Sebastian Cabot (explorer)

Sebastian Cabot (Sebastiano Caboto)
Sebastian Cabot in his old age
Born	c. 1474
Died	c. December 1557 (aged c.83)
Other names	Sebastiano Caboto, Sebastián Caboto
Spouse(s)	Joanna, Catalina de Medrano
Parent(s)	John Cabot and Mattea Cabot

Sebastian Cabot (Italian and Venetian: Sebastiano Caboto, Spanish: Sebastián Caboto, Gaboto or Cabot; c. 1474 – c. December 1557) was an Italian explorer, likely born in the Venetian Republic. He was the son of Italian explorer John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto) and his Venetian wife Mattea.

After his father's death, Cabot conducted his own voyages of discovery, seeking the Northwest Passage through North America for England. He later sailed for Spain, traveling to South America, where he explored the Rio de la Plata and established two new forts.

Accounts differ as to Sebastian Cabot's place and date of birth. The historian James Williamson reviewed the evidence for various given dates in the 1480s and concluded that Sebastian was born not later than 1484, the son of John Cabot, a Venetian citizen credited with Genoese or Gaetan origins by birth, and of Mattea Caboto, also Venetian. Late in life, Cabot himself told Englishman Richard Eden that he was born in Bristol, and that he travelled back to Venice with his parents at four years of age, returning again with his father, so that he was thought to be Venetian. At another time, he told the Venetian ambassador at the court of Charles V, Gasparo Contarini (who noted it in his diary), that he was Venetian, educated in England. In 1515 Sebastian's friend Peter Martyr d'Anghiera wrote that Cabot was a Venetian by birth, but that his father (John Cabot) had taken him to England as a child. His father had lived in Venice from 1461, as he received citizenship (which required 15 years' residency) in 1476. The Caboto family moved to England in 1495 if not before.

Sebastian, his elder brother Ludovico and his younger brother Santo were included by name with their father in the royal letters patent from King Henry VII of March 1496 authorizing their father's expeditions across the Atlantic. They are believed by some historians, including Rodney Skelton, to have still been minors since they were not mentioned in the 1498 patent their father also received. John Cabot sailed from Bristol on the small ship Matthew and reached the coast of a "New Found Land" on June 24, 1497. Historians have differed as to where Cabot landed, but two likely locations often suggested are Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.