The Voyage of the Matthew: John Cabot and the Discovery of North America - Tapa dura

497, the Genoese adventurer John Cabot, bearing letters patent from King Henry VII, became the first European known to have set foot in North America. (Cabot’s contemporary, Christopher Columbus, never actually landed in North America. To his dying day he thought it was the Orient.) Cabot’s triumphant appropriation of the “New Founde Land” for England capped one of the great maritime adventures of the late fifteenth century.

Five hundred years later, the Matthew, a painstakingly constructed replica of Cabot’s three-masted caravel, sailed from Bristol, England, to Bonavista, Newfoundland. Her arrival marked the culmination of a maritime adventure as daring in its way as the voyage it commemorates. This time, however, the trials of the captain and sailors on board were recorded on camera and in reporters' notebooks for armchair onlookers to enjoy.

Peter Firstbrook has been intimately involved in the recreation of Cabot’s voyage

Peter Firstbrook was the producer of the television program about the voyage of the Matthew. He is well qualified to write about the sea as the possessor of both a degree in oceanography and a boat of his own on which he lives when at home in Bristol, England.

He has produced a number of programs, was one of the organizers behind the International Festival of the Sea, and has written frequently for newspapers and magazines.