England's first port for mariners sailing west was the city of Bristol. Bristol merchants hoped that if a new route to the Orient lay directly west across the Atlantic, their city would become the principal trade center. In 1497 they sent John Cabot, a Genoese sea captain, in search of this new passage. Cabot touched land between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and returned believing that he had
visited the outlying parts of Asia. His voyage gave England its later claim to North America.
After realizing that Cabot had not reached Asia, England tried to open a route to the Orient around Northern Europe--the Northeast Passage. In 1576 Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote his 'Discourse of a Northwest Passage', in which he reasoned that a water route led around North America to Asia. A few years later
Gilbert sailed to establish a base in Newfoundland but died on the way home. Two
other captains, Martin Frobisher and John Davis, each made three voyages between
1575 and 1589 to the network of straits and inlets north of the St. Lawrence
River, but neither could find a way to the Pacific.