Cabot, Sebastian, b. 1483–86?, d. 1557, explorer in English and Spanish service; son of John Cabot Cabot, John, fl. 1461–98, English explorer, probably b. Genoa, Italy. He became a citizen of Venice in 1476 and engaged in the Eastern trade of that city. This experience, it is assumed, was the stimulus of his later explorations.
..... Click the link for more information. . He may well have accompanied his father on the 1497 and 1498 voyages, and he was for many years given the credit for his father's achievements. In the 19th cent., scholars, finding discrepancies in the Sebastian stories, branded him an impostor and applied his accounts to the 1498 voyage of John Cabot. However, recent research indicates that the Sebastian narratives relate to a later voyage (1509) made in search of the Northwest Passage. He may have reached Hudson Bay. In 1512 he entered Spanish service and in 1518 became chief pilot. After the return of Magellan's ship Victoria, he sailed (1526) from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with the ostensible purpose of loading spices in the Moluccas. Instead he explored the Río de la Plata country, spending several years along the Paraguay, Plata, and Paraná rivers, but the hostility of the Native Americans and the scarcity of food forced him to leave the country. He returned to Spain in 1530, a distrusted and discredited man. In 1548 he reentered English service, and in 1553 he became governor of a joint-stock company (later the Muscovy Company Muscovy Company (mŭs`kəvē) or Russia Company, first major English joint-stock trading company.
..... Click the link for more information. ) organized to seek a Northeast Passage and open trade with China. Under his instructions an expedition sailed the same year under Sir Hugh Willoughby, who was lost in midvoyage and was replaced by Richard Chancellor Chancellor, Richard, d. 1556, English navigator. When, largely under the inspiration of Sebastian Cabot , a group of men in England undertook to finance a search for the Northeast Passage to Asia, Chancellor was chosen as second in command under Sir Hugh Willoughby.
..... Click the link for more information. . The expedition reached the White Sea, and a commercial treaty was negotiated with Russia, breaking the monopoly of the Hanseatic League.

Bibliography

See C. R. Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot: The Discovery of North America (1964); R. C. Howard, Bristol and the Cabots (1967); R. Biddle, A Memoir of Sebastian Cabot (repr. 1970); David Goodnough, John Cabot and Son (1979).

Cabot, Sebastian

(born c. 1476, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng., or Venice—died 1557, London) English navigator, explorer, and cartographer. The son of John Cabot, he served at various times both the English and Spanish crowns. In 1525 he took charge of a Spanish expedition, abandoning the original goal of developing trade with the Orient and instead embarking on a fruitless expedition to South America. Later he served in England as governor of the Merchant Adventurers, organizing an expedition to search for a northeast passage from Europe to the Orient.