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Giovanni da Verrazzano or Verrazano (c. 1485 – c.1528) was an Italian explorer of North America. Verrazzano sailed for France and is renowned as the European discoverer of many features of the Atlantic coast of the United States and Canada, including New York Harbor, where the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is named in his honor.
Biography
Giovanni da Verrazzano was born at Val di Greve, near the city of Florence, in Tuscany, Italy, around 1485 and died in 1528 in the Lesser Antilles.
Although Verrazzano left a detailed account of his journey to North America, many of the other details about his life remain unknown. He was born approximately 30 miles (48 km) south of Florence at Castello Verrazzano, his family's castle. His date of birth is uncertain, but it was around 1485. Around 1506 or 1507, he moved to Dieppe, to pursue a maritime career. He made several voyages to the Eastern Mediterranean, and also visited Newfoundland.
In 1524 or 1525, he was sent out by King Francis I of France to explore the region between Florida and Newfoundland for a route to the Pacific. He made landfall near Cape Fear on or around March 1, as recorded in his personal journals. He initially sailed south along the coast of present-day South Carolina, then turned north again. Sailing along the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina, he recorded what he observed to be a large inland sea, which he thought was the beginning of the Pacific Ocean, although it is actually the estuary of the Pamlico Sound. This mistake led mapmakers, starting with Visconte Maggiolo in 1527 and Giovanni's brother Girolamo da Verrazzano in 1529, to draw North America as being almost split in two, the two parts connected by a thin land bridge on the East Coast. It would take a century for this error to be corrected.
He made landfall several times and interacted with the Native Americans of the coast. Although he passed the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, he did not enter it or record its existence. He likewise did not record the existence of the Delaware River further north. According to his journals, he sailed along the coast of present-day New Jersey and entered Lower New York Bay. He anchored in the Narrows, the strait between Staten Island and Long Island, where he received a canoe party of Lenape. A party of his sailors may have taken on fresh water at a spring called "the watering place" on Staten Island -- a monument stands in a tiny park on the corner of Bay Street and Victory Boulevard at the approximate spot -- but Verrazano's descriptions of the geography of the area are a bit ambiguous. It is fairly firmly held by historians that his ship anchored at the approximate location where the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge touches down in Brooklyn today. He also observed what he believed to be a large freshwater lake to the north (apparently Upper New York Bay, also called New York Harbor). He apparently did not penetrate deeply enough into New York Harbor to observe the existence of the Hudson River.
From New York Harbor, he continued along the south coast of Long Island, then crossed Block Island Sound and entered Naragansett Bay, where he probably met the Narragansett people. He followed the coast further east and north to Maine, skirted the southeast coast of Nova Scotia, then returned to France by way of Newfoundland.
Later, Verrazzano made two more voyages to the Americas. On the first, he cut logwood in Brazil. The cause of Verrazzano's death is not known for certain. According to some sources, he was killed in 1528 on his third voyage to the New World by the natives of Lesser Antilles. According to other sources, he was captured by the Spanish and hanged as a pirate in Cadiz.
Modern commemoration
Although Verrazzano was the first recorded European to visit the East Coast of the present-day United States, his reputation did not endure and proliferate as much as other explorers of that era. This was particularly true in New York City, where the 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson came to be regarded as the de facto start of the European exploration of New York. It was only with great effort in the 1950s and 1960s that Verrazzano's name and reputation as the European discoverer of the harbour was re-established, during an effort to have the newly built Narrows bridge named after him. See Naming controversy of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. A Staten Island ferryboat that served New York from the 1950s to the 1990s was also named for him (oddly, the ferry was named the "Verrazzano," while the bridge, another Staten Island landmark, was named "Verrazano," indicating the ongoing confusion over the spelling of his name). There are numerous other commemorations on Staten Island itself to the explorer -- a Little League is named for him, for instance -- reflecting not only his connection to State Island but also the large number of descendents of Italian immigrants who live there.
External links
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Greve main piazza - statue of Giovanni da Verrazzano
Italian explorers | Explorers of Canada | Natives of Tuscany | 1485 births | 1528 deaths
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"Giovanni da Verrazano"