right|thumb|upright=1.5|Athore, son of the Timucuan king [[Saturiwa, showing Laudonnière the monument placed by Ribault.]]

Jean Ribault (also spelled Ribaut) (1520 – October 12, 1565) was a French naval officer, navigator, and a colonizer of what would become the southeastern United States. He was a major figure in the French attempts to colonize Florida. A Huguenot and officer under Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, Ribault led an expedition to the New World in 1562 that founded the outpost of Charlesfort on Parris Island in present-day South Carolina. Two years later, he took over command of the French colony of Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida. He and many of his followers died at the hands of Spanish soldiers during the Massacre at Matanzas Inlet, near St. Augustine.

Biography

Early life and first colony

Ribault was born in the town of Dieppe in Normandy in 1520. He entered the French navy under the command of the Huguenot admiral Gaspard de Coligny. In 1562 Coligny chose him to lead an expedition to the New World to found a colony. Ribault left France on February 18 with a fleet of 150 colonists. A recently discovered document suggests that they were guided to Florida by Portuguese pilot Bartolomeu Borges. After crossing the Atlantic, they explored the mouth of the St. Johns River in modern-day Jacksonville, Florida. He named it the "River May", as this was the month when he found it, and erected a stone column claiming the territory for France. Ribault's fleet then proceeded north, charting more of the coastline and noting several rivers. Eventually, they came to the Port Royal Sound in present-day South Carolina, and Ribault elected to establish a settlement on Parris Island, one of the Sea Islands off the coast. Ribault oversaw the layout of a small fort, which was named Charlesfort in honor of the French king Charles IX. Ribault left 27 men under the command of Albert de la Pierria to man the fort and soon set sail for France. However, despite this cordial welcome, he was soon arrested and detained in the Tower of London as a spy. During his time in England, and probably while imprisoned, Ribault wrote an account of the voyage, which survives only in English translation.

Fort Caroline sustained itself for the next year, but Ribault found himself caught up in the fresh outbreak of war in France and was unable to set sail at the appointed time. As a result, the colony experienced food shortages and deteriorating conditions, and some soldiers mutinied and became pirates, attacking Spanish vessels in the Caribbean. The situation was exacerbated by a clash with the Utina, a Timucua Indian tribe up the river to the south. Ribault finally organized his fleet in the summer of 1565, ultimately departing from France with 800 new settlers and five ships. He arrived in Florida on August 28, just as the despairing Laudonnière was preparing to sail home. Ribault promptly relieved Laudonnière as governor and assumed command of Fort Caroline.

Legacy

A replica of the stone column brought from France by Ribault (based on an engraving by Jacques Le Moyne De Morgues) was erected in 1924 by the Florida Chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution to honor and memorialize the Huguenots who colonized Florida. It has been moved several times and is now in the Fort Caroline National Memorial. It appears on a postage stamp, Scott catalog number 616, printed in 1924 — one in a series of three celebrating the 300th anniversary of the arrival of the Huguenots and Walloons to North America.

In 2018 the shipwreck of Ribault's flagship, La Trinité, was located off of the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Several places and institutions in Jacksonville are named for Ribault, including Jean Ribault Middle School and Jean Ribault High School; the Ribault Club on Fort George Island; a tributary of the Trout River, the Ribault River; several neighborhood streets near the river; and the Mayport Ferry Service boat, the Jean Ribault. In Beaufort and adjacent Port Royal, SC, Ribaut (spelled without the l) Road is a major thoroughfare; as a segment of US 21 it passes near the Charlesfort site. Ribault was featured in the "Conquest of the Southeast" episode (2005) of The History Channel's documentary miniseries Conquest of America and in the "Secrets of Spanish Florida" episode (2017) of the PBS/WNET program, Secrets of the Dead.

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File:05 French Exploration of Florida - Jacksonville Jean Ribault Monument Column St. Johns Bluff.jpg|alt=Monument of French Exploration of Florida|"Jean Ribault and a party of Huguenots landed the morning of May 1, 1562 on this island. Here they knelt in prayer, beseeching God's guidance and commending the natives to his care. This was the first Protestant prayer in North America."

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References

Further reading

  • University of South Carolina: Santa Elena Project
  • Charlesfort-Santa Elena National Historic Landmark
  • Harris, Sherwood, "The Tragic Dream Of Jean Ribaut" American Heritage (14) 6, 1963. Retrieved December 29, 2017.