Cape Cod is sighted and named by Bartholomew Gosnold
On this day · 15 May 1602
When an English crew hauled up nets bursting with fish, the catch handed a sandy peninsula a name that would stick for centuries.
On 15 May 1602, the English captain Bartholomew Gosnold brought his small ship the Concord within sight of a long, hooked peninsula on the Massachusetts coast. His crew first called the headland Shoal Hope, wary of the shallow water around it.
The name did not last. Anchoring in some fifteen fathoms, the sailors pulled in such an enormous haul of fish that they renamed the place after their catch. The expedition’s gentleman chronicler, Gabriel Archer, recorded that they “took great store of codfish, for which we altered the name, and called it Cape Cod.”
“We took great store of codfish, for which we altered the name, and called it Cape Cod.”
Gosnold’s voyage was an early English reconnaissance of New England, decades before the Pilgrims landed nearby in 1620. The label he coined endured, and today Cape Cod remains one of the most recognizable place names on the Atlantic coast of the United States.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
