After Making Many Other
Voyages, Which Are Not Specified, He Settled In Seville, Where He Employed
Himself In Making Sea Charts, And Had The Appointment Of Pilot-Major, All
Pilots For The West Indian Seas Having To Pass His Examination, And To
Have His License[15].
He thought fit, however, to return into England, and
was employed by Henry VIII.
In the service of that sovereign he made a
voyage to the coast of Brazil in 1516, under the superior command of Sir
Thomas Pert, vice-admiral of England, of which the following imperfect
account is preserved by Haklyut.
"That learned and industrious writer Richard Eden, in an epistle to the
Duke of Northumberland, prefixed to a work which he translated from
Munster in 1553, called A treatise of the New India, makes mention of a
voyage of discovery made from England by Sir Thomas Pert and Sebastian
Cabota, about the eighth year of Henry VIII. The want of courage in Sir
Thomas Pert occasioned this expedition to fail of its intended effect;
otherwise it might have happened that the rich treasury called Perularia,
now in Seville, in which the infinite riches which come from the new-found
country of Peru, would long since have been in the Tower of London to the
great honour of the king, and the vast increase of the wealth of this
realm. Gonsalvo de Oviedo, a famous Spanish writer, alludes to this voyage,
in his General and Natural History of the West Indies, as thus quoted by
Ramusio. In the year 1517, an English corsair, under pretence of a voyage
of discovery, came with a great ship to the coast of Brazil, whence he
crossed over to the island of Hispaniola, and arrived near the mouth of
the harbour of St Domingo, where he sent his boat to demand leave of entry
for the purpose of traffic. But Francis de Tapia, the governor of the
castle, caused some ordnance to be fired from the castle at the ship,
which was bearing in for the port; on which the ship put about, and the
people in the boat went again on board. They then sailed to the island of
St John, or Porto Rico, where they went into the harbour of St Germaine,
where they required provisions and other necessaries for their ship, and
complained against the inhabitants of St Domingo, saying that they came
not to do any harm, but to trade for what they wanted, paying in money or
merchandize. In this place they procured provisions, and paid in certain
vessels of wrought tin and other things. They afterwards departed towards
Europe, where it was thought they never arrived, as we never heard any
more news of them[16]."
From the above hint respecting the riches of Peru finding their way to the
Tower of London, and as combined with the former voyage of Cabot to the
north-west; in search of a passage to India, it may be inferred, that the
object of the present voyage was to discover a passage to India by the
south-west, or by what is now called Cape Horn.
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