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Jean Alfonse | |
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| Born | Jean Fonteneau, dit Alfonse de Saintonge c. 1484 |
| Died | December 1544(1544-12-00) (aged 59–60) or December 1549(1549-12-00) (aged 64–65) |
| Occupations | navigator, explorer andcorsair |
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Jean Fonteneau, dit Alfonse de Saintonge (also spelled Jean Allefonsce) orJoão Afonso inPortuguese (also spelled João Alfonso) (c. 1484 – December 1544 or 1549)[citation needed] was aPortuguesenavigator,[1][2][3]explorer andcorsair, prominent in the EuropeanAge of Discovery. He had an early career in Portugal and later served the King of France.
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Born João Afonso and later known in France as Jean Fonteneau or Alfonse ofSaintonge, he married a woman named Valentine Alfonse (Valentina Alfonso). Taking to the sea at age 12, he joined thePortuguese India Armadas and the Portuguese commercial fleets as they sailed past theseven seas to the coasts ofBrazil, Western Africa, and around the Cape toMadagascar and Asia. His writings talk of days lasting three months, and of a vast southern continent, theTerra Australis, and theJave la Grande, which he claims to have seen south of Southeast Asia, possibly suggesting he had approached theArctic (by North America),Australia, andAntarctica.
Before or around 1530, for some reasons, he moved to France putting himself at the service ofFrancis I. The correspondence of diplomatic agents of the king of Portugal in France, in the first half of the century, tried to clarify the causes of this change of allegiance. Gaspar Palha, a Portuguese diplomat in Paris in 1531, having met a man from La Rochelle to whom he requested information concerning the pilot Jean Alfonse, wrote that he had been exiled because, when he was lost near the coast of Brittany hit by a storm, he had been involved in a quarrel (according to what was reported, with his own oldest son) that resulted in the death of his son or some man aboard; and that consequently he had been exiled and did not dare to appear in public, but it is a report by indirect testimony, and there may have been other non-criminal reasons for the exile. However, it appears that it was to escape the Portuguese Justice for some reason. Jean Alfonse left the country, later in the company of his wife and his sons. In 1531,John III of Portugal attempted to repatriate the defector pilot because of his high qualifications and for his vast and possible classified knowledge.[4] The king himself corresponded directly with Afonso, sending letters of pardon by his ambassadors and representatives and later exchanging letters with him in this attempt.
By the 1540s, he was a renowned pilot, leading fleets to Africa and theCaribbean and reputed to have never lost a ship.André Thévet mentions a conversation where Alfonse described lootingPuerto Rico as a corsair. It was long thought that theRabelaisian hero Xenomanes was based on Alfonse.
In 1542–1543, Alfonse pilotedJean-François de la Roque de Roberval's attempt to colonizeCanada on the heels ofJacques Cartier's third voyage there. Alfonse established that one could sail through a passage betweenGreenland andLabrador.[citation needed] The crew of 200, including prisoners and a few women, spent a harsh winter on the shores of theSt. Lawrence River, hit byscurvy and losing a quarter of the colonists before sailing back to France. During this trip, Alfonse described a land he calledNorombega[5] writing that "Fifteen leagues within this river there is a city called Norombegue with clever inhabitants and a mass of peltries of all kinds of beasts. The citizens dress in furs, wearing sable cloaks. . . The people use many words which sound like Latin and worship the sun, and they are fair people and tall." From a sketch he made of what he called the "Riviere de Norenbegue" the river has been identified as thePenobscot River.[6]
In late 1544, Alfonse left La Rochelle with a small fleet and disrupted Basque shipping, while thetreaty of Crépy had just been signed between France and Spain. A Spanish fleet led byPedro Menéndez de Avilés caught up to him as he was getting back to La Rochelle and killed him at sea. Some sources say this fatal encounter occurred in 1549.[7]
His writings were published asLes voyages avantureux du Capitaine Ian Alfonce (1559), theRutter of Jean Alphonse (1600) andLa cosmographie avec l’espère et régime du soleil du nord par Jean Fonteneau dit Alfonse de Saintonge, capitaine-pilote de François Ier (manuscript dated 1545, first published in 1904). In them he describes the various places and peoples he and others have seen, many of them for the first time in print (such asGaspé, theBeothuk,Saint-Pierre Island, the jewels ofMadagascar, a continent south ofJava) and provides navigational instructions on how to get there.
