Lafayette (LA) Daily Advertiser, January 26, 1999

Good fishing led early Frenchmen to American shores

Fishermen were off Grand Banks in 1504

by Jim Bradshaw

Explorers flying the fleur de lis of France would eventually lay the foundation for the French claim to Acadie and New France, as Canada was first called. But, from the very beginning, the French claim would be disputed by the British, because of the voyages of Giovanni Cabot, a Genoese navigator, who became known to the British and, thus to British-written history, as John Cabot. He and his sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sanctus were commissioned by English King Henry VII to sail to North America and raise the flag of England over any new lands they found and to acquire "dominion, title, and jurisdiction over the towns, castles, islands and mainland so discovered."

Cabot sailed from Bristol, England, in May 1497 and landed in North America on June 24. Like Columbus, he thought he had reached the edge of the Orient and that he was near an open passage that would let him reach its rich cities.

That was what he reported when he returned to a hero's welcome in England. King Henry sent him right back to North America, this time with 300 men, to find the northern passage. He never came back. Most historians think he went as far south as Chesapeake Bay before storms wrecked his ships and everyone aboard them was killed.

But Cabot's death did not kill the quest for the Northwest Passage. Merchants in Bristol formed The Company (of) Adventurers to the New Found Land and financed several more expeditions to northern North America. They never found the Northwest Passage. But they did find rich fishing banks that would eventually lure a steady stream of fishermen from western Europe, including most of the first Frenchmen who sailed to the New World.

The first authentic records of a French ship reaching the fishing banks of Newfoundland are those of Jean Denys of Honfleur who fished between Cape Bonavista and the Strait of Belle Isle in 1504. A steady stream of Frenchmen followed.

In the early years, fish were taken, cleaned, and put in the hold between thick layers of salt to be preserved during the trip home. But before long, the mariners found that they could sun-dry the fish on land, and that cod cured in this way was tastier than the cod packed in salt. To do this, the fishermen put up crude facilities for themselves and for their fish at several places on the Newfoundland coast, on the Acadian peninsula at Canseau and La Hève, on Cape Breton Island, at Tadoussac, and on the St. Lawrence River.

Except for these temporary fishing villages, the French made no attempt at colonization. For long periods of time, France was preoccupied with wars on the European continent and did not have the men or money for colonization attempts. But the French fishermen who sailed to the Grand Banks for their shiploads of cod and other fish also brought home accounts of the forests, rivers and beaches of their new campsites. These tales finally ignited the imagination of one of their rulers, Francis I.

In 1515, when he came to the French throne, Francis I was 21 years old, ambitious, and gifted in many ways. It was said that he was the finest dresser in all of Christendom. He was also spoiled rotten, and didn't like the idea that his rivals, King Henry VII of England and King Charles V of Spain, were acquiring an advantage in the discovery of North America. He hired Giovannia de Verrazano to explore for France, and Verrazano was happy to have the opportunity to go back to the New World. He had just come from there after "acquiring" a ship full of Spanish gold and silver, and the Spanish wanted his head for piracy.

On Jan. 17, 1524, Verrazano set sail in La Dauphine from Madeira, an island off the coast of Morroco. He sailed for 50 days before sighting land, probably the coast of what is now South Carolina. He sailed up the Atlantic coast, discovered New York Bay in April, and sailed as far north as Nova Scotia before his provisions ran low and he was forced to return to France.

He reported back to Francis I that North America was ripe for colonization. But France was again involved in a war on the continent, and Francis I did nothing to follow up.

Verrazano is regarded as the first to recognize that North America was a new continent, not a part of Asia. And, though there are other accounts, he was probably also the first to apply the name Arcadia, from which came Acadie, to a place in North America. He anchored at a place that "appeared to be much more beautiful (than the other Newfoundland banks) and full of very tall trees," he wrote. "We named it Archadia (sic) owing to the beauty of the trees." The original Arcadia was a place named by the Greek poet Virgil, which he said had an ideal landscape and was inhabited by simple, virtuous people.

Historian Samuel Eliot Morison tried to find Verrazano's original Archadia.

"After flying the entire coast from Cape Fear River to Barnegat, New Jersey, in search of a hilly section with big trees, " Morison wrote, "I have no hesitation in locating Verrazano's Arcadia at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. ... Later map-makers continually moved it eastward until it became L'Acadie, the French name for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and part of Maine."