2. Giovani Caboto, known to history as John Cabot, and his five ships vanished
John Cabot was a Venetian explorer in the service of Henry VII of England when he became the first European to find and explore the coastline of North America in either 1496 or 1497, other than the possible Norse expeditions from Vinland in the days of the Vikings. His first voyage to North America likely occurred in the summer of 1496, of which there is little record, other than a letter believed to have been written by a merchant from Bristol to Christopher Columbus, which states that the voyage was discontinued. According to the letter Cabot related to the merchant, John Day, he had been forced to turn back by a discontented crew and the storms of the North Atlantic. On his second voyage, in 1497, Cabot sailed along the North American coast, and charted segments of it, which is discussed in the same letter.
In May 1498, Cabot departed from Bristol in a fleet of five ships, one of which was forced by storms to make landfall in Ireland. Cabot and the remaining four ships sailed on, and their fate remains unknown for certainty. Historians have postulated that Cabot successfully reached the New World and returned to England, since at least one person who had been supposed to have been part of the voyage was later reported to be in England. Cabot was not. Others have speculated that Cabot died on the voyage and was buried at sea, others that he was killed by natives in North America. The truth is no one knows what happened to Cabot and the four ships in his flotilla after it left England. His son Sebastian later led an expedition to North America to seek the fabled Northwest Passage, and another which explored for silver in South America.