A tragic history of ego-filled adventure

THE LOST VOYAGE OF JOHN CABOT, by Henry Garfield, Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2004, 312 pages, $16.95.

Henry Garfield likes to say that his latest book, a novel for young adults set in the 15th century, is “speculative history.”

Clearly, the author doing the speculating did his homework, logging more than a year researching and writing this romanticized solution to the great conundrum: Whatever happened to explorer John Cabot, his two sons and the rest of their party during their second voyage west in 1498?

Searching for a western passage to Asia, and attempting to paint fellow Italian-born explorer Christopher Columbus as a misguided fool, they were never heard from again.

Garfield, a Belfast author, amateur sailor, Ellsworth Weekly reporter and the great-great-grandson of President James A. Garfield, knows how to spin a good yarn. His first foray into young adult fiction crackles with believable dialogue and just enough historical detail to keep teenage readers, and their parents, returning for more.

The backbone of his book is a series of letters Garfield imagines that 14-year-old Sancio Cabot wrote from across the Atlantic Ocean to his older brother, Sebastian, who, against his will, had been kept home in Bristol, England, with his mother, Mattea, supposedly to spare her the loss of her entire family should John, Sancio and the oldest brother, Ludovico, never return.

“During the storm, I would have traded places with you in a heartbeat,” writes Sancio from aboard the ship Pandora in his first letter, dated May 31, 1498. “… Every day on this vast and uncharted ocean is a day spent face-to-face with Death.”

By June 14, 1499, the date of his final letter to Sebastian, Sancio is frantic, having witnessed the deaths of many of his father’s crew at the hands of mistreated New World natives who at first were welcoming to Cabot and his shipmates.

“We have followed the coast as far as we can go,” writes Sancio, “and now there is open water to the west. The long-sought route to Asia? There is much debate among our exhausted crew.”

Garfield cuts back and forth from Sancio’s letters to a portrait of life in Spain, where Giovanni (John) Caboto moved from Italy, eventually settling in Bristol, England. The publicist says the story is intended for readers as young as 12, but the narrative accounts of Jews considered disloyal to the Catholic Church being burned at the stake in Spain and carnage in the “New Found Land” of North America make it seem more appropriate for readers in their late teens.

Older teenagers might also better grasp the fierce rivalry between Cabot and Columbus and the gargantuan egos of European explorers and the reasons they ventured across the Atlantic in search of wealth and immortality. And they might better understand the supposed reasons that led to Cabot’s death.

Readers will appreciate a world map at the front of Garfield’s book, which traces his first western voyage in 1497 to what is now Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, as well as his 1498 journey believed to have been farther south along the Atlantic coast.

Also shown is Sebastian Cabot’s 1508 exploratory route close to Greenland and Columbus’ voyages.

There’s a glossary of nautical terms such as dogwatch and caravel, in addition to a biography of people mentioned in the book.

Historians will probably never know what really happened on Cabot’s second voyage to the New World, but Garfield’s “speculative history” teases the imagination and encourages future exploration of a fascinating historical era.

Readers may contact Dick Shaw at rshaw@bangordailynews.net, and at 990-8204.