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 made landfall after a month and spent four weeks exploring a rugged and hostile-looking coastline. The crew of the Matthew observed great trees, evidence of human habitation, and--a matter of great importance to later visitors--remarkably productive cod-fishing banks.
Historians are not certain where Cabot actually made landfall. Samuel Eliot Morison's authoritative history of the age of exploration favors the east coast of Newfoundland. James A. Williamson and David B. Quinn, eminent scholars who devoted substantial portions of their careers to the study of Cabot and his contemporaries, both feel he could have reached mainland America. Perhaps he and his crew were the first Europeans to set foot on the Maine coast.
The first clearly documented European visit to the Maine coast occurred in 1524. Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano sailed early that year for King Francis I of France seeking a passage to the Orient. He made landfall at or near Cape Fear, South Carolina, and then coasted northward along the Atlantic seaboard, providing the earliest known account northward along the Atlantic seaboard, providing the earliest known account of the area and its inhabitants. In early May he reached the Maine coast. Although pleased with the country, he found the Indians anything but cordial. Accustomed by Indians farther south to a warm reception, Verrazano paused to trade, perhaps at Bald Head at the tip of Cape Small. The Maine natives refused to allow the ship's crew to approach them. Ensconced on cliffs above the breakers and waving the small boat away from the land, they passed the items they saw fit to trade to Verrazano's crew using a rope, and accepted only a few items in return. "We found no courtesy in them," Verrrazano complained, "and when we had nothing more to exchange . . . the men made all the signs of scorn and shame that any brute creature would make . . . such as showing their buttocks and laughing immoderately."
Some commentators have suggested the hostile reception stemmed from some previous unpleasa