Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485? - 1528)
Date and place uncertain, but likely born around 1485 in Tuscany, outside Florence. Apparently well born as he was well educated (Latin/Math). Attached to Florentine émigré community in Lyons, France in early 1500s. Acquired knowledge of sailing on voyages to Levant and possibly Newfoundland. In 1522 he proposed to King Francis I of France an expedition westward across the Atlantic to the Orient, between southern areas staked out by Spain and northern latitudes claimed by English from Cabot's explorations. Lyons silk merchants, worried that Portugueses might cut off their links to Orient, formed a syndicate to finance voyage. King Francis Ist authorized expedition and provided one ship -- La Dauphine -- and a captain's salary for GV.
Verrazano, accompanied by his mapmaker younger brother Gerolamo, departed Brittany (Dieppe or Rouen?) with flotilla of four ships in late December 1523, but storm and wartime exigencies reduced him to the Dauphine, which, with a crew of 50, cleared the Madeira Islands on January 17. First leg of ocean passage of 25 days (3-4 knots; 75-100 miles a day), broken by a 15-hour storm about 2/3s way across. Another 25 days to sight land. Had sailed along 32 degree N latitude and a bit northward. Land sighted off North Carolina near Point Lookout (34/40) around March 20; three day loop to the south in futile search of a harbor; returned to initial landfall and went ashore on March 25. Reported sighting an open sea ("Verrazzano's Sea") just to west of narrow isthmus (Pamlico Sound?) and declared it to be an approach to adjacent Orient. Thereafter coasted in northeasterly direction, going ashore on Maryland's eastern shore on Marc 25th where his crew abducted a young boy to take back to France. Entered New York Harbor in mid-April, came ashore briefly on lower Manhattan ("not without some properties of value") before pending storm sent him on their way. Coasted eastward along southern shore of Long Island and 30 miles beyond to Block Island; from there north to Narragansett Bay ["Refugio"]. Stayed around present day Newport for 15 days (4/22 to 5/6), which he compared in latitude to Rome ("but colder"), before renewing eastward and northastward coasting along Cape Cod. Took note of dangerous shoals off Nantucket. Sailed along Maine coast where crew encountered their most hostile natives. Sailed as far north as Newfoundland (50degreesN) by Mid-May, before turning eastward and homeward for France. Sailed into Dieppe in early July (6-7 week eastward passage) and filed report (and map?) of voyage with Lyons backers and King Francis on July 8, 1524. News of GV's voyage, especially of his report of a sea approach toadjacent China, spread throughout Europe and long figured prominently in English ideas about America.
GV's hopes for a second voyage backed by Francis I were dashed by the king's preoccupation with his war with Charles V of Spain. He then tried to interest England's Henry VII and Portugal's King John, to no effect. In 1527 his Lyons backers financed a trip to Brazil, from which GV returned with a profitable load of wood. A third voyage west a year later, in search of a passage to China south of his first voyage resulted in his death at the hands of hostile natives in Guadaloupe.
Claims of GV's precedence in exploring Atlantic seaboard
challenged by skeptical historians in late 19thC, only to be confirmed by the discovery in
1909 of a copy of GV letter to Francis Ist.
Robert A. McCaughey
Sources: Lawrence C. Wroth, The Voyages of Giovanni
da Verrazzano, 1524-1528 (Yale UP, 1970);
Samuel Eliot Morison, The European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages
(Oxford, 1971), Ch. IX