John Cabot is celebrated in Bristol as a hero and an extraordinary adventurer. He was a Venetian merchant who crossed the Atlantic not long after Columbus’s voyage and probably made landfall on Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland, although it may have been Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Labrador, or Maine. Cape Bonavista, His men were the first Europeans in the Americas since the Vikings, who reached the continent as early as the tenth century. Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean, and Amerigo da Vespucci may have had his adventures forged or at the least inflated.
Cabot returned to England and was made an admiral, and rewarded with £10 and a given a letter patent for a new voyage. and next year, 1498, he set sail again, this time with 5 ships. One ship arrived in an Irish port after a storm… The rest of the expedition, and John Cabot himself, were never ever heard of again.
We were in Bristol, by the harbour, when we saw the Matthew sailing towards us. 
Lois Elsden 