This was the last public appearance of Cabot, or the last of which mention is made in the chronicles, although he lived for a year longer. His death occurred probably in London in 1557, sixty-one years after the first commission issued to the Cabots, John and his sons, from Henry the seventh. As in the case of his father, neither the exact date of his death nor the place of his burial is known, and Englishmen and Americans alike much regret that no monument marks the graves of these discoverers of our continent of North America.
SEBASTIAN CABOT AT ABOUT EIGHTY YEARS OF AGE.
Reproduced from the engraving of Seyer’s “History of Bristol,” published in 1823. The original painting was attributed to Holbein and destroyed by fire in 1845. ]
The record of Borough’s voyage is his own account, which Hakluyt gives under the title, “The navigation and discoverie toward the river of Ob [Obi] made by Master Steven Burrough, master of the Pinnesse called the Searchthrift with divers things worth the noting, passed in the yere 1556.” The outcome of it was the discovery of the strait between Nova Zembla and the island of Waigats leading to the Kara Sea, which entrance was given the discoverer’s name as Burrough’s Strait. While Borough did not get to the Obi, adverse winds and the lateness of the season preventing (off Waigats snow was being shovelled from the “Searchthrift” in August), he was the first Western European to reach the southern extremity of Nova Zembla, and the first to put “Vaigats” on the map. Turning at the new-found strait he worked his way back to the White Sea and wintered at Kholmogro. In the following May he set sail again to seek the three missing ships which had left St. Nicholas with Chancellor and the Russian ambassador the year before. After a search of the coast of Lapland, and a call at “Wardhouse” without result, he was returning to Kholmogro, when calling at Fisher Island, or Ribachi, off Point Kegor, in Russian Finland, he learned their fate from Dutch traders there.
Of this supplementary voyage Borough also wrote a detailed account, with mention of other “divers things” worth noting. Hakluyt reproduces this account as “The voyage of the foresaid M. Stephen Burrough, An. 1557, from Colmogro to Wardhouse, which was sent to seeke the Bona Esperanza, the Bona Confidentia, and the Philip and Mary, which were not heard of the yeere before.” Constantly observant, Borough made various practical business notes along the way. At Fisher Island he found Dutchmen with Norwegian ships trading prosperously with the Lapps, giving “mighty strong” beer in exchange for stock-fish. Upon which he shrewdly comments: “I am certaine that our English double beere would not be liked by the Kerils and Lappians as long as that would last.” He arrived back in England in the summer of 1557.