Giovanni da Verrazzano's Voyage (1524): New York Harbor

Giovanni da Verrazzano’s voyage of 1524 was the first recorded European exploration of the Atlantic coast of North America between Florida and Newfoundland. Sailing for King Francis I of France in the ship La Dauphine, the Florentine navigator became the first European known to enter New York Harbor, in April 1524. His long letter to the king gave Europe its first detailed description of the coast and its peoples.

Background: France looks west

By the early 1520s Spain and Portugal had divided the routes to Asia between them under the Treaty of Tordesillas. Magellan’s expedition, which returned in 1522, showed that a southern route around the Americas existed but was long and dangerous. Francis I of France, a rival of the Spanish king Charles V, was keen to find a passage of his own.

Giovanni da Verrazzano, born around 1485 into a Florentine family, was an experienced navigator living in France. His voyage was backed by the king and financed largely by Italian bankers and merchants based in Lyon and Rouen, who hoped for a direct route to the silk and spice trade. Between Labrador, explored earlier by the Portuguese and by John Cabot, and Spanish Florida lay a long stretch of coast that no European had charted.

The voyage

A first attempt in 1523 with four ships was scattered by storms. Verrazzano finally sailed with La Dauphine alone and a crew of about 50, leaving the Desertas islands near Madeira around 17 January 1524. After a stormy crossing he reached the American coast in early March, near Cape Fear in present-day North Carolina.

He first sailed a short way south, then turned north to avoid the Spanish, and followed the coast. Along the Outer Banks he saw a broad expanse of water beyond a narrow strip of sand. He believed it was the Pacific Ocean, only a mile or so from the Atlantic. It was actually Pamlico Sound, but the idea of a narrow isthmus and an inland “Sea of Verrazzano” persisted on European maps for decades.

Further north, somewhere between the Outer Banks and the Delmarva Peninsula (the exact place is debated), he named a wooded region Arcadia, after the idyllic land of classical poetry. The name later migrated north and survives, in altered form, as Acadia.

New York Harbor

In mid-April 1524 La Dauphine anchored in the Narrows, the strait between present-day Staten Island and Brooklyn. Verrazzano took a small boat into the Upper Bay and described a beautiful harbour with a great river, now the Hudson, flowing into it. Local people, Lenape, came out in canoes to greet the strangers. He named the land Angoulême, after the French king’s former title as Count of Angoulême, and the bay Santa Margarita, after the king’s sister Marguerite. In his letter he described the people dressed in bird feathers of many colours, coming out joyfully to meet the ship, and noted that the river was deep enough for a laden ship to enter.

A sudden storm forced the ship back out to sea before he could explore further. He sailed east past an island he compared to Rhodes, often identified with Block Island, and reached Narragansett Bay. There, near present-day Newport, Rhode Island, he stayed about two weeks and traded with the Wampanoag and Narragansett peoples, whom he described in detail and with admiration.

Maine and the return

Continuing northeast around Cape Cod, he reached the rocky coast of Maine, where the Abenaki inhabitants were wary and would trade only by lowering goods on a rope from the cliffs. Verrazzano called it the land of bad people. Running short of supplies, he followed the coast to Newfoundland and then crossed the Atlantic, arriving back at Dieppe on 8 July 1524.

That day he wrote a long report to Francis I. He had sailed the whole coast without finding an opening to the west, and he concluded, correctly, that the land was a continuous barrier between Europe and Asia. The best surviving copy, known as the Cèllere Codex, is held by the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. It describes landscapes, plants, animals and Indigenous peoples, and it concludes that the coast formed a continuous new continent rather than part of Asia.

Meeting the peoples of the coast

Verrazzano’s letter is one of the earliest European descriptions of the Indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard. It records the appearance, clothing, houses, canoes and food of the peoples he met, and his impressions changed from place to place. In the Carolinas a young sailor who swam ashore was cared for and returned safely, while further north the crew kidnapped a boy to take back to France, an act typical of European explorers of the time.

His descriptions mix careful observation with the assumptions of a Renaissance European, who compared the people with classical models. Modern historians use them, with caution, as evidence for coastal societies before epidemics and colonisation changed them.

Key people

• Giovanni da Verrazzano (c. 1485 – c. 1528): Florentine navigator in French service.
• Francis I of France (reigned 1515–1547): the king who sponsored the voyage.
• Gerolamo da Verrazzano: Giovanni’s brother, a mapmaker who sailed with him and drew a world map in 1529 based on the voyage.

Consequences

France was soon distracted by war with Spain, and Francis I was captured at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, so no settlement followed immediately. Verrazzano made later voyages to Brazil, for valuable dyewood, and to the Caribbean. On the voyage of 1528 he was reportedly killed by the inhabitants of an island in the Lesser Antilles, though the details are uncertain.

His exploration nevertheless laid the foundation for French claims in North America. A decade later Jacques Cartier, also sailing for Francis I, explored the Gulf of St Lawrence and the St Lawrence River (see Jacques Cartier’s Voyages). Maps based on Verrazzano’s voyage, such as those of Vesconte Maggiolo in 1527 and Gerolamo da Verrazzano in 1529, spread knowledge of the coast across Europe.

Legacy

Verrazzano’s visit to New York Bay came 85 years before Henry Hudson sailed up the river in 1609 for the Dutch. He was little remembered until the 19th century, when Italian Americans in New York promoted his memory. A statue of him was erected in Battery Park in 1909.

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, linking Staten Island and Brooklyn across the strait where he anchored, opened on 21 November 1964 and was for a time the longest suspension bridge in the world. Its name was originally spelled with one z and was officially corrected to Verrazzano in 2018.

Timeline

• 1523: A first expedition with four ships is scattered by storms.
• 1524, c. 17 January: La Dauphine leaves the Desertas islands near Madeira.
• 1524, early March: Landfall near Cape Fear, North Carolina.
• 1524, mid-April: Verrazzano enters New York Bay and anchors at the Narrows.
• 1524, late April – May: About two weeks at Narragansett Bay, then north to Maine.
• 1524, 8 July: Return to Dieppe; Verrazzano writes his report to Francis I.
• 1528: Verrazzano dies on a voyage to the Caribbean.
• 1964, 21 November: The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opens in New York.

Why it matters

Verrazzano’s voyage filled the largest gap in Europe’s knowledge of the Atlantic coast of North America and showed that the Americas were a separate continent blocking the way to Asia. It gave France its first claim in the region and produced the earliest European description of the land and peoples around New York Harbor.