These accounts contain so many improbabilities, and to some extent impossibilities, that it is on the whole extremely doubtful whether Sebastian Cabot ever made such a voyage to the north-west. That he did so is contradicted in the first place by the already quoted protest against Sebastian of the Wardens of the Drapers' Company, which was issued in the name of the various Livery Companies of London, and which is of great significance, as it was written so soon after the events are supposed to have taken place that they must have been in the memory of most people; and it must have been easy for the King to inquire into the justification of the protest (cf. above, p. 330).
The map of 1544, which is attributed to the collaboration of Sebastian Cabot, may also point to his having never sailed along the northern part of the coast of America, since, according to the custom of that time, the coast of Labrador is made to run to the east and north-east. This agrees with the statement of Ramusio's anonymous informant, that Sebastian had to turn back because in 56° N. lat. he found the land turning eastward (Galvano says the same). This is evidently derived from the study of maps. As such a delineation of the coast had not yet occurred on maps of Peter Martyr's time, it is natural that this reason for turning back is also absent from his account.
In addition to all this, there are in the various accounts several statements which we must suppose to be really derived from Sebastian Cabot, but which are evidently untruthful. Thus Ramusio's anonymous guest attributes to Sebastian the words that his father was dead when the news of the discovery of Columbus reached England, and that it was then Sebastian conceived the plan of his voyage which he submitted to the King. That, as stated by Peter Martyr, he should have fitted out two ships with crews of three hundred men at his own expense, is extremely improbable. He is also reported to have told Peter Martyr that he
"called these countries Baccallaos, because in the seas about there he found such great quantities of certain large fish--which might be compared to tunny [in size], and were thus called by the inhabitants--that sometimes they stopped his ships."
