About World Globes

Sabastian Cabot, (1474? - 1557?) Explorer, Cartographer and Navigator during the age of discovery.  During his life Sabastian Cabot was employed by England and Spain to find the Northwest Passage and a way to China.

By 1512 Sebastian was employed by Henry VIII as a cartographer at Greenwich.

About 1525, he received the rank of captain general from Spain.  He began a trip with four ships and 200 men around the world (1526-1529) that was supposed to sail to China and the
Moluccas (the Spice Islands, in Indonesia).  Upon landing in Brazil, however, rumors of the wealth of the Incan king and the nearly-successful expedition of Aleixo Garcia caused Cabot to abandon his charge and instead further explore the interior of the Río de la Plata (a river between Argentina and Uruguay in South America).

All that remains of his personal work, (the account he wrote of his journeys has been lost), is a map of the new world drawn in 1544; one copy of this was found in Bavaria, and is still preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where it still remains.

Present day world globes and maps have a rich history of courage exhibited by explorers like Sebastian Cabot.