Give Giovanni da Verrazzano more credit for exploring America, RI

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I sometimes get to wondering what happened between the time Columbus arrived in America in 1492 and the Pilgrims putting roots down in Plymouth 128 years later.

So I took a break from scrolling Instagram and learned something I should have known but never did.

Christopher Columbus never made it to America.

Never set foot in what’s now the continental U.S.

Not once.

First, they say Washington never cut down that Cherry tree, and now this.

Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean, and poked a bit around South America, but that was it. Zero contact with what was to become the U.S.

I am bringing this up because the story has a very Rhode Island component.

The first European ship captain to legitimately explore the Mid-Atlantic and New England heart of America was another Italian navigator.

Giovanni da Verrazzano.

You know, the guy whose name is on the Newport area’s “other” bridge – the Jamestown-Verrazzano that runs from the island to North Kingstown.

While Columbus stayed in the Caribbean area, Verrazzano landed further north, in January of 1524, heading over from France, which backed his expedition.

Seems like a cold time to have left to me.

Anyway, he first hit land in North Carolina in March, then took a right, which is where the local component comes into play.

As we who live here know, Rhode Island is the true center of America. I’m not even kidding. It’s where Roger Williams established what’s now the most defining part of the nation – freedom of conscience.

But we also have this amazing thing called Narragansett Bay, and Verrazzano was the first European to see it.

Oh, on his way, he stopped at a less important point that would eventually become New York.

But for today’s column, my focus is that Verrazzano was the real Columbus, and Rhode Island the signature part of his journey. He checked out Block Island, too, even before the car ferry began to run there from Point Judith.

Admittedly, there was one other European navigator who preceded Verrazzano onto mainline America.

In 1513, the Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León made it to Florida. It turns out, this was the indirect fault of Columbus. Five years earlier, in 1508, Ponce de Leon reached Puerto Rico, becoming the governor there until a son of Columbus disputed his right to the office, which sent Ponce de Leon exploring north to Florida near St. Augustine.

I guess Florida kind of counts. As we all know, in addition to Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns, Florida makes 40 since half of us winter down there.

But if we’re talking Europeans who explored the heart of East Coast America, Verrazzano was the first to sail here over the ocean blue.

This is the right time to talk about it since we just marked the 500th anniversary of Verrazzano’s Rhode Island odyssey. In fact, on Aug. 26th, nine Italian Air Force jets streaked over Newport with green, red and white smoke trails for the Italian flag to commemorate it.

To me, Verrazzano confirms Rhode Island’s centrality in the story of America’s exploration and homesteading, when you consider that Plymouth is a stone’s throw, and two of the pilgrims are buried here.

Nor did Verrazzano just do a hit-and-run, kind of like he did in New York Harbor.

Here, he spent a few weeks anchored in Newport, poking around the Bay, with one trip as far as Providence and Pawtucket, which is farther than many people from southern Rhode Island are willing to drive today.

You can learn things when you stop scrolling through memes. Columbus never made it to America. Never got close to the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts.

But our guy Giovanni da Verrazzano did – the first European to do so, and Rhode Island was at the heart of what he explored.

mpatinki@providencejournal.com

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