Giovanni Antonio de Carbonariis

The ambassador notes that on the damaged ship was ‘another Friar Buil.’ This was an allusion to Bernardo Buil, the Minim missionary who had accompanied Christopher Columbus's 1493 expedition.

Alwyn Ruddock of the University of London was one of the world's foremost experts on John Cabot's expedition and suggested in correspondence that Carbonariis had a more important role, but due to ill health was unable to publish her findings.

Learning of her research, Dr Evan Jones of the University of Bristol has re-investigated her claims, finding new documents and verifying some of her positions.

Dr Ruddock suggested that the community was located at what is now Carbonear, Newfoundland and Labrador, the modern name being a relic survival of the 15th-century settlement.

)[4] From 2010 to 2014, archeological excavations were undertaken by Professor Peter Pope (d. 2017)[8] of Memorial University of Newfoundland in Carbonear to study its colonial history.

[9][10] Ruddock's book proposal and surviving letters to colleagues do not indicate the sources on which she based her claims about the North American settlement, but she had written of discovering more than 20 documents related to Cabot's voyages.

Historian Evan Jones has investigated some of her claims and confirmed evidence for a 1499 voyage undertaken by William Weston, a merchant of Bristol; he is now identified as the first Englishman to lead an expedition to North America.