Cabot, or CABOTTO, GIOVANNI, discoverer of the North American mainland, was a Genoese, naturalised in 1476 in Venice, who settled about 1490 as a merchant in Bristol, where he is supposed to have died about 1498. Under letters-patent from Henry VII., dated 5th March 1496, he set sail from Bristol in 1497, with two ships, accompanied by Lewes, Sebastyan, and Sancto, his sons, and on 24th June sighted Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia. Letters-patent were granted, 3d February 1498, for a second expedition; but whether any voyages were made under these is doubtful. However, they form the last authentic record of his career. — The same uncertainty exists as to the birthplace of his second son, SEBASTIAN, who, it now appears most probable, was born at Venice in 1474. Sebastian's name is associated with that of his father in the charter of 1496, and in 1499 he appears to have sailed with two ships in search of a North-west Passage, and followed the American coast from to N. lat.; but it has been considered doubtful whether this voyage also should not be assigned to his father. We hear no more of Sebastian till 1512, when he appears to have attained some fame in England as a cartographer, in which capacity he entered the service of Ferdinand V. of Spain in the same year. A contemplated voyage of discovery to the North-west was frustrated by the death of the king in 1516; and the jealousy of the regent, Cardinal Ximenes, impelled Cabot to return to England in 1517. During this visit he appears to have been offered by Henry VIII., through Wolsey, the command of an expedition which, through either the cowardice or malice of Sir Thomas Perte, who was appointed his lieutenant, 'took none effect;' but whether the expedition ever left England or not has been disputed. In 1519 Cabot returned to Spain, and was appointed pilot-major of the kingdom by Charles V., for whom, in 1526, he commanded an expedition which examined the coast of Brazil and La Plata, where he endeavoured to plant colonies. The attempt ending in failure, he was imprisoned for a year in 1530, and banished for two years to Oran, in Africa. In 1533 he obtained his former post in Spain; but in 1547 he once more betook himself to England, where he was well received by Edward VI., who made him inspector of the navy, and gave him a pension. To this monarch he seems to have explained the variation of the magnetic needle in several places, which he was among the first, if not the very first, to notice particularly. In 1553 he was the prime mover and director of the expedition of Merchant Adventurers which opened to England an important commerce with Russia. He seems to have died in London in 1557. Of his famous map (1544), embodying the discoveries of his father and himself, one example exists, preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris.
Among monographs on the Cabots are those by Nicholl (1869), Harrisse (Paris, 1882; Eng. trans. 1896), Dawson (1895), Weare (1897), and C. R. Beazley (1898); see also Weise's Discoveries of America to 1525 (1884), and Winsor's History of America, vols. ii.-iv. (1885).