Alfonse (1542-1543)
Alfonse, Jean (1484?-1544). Les Voyages avantureux du capitaine Ian Alfonce, Sainctongeois. Poitiers: Ian de Marnef, 1559?
When still a young man, Jean Fonteneau, a French navigator born in 1484 in Saintonge in the west of France, married a Portuguese woman, Valentine Alfonse, and eventually adopted his wife's family name.
In all likelihood, Alfonse started navigating in 1496, and eventually carved out a solid reputation for himself. In 1542 King Francis I of France commissioned him to take the expedition led by La Rocque de Roberval to Canada, in what turned out to be a vain attempt to found a settlement in the Saint Lawrence Valley. Back from this expedition, Alfonse undertook a voyage in search of the Northwest Passage to China. He entered Davis Strait and, it seems, became the first European navigator to discover that Labrador was distinct from Greenland.
Jean Alfonse was killed in 1544 during a fight in the port of La Rochelle, France. He left behind two manuscripts: Voyages avantureux and Cosmographie. The former gives a brief account of his voyages on different seas and provided the first instructions to be printed on navigating in Canadian waters. Alfonse's works served as a guide and model to the navigators and cartographers who came after him. Moreover, Alfonse was almost certainly the inventor of the topgallant sail, yard and mast.
A few years later, Champlain, himself an excellent navigator, called Alfonse the "most expert navigator of his time in France".
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