Cape May could have been ‘Cape Verrazzano’

Italian explorer was first European visitor here

If Cape May’s forefathers had been historically correct, we might never have been influenced by tulips, wooden shoes and Dutch heritage as we are now in this city that bills itself as the nation’s oldest seashore resort.

Instead, we possibly would be eating at French restaurants at every street corner and watching “Can-Can” girls dancing at the Marquis De Lafayette Hotel.

Today’s generally accepted history of Cape May is that it is named after Dutch sea captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey who explored the area and was appointed the first director of New Netherland in 1623. Henry Hudson, some of whose fame came from the naming of the Hudson River after him, preceded Mey in 1609, serving as the captain of the celebrated Half Moon vessel, but literally and figuratively he missed the boat by never getting ashore as he was stymied by stormy weather. He was looking for the Northwest Passage and obviously he needed better directional signals.

But often overlooked in the telling of the history of Cape May, first known as Cape Mey before the name was anglicized, was a voyager whose feats could have conceivably resulted in naming the present cape as “Cape Verrazzano” although Cape May is much easier to spell and fit into newspaper headlines.

His full name was Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, often spelled as Verrazano, and in 1524 or thereabouts he was very well liked by the king of France who liked many things Italian even before they invented pizza. So King Francois (Francis I), seeking a route to China, hired Verrazzano to lead an expedition of four ships to what is now the East Coast of the United States in hopes that his seafaring friend could find a link to that faraway place.

Well, Verrazzano didn’t even find a Chop suey restaurant to help him along the way, but according to Harriet A. Reardon’s thesis in the Cape May County Magazine of History and Genealogy, he did find New Jersey and anchored offshore, presumably off the coast of what was to be Cape May, nee Cape Island. It was to be another century before another explorer was to visit this territory that was often frequented and inhabited by native Indians.

Like many seafaring voyages of that era, Verrazzano’s journey from Europe was rife with danger. He started with four ships, including his 100-ton flagship La Dauphine, with a crew of 50. Two of the ships soon were shipwrecked after leaving port and a third was sent back home with its loot after privateering on the Spanish coast.

But Verrazzano and his remaining ship made it to this unexplored coast in a two-and-a-half-month voyage between Jan. 17 and the first day of March.

The first land they touched was later to be known as Cape Fear in North Carolina, a cape that acquired that name 34 years later after the crew of another ship feared their vessel would go down to sea with them in it.

Encouraged by their successful discovery, Verrazzano and his crew sailed south to a point north of Charleston before deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, since they feared Spanish ships were floating around in that area and at that time France and Spain were not the best of friends.

So they returned to the Cape Fear area, anchored out in the sea, and sent a boat ashore to explore the territory and meet the people, unsure of whether they would be friendly or otherwise. Verrazzano was unimpressed by what he saw, particularly their near nakedness, something not usually seen on the streets of his home country of Italy or, for that matter, in France, the nation he was representing on this trip.

“These people go altogether naked except only that they cover their privy parts with certain skins of beasts like unto martens, which they fasten onto a narrow girdle made of grass, very artfully wrought, hanged about with tails of divers other beasts, which round about their bodies hang dangling down to their knees.,” he was to write in a report of his visitation which seemed to indicate that all went well between the uninvited guests and their accommodating but unexpecting hosts.

Soon his ship from France was back on the high seas again, heading for the Outer Banks of Carolina. When they arrived at a place called Pamlico Sound, Verrazzano thought it was the Pacific Ocean and he really was on the way to China.

Alas, perhaps hurting his image if anyone later contemplated naming today’s Cape May after him, Verrazzano got into trouble when his ship arrived in the area of Kitty Hawk. There, he was said to have kidnapped a girl, but didn’t do as well when he tried to kidnap a young woman.

So, fearful of reprisal, he quickly headed north wanting to get ahead of a possible posse of Indians who may have been anxious for his head with their bows and arrows and scalping knives.

On the way to Cape May, his ship missed the entrances to the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, but anchored in the ocean, presumably near the land of the song that Cozy Morley and others were to make famous. History has not made clear whether he sent a landing party ashore. Probably not, given the earlier kidnapping episodes and the presence of smoke signals that Indians used then to get their messages from one place to another.

Verrazzano and his ship moved northward, anchoring in the Narrows where they later named a bridge after him and credited him with having discovered the New York Harbor. Eventually they were in New England and Canada where the Indians, perhaps getting the smoke signals from the south, shot arrows at them at one place when they tried to land.

The visitors from Europe managed to land, however, and negotiate, but finally decided to return to their homeland. As they were leaving the harbor, a farewell party of Indians bade them farewell at water’s edge by bending over and “exhibiting their bare behinds and laughing immoderately.”

When Verrazzano was back in France he reported to the king that the return trip was uneventful except that they barely made it out of the harbor.