The Cabot Room
Please note all prices based on double occupancy.
The Cabot Room offers an exceptional view of Bonavista and the sea. In addition to the view, the Cabot Room offers cable television; separate and full private bathroom; and breakfast is served in the morning.
Cabot Room $ 125.00 plus tax per night (off season $110.00 plus tax).
Giovanni Caboto (c. 1450 – c.1499), known in English as John Cabot, was an Italian navigator and explorer commonly credited as the first early modern European to discover the North American mainland, in 1497.
Biography: Cabot was born in 1451 (the exact date and place of birth are uncertain) in Genoa, Gaeta, or Chioggia (this is also uncertain). In his youth he moved to Venice and became a Venetian citizen.
Like other Italian explorers of the era, such as Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo), Cabot made another country his base of operations. For Cabot it was England, so his explorations were made under the English flag. The voyage that saw him and his crew discover the North American mainland – the first Europeans known to do so since the Vikings – took place in 1497, five years after Columbus' discovery of the Caribbean. Again, like Columbus, Cabot's intention had been to find a westerly sea route to Asia.
It was probably on hearing of Columbus's discovery of 'the Indies' that he decided to find a route to the west for himself. He went with his plans to England, because he incorrectly thought spices were coming from northern Asia; and a degree of longitude is shorter the further one is from the equator, so the voyage from western Europe to eastern Asia would be shorter at higher longitudes.
King Henry VII of England gave him a grant to go on "full and free authorities, leave, and power, to sail to all partes, countries, a see as, of the East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensigns, with five ships ... and as many mariners or men as they will have in ships, upon their own proper costs and charges, to seek out, discover, and find, whatsoever islands, regions or provinces of the heathen and infidels, whatsoever they bee, and in what part of the world soever they be, which before this time have been unknown to all Christians."
Cabot went to Bristol to make the preparations for his voyage. Bristol was the second-largest seaport in England, and during the years from 1480 onwards several expeditions had been sent out to look for Hy-Brazil, an island that would lie somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean according to Celtic legends. Some people think Newfoundland may have been found on one of these voyages.
John Cabot in Bonavista Newfoundland: In 1496 Cabot started out from Bristol with one ship. But he got no further than Iceland and was forced to return because of disputes with the crew. On a second voyage Cabot again used only one ship with 18 crew, the Matthew, a small ship (50 tons), but fast and able. He departed either May 2 or May 20, 1497 and sailed to Dursey Head, Ireland, from where he sailed due west to Asia - or so he thought. He landed on the coast of Newfoundland on June 24, 1497 at Bonavista. He went ashore to take possession of the land, and explored the coast for some time, probably departing on July 20. On the homeward voyage his sailors thought they were going too far north, so Cabot sailed a more southerly course, reaching Brittany instead of England and on August 6 arrived back in Bristol.