Although a man of many accomplishments, Sir Walter Raleigh is best known as an explorer and the founder of Roanoke colony (1585), England’s first colonial settlement in the Americas.
Read the full storyThe English navigator Henry Hudson was known for sailing farther north than any European had previously as he searched for the fabled northern passage to Asia.
Read the full storyRichard Hakluyt was the principal exponent of English colonization in the Americas, long before England acquired its transatlantic empire.
Read the full storySailing for Spain during four voyages between 1492 and 1504, Christopher Columbus laid the foundation for an extensive Spanish empire in North, Central, and South America and eventually the Europeanization of the Western Hemisphere.
Read the full storySamuel de Champlain was the principal founder of New France and the first European explorer of much of modern Quebec and Ontario.
Read the full storyThe French king Francis I’s (r. 1515–47) search for a seasoned mariner to lead his country’s challenge to Spain and Portugal in the recently discovered Americas brought to the forefront Jacques Cartier.
Read the full storyGiovanni Caboto, one of the ablest seamen of his day, spent the last years of his life searching for a northwestern route to the Indies.
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