cial expansion and economic gain. Europeans had long known of the riches in the Far East, and their appetites were whetted by trading that developed out of the Crusades and by reports brought back by Marco Polo, Odoric of Pordenone, and others in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The century following the last Crusades brought expanding commercial networks throughout Europe and into Asia. In the mid-fourteenth century, however, Islamic and other anti-Western empires arose in the Near and Far East and gradually consolidated their hold on the eastern Mediterranean. Although trade with the East continued, Islamic influence increased the already considerable risk to the Europeans of overland trade. The great overland caravan routes declined, forcing traders to sea-borne routes, where numerous Muslim intermediaries gouged them at ports along the way. Faced with rising prices, higher risks, and dwindling supplies of oriental goods, Europeans began searching for new routes to the East.
A third development necessary to the fifteenth-century explorations was a series of advances in ship design and navigation that made long, open-water voyaging possible. The vessels used by the explorers combined features of two earlier types of crafts, one from the North Atlantic and the other used by Mediterranean and southern European sailors. Neither by itself was satisfactory for transoceanic exploration. The North Atlantic vessel, a tubby, thick, high-sided craft designed for rough seas, featured a single mast with a large square sail. Although fairly stable in open seas, it was unsuitable for coastal navigation. The Mediterranean craft was sleeker but less ocean-worthy. Its highly maneuverable lateen sail and fore-and-aft rigging were perfectly adapted to the Mediterranean coasting trade but performed poorly in the open sea. The explorers' vessels were ingenious composites of the two, borrowing the heavy structure, decking, and seaworthiness of the North Atlantic type and incorporating some of the sleekness of the southern style. Their rigging combined the best features of each type; typically, two of the three masts were square-rigged for open sea, and the third was lateen-rigged for maneuverability during coastal exploration.
Like ship design, the art of open-sea navigation improved during this time. In simplest terms, navigators solved the crucial problem of sailing in a straight line while out of sight of land. This was accomplished by devising a means of determining latitude which permitted sailors to keep to a direct east-west course. Borrowing from astronomers, navigators modified the quadrant and astrolabe for use on the rolling deck in the open ocean. Gradually these instruments were replaced by the cross-staff, essentially a calibrated shaft that was pointed due north (or south, if below the equator) with a sliding sight bar that was focused by sighting the upper end with a heavenly body and the lower with the horizon. It had the added attraction of being the simplest instrument to use on shipboard in the open sea. Despite their various shortcomings, these instruments guided mariners to landings far beyond the horizon of their home ports and back again.
First Contacts with the New Land, 1497--1527
Such was the situation when Columbus sailed west on his epic voyage of 1492. Europe was electrified by his discovery, and it was not long before other nations resolved to reach the East by sailing west. The first quarter of the sixteenth century brought several explorers to the Maine coast, each establishing an overlapping imperial claim to the region. Although these early voyages generated more disappointment than enthusiasm, each contributed to the small store of knowledge about the wealth of resources in the area.
By late 1495, John Cabot, "citizen of Venice," was in England urging Henry VII to grant letters-patent authorizing him to sail in search of a shorter route to the Indies. Cabot received his patent the following March and after a year's preparation departed from Bristol in May 1497 in the ship Matthew. He ma