Cape Race

Cape Race is a flat, rocky headland at the southeastern tip of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. Its cliffs rise thirty metres from the Atlantic, and dense fog covers the cape on many days. The position made it a landfall and navigational marker for ships crossing from Europe. Portuguese charts called it Cabo Raso, a name probably describing the low, flat point rather than the prevailing weather.

From the sixteenth century, fishing fleets from Portugal, England, France and Spain worked the rich waters around Newfoundland. Cape Race lay beside their routes, while the island's Beothuk people increasingly withdrew inland as European fishing stations and settlement expanded. In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed past the cape after claiming St John's; his ship Squirrel later sank with him on the return voyage. No permanent town developed at Cape Race during the EU5 period. Its history belongs instead to navigation, seasonal fisheries and the dangerous meeting of Atlantic routes with a fogbound coast.