Sebastian Cabot Discovers Hudson Bay

Sebastian Cabot, the Venetian-born navigator and son of the explorer John Cabot, sailed westward across the North Atlantic in the service of the English crown during the first decade of the sixteenth century. Like many explorers of his era, he hoped to find a northwest passage that would carry European ships through or around the Americas to the riches of Asia. His voyages probed the cold waters and broken coastlines of what is today eastern Canada.

On these expeditions Cabot is credited with reaching the strait and great inland sea later known as Hudson Bay, a vast body of water that cuts deep into the North American interior. He also coasted southward along the Atlantic seaboard before turning back. The forbidding ice, short sailing season, and the absence of any obvious through-passage frustrated his search for a route to the Orient.

Although Cabot found no passage to Asia, his explorations strengthened English claims to North America and added to Europe's growing knowledge of the continent's northern geography. The bay would later bear the name of Henry Hudson, who explored it in 1610, and it became the heart of the fur-trading empire of the Hudson's Bay Company. Cabot himself went on to serve both England and Spain as a respected pilot and mapmaker.