Who Sailed along the West Newfoundland Shore?
On his first voyage of 1534, Jacques Cartier was commissioned by the King of France
To discover certain islands and lands where it is said a great quantity of gold and other precious things are to be found.
Having passed through the Strait of Belle Isle and made his famous remark about "the land God gave to Cain", on 15 June 1534 Jacques Cartier set sail down the West Coast of Newfoundland. On 17 June, running before a storm, he sighted the Bay of Islands and its two headlands, which he called Cape Royal and Lath Cape (North and South Heads).
Of course, the modern names had not yet been assigned, but this seems to have been the first authentic documented account of the Bay of Islands:Between these two capes are low shores, beyond which are very high lands with apparently rivers among them. Two leagues from Cape Royal there is a depth of twenty fathoms and the best fishing possible for big cod. Of these cod we caught, while waiting for our consort, more than a hundred in less than an hour.
On his next voyage, Cartier circumnavigated Newfoundland, proving conclusively that it was an island, but it was still some considerable time before the world's cartographers incorporated that fact into their work. On that trip, as he passed through the Cabot Strait on his way back to France in the spring of 1536, off the south coast of Newfoundland Cartier encountered French fishing vessels from his home port of St Malo. The great quantity of gold and other precious things mentioned in Cartier's commission were not to be found in this part of the world, at least not in the form expected, although fishermen from St Malo and other ports of Western Europe continued coming to Newfoundland and returning home with vast cargoes of another form of wealth for the next four hundred years.