia, those financing both him and the first colonies of (BELOW) of a pre-1620 house. century. For decades, historians have suggested that Giovanni Newfoundland sought something more essential to Europeans Like other Newfoundland Caboto, or John Cabot as he is now better known, stumbled — new fishing grounds to replace the overcrowded, some say outports, Cupids made its living on the region’s cod-rich waters 500 years ago this summer by exhausted, waters of Europe. The early colonies that followed on cod, which was dried outside accident as he scoured the seas for a western route to Asia’s were successful, shaping Newfoundland lives for generations. — as in this scene (OPPOSITE) spices, teas and porcelains. Many researchers have also dis- “The result of Cabot was the fishery,” says Peter Pope, an photographed at Ferryland in missed Newfoundland’s earliest colonies as dismal failures, archeologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. 1938 — before being shipped suggesting they collapsed within a few short years of their John’s. “That’s not what he intended, but that was what hap- to market. founding. Newfoundland, or so the story went, remained the pened.” almost exclusive preserve of Beothuk and Mi’Kmaq hunters and fleets of seasonal European fishers until the 18th century. ITTING IN A CROWDED CAFE a few blocks from the har- In recent years, however, archeologists, geographers and bour in St. John’s, Pope downs the last of his cappuccino. historians have uncovered a different tale. Poring over docu- SClearly relishing his subject, he leans forward as he sums ments in European archives and excavating early colonial sites up the historical prelude to Cabot’s famous voyage. The author along Newfoundland’s English Shore, they are exhuming new of a forthcoming book, The Many Landfalls of John Cabot, Pope evidence of pre-Cabot exploration and 17th-century settlement points out that it was not the Italian mariner and his crew but in the North Atlantic. The history of the early fishing captains early Norse seafarers who were truly the first Europeans to land of the North Atlantic, who were little interested in leaving be- in North America. Sailing westward from Viking settlements hind records of their voyages and routes for competitors to read, in Iceland and Greenland, says Pope, the Norse crossed Davis PROVINCIAL ARCHIVES OF NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR/VA6-75 NED PRATT BILL GILBERT/BACCALIEU TRAIL HERITAGE CORPORATION CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 33 N it a O r D Baffin I. t N R S A ICELAND W s L A SWEDEN First contacts i N Y v a E F l o k i V i l g e r d a r s o n ? D RE G Eirik the Red ca 865 DENMARK 982-985 Leif Eiriksson ENGLAND Coastal fishing ca 1000 IRELAND London LABRADOR • after 1713 ? •Bristol Normandy L’Anse aux Meadows• Irish Brittany 50° French fishing zone ? FRANCE Sea Bay of Northern Peninsula until 1763 NEWFOUNDLAND ATLANTIC Biscay French, Basque French shore John Cabot P O Mediterranean ceded to Britain, 1904 Usual seaward 1497 OCEAN R T SPAIN Sea French and, increasingly, U Coastal fishing limit of cod G A L Seville English fleets came to dominate • 1500-1600 Bonavista North coast Regular the Newfoundland cod fishery Bay 50° Portuguese, French Infrequent by the early 18th century Cupids (RIGHT), with dried, salted (Cupers Cove Baccalieu I. Bay of Islands est. 1610) Stories about Norse sailors, French Newfoundland cod a central Cape St.Francis Cape Bonavista St. John‘s who worked their way across commodity in a three-way • • Cape Spear Cape St. George Portuguese, English, French Ceded by France the North Atlantic by transatlantic trade (BELOW). Original English shore Basque to Britain, 1713 AD 1000 (ABOVE), •Ferryland Conception Bay may have inspired explorers Portuguese, French Saint-Pierre et Miquelon like John Cabot (Returned to France, 1763) Cape Ray • Avalon Peninsula five centuries later. Portuguese, Basque, St. John’s Portuguese, Basque, English cod trade: late 1600s French French, English By the 16th century (RIGHT), 0 150 km English, French, Portuguese and Basque fishers Saint-Pierre et Miquelon 45° French, Basque South coast NORTH Fishing gear, clothing, ENGLAND were catching cod Portuguese, French, AMERICA general provisions 60° 55° 50° in established zones Basque FRANCE off Newfoundland’s coast. Usual seaward Newfoundland ATLANTIC Mediterranean products: 0 150 km limit of cod OCEAN olive oil, wine, dried fruit 45° Cod SPAIN 60° 55° 50° STEVEN FICK/CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC: ADAPTED FROM HISTORICAL ATLAS OF CANADA, VOLUME I Strait in the 10th century, journeying down the coasts of defeat, some English vessels — particularly those from the Once they had arrived in Greenland, says Kirsten Seaver, the home empty-handed. Baffin Island and Labrador before building a small outpost western port of Bristol — headed north to Iceland where cod English lay just a short crossing away from Baffin Island. To To find a direct route to the New World, the Bristol in- at the northern tip of Newfoundland. Known today as was reputedly abundant and Icelanders ill-equipped to defend the Norwegian-born historian, it seems only logical that terests needed a European navigator skilled in the new tech- L’Anse aux Meadows — and discovered in 1960 by Norwe- their waters. the English soon took the same northern route to the New niques. They eventually located just the man — John gians Anne Stine Ingstad and Helge Ingstad — the out- The English fleet began scouring Iceland’s inshore waters World first discovered by early Norse seafarers. “There’s re- Cabot. Likely born near Naples around 1455, Cabot lived post, says Pope, thrived briefly before the Norse retreated to as early as 1408 or 1409. Alarmed by these invaders, Icelandic ally no reason to suppose that there was anything to stop the most of his adult life in Venice and became a merchant in the Greenland.