Born 1485,
Tuscany, Italy
Died 1528,
Guadeloupe, West Indies
The name Verrazano is familiar to many in North America because of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which spans from Brooklyn to Staten Island, crossing over the entrance (“the Narrows”) of New York Harbor. One of the longest suspension bridges in the world, it was named after Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer, who in 1524 became the first European to sight New York Harbor and many other points along the eastern coast of North America. He also wrote the earliest account of Native American life in that region. Verrazano had been commissioned by the king of France to explore the eastern coast from Florida to Newfoundland with the goal of finding a passage to Asia.
Giovanni da Verrazano was born in 1485 into an aristocratic family in the Chianti region of Tuscany, Italy. Pursuing a career as a mariner, he moved in 1506 or 1507 to Dieppe, a port on the northwestern coast of France. From Dieppe he sailed to the eastern Mediterranean and may have traveled to Newfoundland in 1508.
In 1523 a group of Italian merchants in the French cities of Lyons and Rouen convinced the French king, François I, to sponsor Verrazano’s voyage to North America. Accompanied by his younger brother Girolamo, who was a mapmaker, Verrazano embarked on the ship La Dauphine from Dieppe in early 1524. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean, Verrazano sighted land on March 1, 1524, at or near the site of present-day Cape Fear, North Carolina.
The Verrazano expedition sailed southward for a short distance and then turned back north. The ship landed near what is now Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks, a sand bar separated from the mainland by Pamlico Sound. Unable to see the mainland from this vantage point, Verrazano assumed that the body of water on the other side of the sandbar was the Pacific Ocean. He concluded that he had found the route to China because Girolamo’s maps showed North America as a vast continent tapering to a narrow strip of land near the coast of North Carolina.
Unable to find a passage through what he thought was an isthmus, Verrazano sailed north along the coast, probably stopping at the present site of Kitty Hawk, where he encountered a group of Native Americans. He continued north but missed the entrance to both Chesapeake and Delaware bays. On April 17, however, Verrazano sailed into the upper reaches of New York Harbor, which he described in his journal:
We found a very pleasant place, situated amongst certain little steep hills; from amidst which hills there ran down into the sea a great stream of water [the Hudson River], which within the mouth was very deep, and from the sea to the mouth of same, with the tide, which we found to rise 8 foot, any great vessel laden may pass up.
He anchored
La Dauphine at the Narrows, which was later named for him.
Leaving New York Harbor, Verrazano sailed up the coast to the entrance of Narragansett Bay and named one of the islands Rhode Island because it had the shape of Rhodes, the Greek island in the eastern Mediterranean. (More than a hundred years later, Roger Williams would take the name Rhode Island for the new English colony he had founded on the mainland off Narragansett Bay.) Verrazano anchored his ship in present-day Newport Harbor, giving his crew a rest for a couple of weeks. Exploring parties from the ship went as far inland as the site of Pawtucket. From Rhode Island Verrazano sailed up the coast of Maine, proceeding north around Nova Scotia to Newfoundland before returning to Dieppe on July 8, 1524.
Immediately after landing in France, Verrazano wrote a report of his expedition for François I. This report gives the earliest firsthand information about the eastern coast of North America and the Native Americans who lived there. Verrazano’s next expedition, in 1527, was sponsored in part by Philippe de Chabot, admiral of France, because King François I was preparing for war in Italy and could not spare any ships. On this trip Verrazano traveled to the coast of Brazil and brought back a valuable cargo of logwood, which is used for making textile dyes.
In 1528 Verrazano undertook another voyage to North America to renew his search for a passage to the Pacific, which he still thought could be found just south of Cape Fear. Leaving France in the spring of 1528, his party apparently reached the West Indies, where it followed the chain of islands northward. After landing at one of the islands, probably Guadeloupe, Verrazano was captured and killed by members of the hostile Carib tribe. His ships then sailed south to Brazil, where they obtained another cargo of logwood and returned to France.
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