Did Cabot Sail With Columbus?

With the current paucity of heroic Italian sea captain stories, Douglas Hunter’s The Race to the New World: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot and a Lost History of Discovery comes not a moment too soon. It intertwines the expeditions of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), each of whom reached the New World, within five years of each other. Columbus and Cabot sailed bearing the standards of different countries, Spain and England, by very different routes, thousands of kilometres apart; but Hunter weaves intriguing—if sometimes strained—links between them.

More of the book is about Christopher Columbus, but it is the parts about Cabot that are more tantalizing, and pertinent to us. After all, Cabot is reputed to be the first European since the Vikings to reach the shores of modern-day Canada (Newfoundland). It was certainly pertinent to the documentary unit I...