Race to the New World by Douglas Hunter

Author:Douglas Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: HIS051000, HIS010000
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

JOHN CABOT’S timing in taking to England the idea of a north Atlantic passage to Cathay was flawless in capitalizing on catastrophe. The venal relations between England and Maximilian’s realm had shut the door on any chance that Martin Behaim could make a pitch of his own. But the trade war arising from the maneuverings surrounding the pretender Warbeck proved to be only part of the complications necessary to turn Cabot into an English explorer. Cabot also needed England to be somehow denied the services of the Flanders Galleys and the Oriental luxury goods they carried. In 1495, that condition was fulfilled in spectacularly disastrous fashion.

In January 1495, two of the three vessels in the Flanders Galley flotilla, including the flagship, perished in a storm in the Bay of Biscay en route to England. Then in October 1495, the lone surviving galley, the Bragadina, and another Venetian merchant vessel, the Zorza, with which the galley was to return home in convoy, suffered a brazen attack by French pirates at Southampton. The Venetian consul in London, Almoró Gritti, was dining aboard the galley when the raiders struck at dusk. The crews were taken prisoner. The galley convoy’s captain, Piero Bragadin (Pietro Bragadino), as well as Nicolo da Napoli, commander of the Zorza, each were tagged with a 550-ducat ransom; a nobleman’s son, Francesco Donado, who was wounded in the thigh by a falconet—a small cannon that fired a two-inch-diameter iron ball—was held for an additional 150 ducats. They were all carried away to France to await payment for their liberation.

Venetians found it outrageous that English defenses had allowed this pirate raid to succeed. It fell to the Venetian doge, Agostino Barbarigo, to address by diplomacy. He was about seventy-five years old and had been elected for life in 1486 as chief magistrate and head of state of the republic. Henry VII was a familiar if problematic customer for Barbarigo. On one hand, the English king had goods, wool especially, that Venice desperately needed. On the other hand, he could behave like an unpredictable barbarian, moving ruthlessly to press an advantage. “I fancy he will always wish to have peace with France,” the Milanese ambassador to his court would remark in December 1497, “though I think if he saw her up to her neck in the water, he would put his foot on her head to drown her.”

In 1492, Henry had commandeered two of the Flanders Galleys so he could ferry an army to Calais during his spat with Charles VIII over Brittany, threatening the captains with death if they did not comply. Barbarigo had naturally protested then; beyond the high-handedness that delayed the galleys’ return with desired English wool, loading these exquisite craft with the Renaissance military’s version of an organized, armed mob did little for their state of finish, and damage was also incurred bringing them into Calais. Henry’s action had been little more than state piracy.

From his station inside the Palazzo Ducale on the Piazza San Marco—which a doge

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