Reproduction of: The Matthew of Bristol It’s perhaps the most famous and important ship in Canadian history: the Matthew of Bristol, the 50-tonne vessel that carried Anglo-Italian explorer John Cabot on his landmark voyage to Newfoundland or Nova Scotia in 1497 — the first European known to have reached the shores of the future Canada since the age of the Vikings some 500 years earlier. Now, a British maritime historian leading an international research project on Cabot’s 15th-century expeditions to the New World has unearthed evidence that the ship — much celebrated in Canadian stamps and coinage, and commemorated with epic splendour in 1997 when Queen Elizabeth watched a Matthew replica sail into Bonavista Harbour for the Cabot quincentennial — did an inglorious stint smuggling cargo to English ports in its post-discovery days. University of Bristol professor Evan Jones discovered documents shedding light on the Matthew’s seamier side in historical records kept by the Exchequer Court in London, where customs disputes and other tax-related legal battles were resolved. Jones, author of a newly published scholarly book titled Inside the Illicit Economy: Reconstructing the Smugglers’ Trade of Sixteenth Century Bristol, found details of a January 1499 case involving “the seizure of nine uncustomed broadcloths” — a dense, woollen fabric that was a mainstay of the textile industry in medieval England — that had been imported to Bristol aboard the Matthew in November 1498. It was in the spring of that year that Cabot is known to have set out on his second voyage to North America with a fleet of five ships — possibly including the Matthew — though it’s generally believed that Cabot and some of his ships were lost on that expedition. The 1499 smuggling case ultimately was resolved without a fine or conviction, though in “fishy” circumstances that probably involved the bribing of inspectors, Jones concluded. But the record of the case adds to other evidence, he told Postmedia News, that if the Matthew was among the ships on Cabot’s ill-fated second voyage to Canada, it at least returned safely to England.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 05:30:54 +0000