From the Book
Colonial American History Stories – 1215 – 1664
Transcript:
Greetings, today I will talk about Giovanni da Verrazzano, one of the lesser known explorers. Though he established no settlements he embarked on the earliest recorded exploratory mission of North America.
By the time of da Verrazzano’s expedition many began to suspect that Columbus had not visited Asia. Instead he had found an entirely new land. German geographers Martin Waldseemuller and Matthias Ringmann published a map in 1507 that depicted the discoveries as part of a new world in 1507. They used accounts of the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who undertook a series of voyages beginning in 1497. The geographers named the new lands as “America,” in honor of the explorer who had first postulated that Columbus’ discoveries were a new world and not Asia. This realization sparked many voyages of discovery searching for a passage through them that would lead to Asia.
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Reports of Columbus’ explorations filtered out to the other European nations, sparking France to hire a sailor named Giovanni da Verrazzano to explore the area between Florida and the region known as Terranova, the “New Found Land.” He was to attempt to find a passage that would lead through the land mass and allow them to sail to Asia.
Little is known of da Verrazzano’s early life other than he was native to Val di Greve, Italy. At an early age he began exploring, first to Egypt and then Syria. In 1508 he traveled to France where he became acquainted with Francis I, king of France.
Francis I hired da Verrazzano in 1523. The expedition was supposed to include 4 ships, however 3 of them proved un-seaworthy and could not make the journey. The remaining ship, the Dauphine set sail on January 17, 1524.
Verrazzano and his crew arrived off shore from Cape Fear, North Carolina sometime around March 1, 1524. After doing a bit of exploring, They sighted some natives, he sent a boat ashore to trade with them. The surf proved too dangerous to try to land the boat, so one of the sailors tried to swim to shore. He foundered in the surf and would have drowned if the natives had not pulled him out. They stripped him and him by the fire. At first he feared they were preparing to eat him, however they soon convinced him of their good intentions and sent him back to the boat, still offshore.
They continued to explore, going as far north as the Hudson River, which they sailed up for some distance. They stayed for about 2 weeks in the region near Newport, Rhode Island. They visited with the natives and explored.
Sailing on, they visited New Found Land. Their supplies almost exhausted, they returned to France .
Verrazzano would make two more voyages to the New World. The second voyage, in 1527, went to South America in search of a passage through to the Pacific, which it did not find. His third voyage, to the Caribbean, ended in disaster. Legend has created two accounts of his death. One version is that he and his crew landed on an island inhabited by hostile natives, who captured him, killed him and consumed his body. Another relates that the Spanish captured him and executed him for piracy.
The next episode will relate the attempt by Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón to settle in South Carolina. The articles in the book contain much more detail about the topics discussed. Additionally, there are other topics not included in the podcast. I encourage you to subscribe to both my web site, mossyfeetbooks.com and this You Tube channel.
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