section_path: Northern European involvement (1595–17th century)/Exploring North America
section_name: Exploring North America
paragraph_text: Exploring North America
  
  The 1497 English expedition authorized by Henry VII of England was led by Italian Venetian John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto); it was the first of a series of French and English missions exploring North America. Mariners from the Italian peninsula played an important role in early explorations, most especially Genoese mariner Christopher Columbus. With its major conquests of central Mexico and Peru and discoveries of silver, Spain put limited efforts into exploring the northern part of the Americas; its resources were concentrated in Central and South America where more wealth had been found. These other European expeditions were initially motivated by the same idea as Columbus, namely a westerly shortcut to the Asian mainland. After the existence of "another ocean" (the Pacific) was confirmed by Balboa in 1513, there still remained the motivation of potentially finding an oceanic Northwest Passage to Asian trade. This was not discovered until the early twentieth century, but other possibilities were found, although nothing on the scale of the spectacular ones of the Spanish. In the early 17th century colonists from a number of Northern European states began to settle on the east coast of North America. Between 1520 and 1521, the Portuguese João Álvares Fagundes, accompanied by couples of mainland Portugal and the Azores, explored Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (possibly reaching the Bay of Fundy on the Minas Basin), and established a fishing colony on the Cape Breton Island that would last until at least the 1570s or near the end of the century.
  
  In 1524, Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano sailed under the authority of Francis I of France, who was motivated by indignation over the division of the world between Portuguese and Spanish. Verrazzano explored the Atlantic Coast of North America, from South Carolina to Newfoundland, and was the first recorded European to visit what would later become the Virginia Colony and the United States. In the same year Estevão Gomes, a Portuguese cartographer who had sailed in Ferdinand Magellan's fleet, explored Nova Scotia, sailing South through Maine, where he entered what is now New York Harbor, the Hudson River and eventually reached Florida in August 1525. As a result of his expedition, the 1529 Diogo Ribeiro world map outlines the East coast of North America almost perfectly. From 1534 to 1536, French explorer Jacques Cartier, believed to have accompanied Verrazzano to Nova Scotia and Brazil, was the first European to travel inland in North America, describing the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which he named " The Country of Canadas ", after Iroquois names, claiming what is now Canada for Francis I of France.
  
  Europeans explored the Pacific Coast beginning in the mid-16th century. Spaniards Francisco de Ulloa explored the Pacific coast of present-day Mexico including the Gulf of California, proving that Baja California was a peninsula. Despite his report based on first hand information, the myth persisted in Europe that California was an island. His account provided the first recorded use of the name "California". João Rodrigues Cabrilho, a Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown, was the first European to set foot in California, landing on September 28, 1542, on the shores of San Diego Bay and claiming California for Spain. He also landed on San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands, and continued as far north as Point Reyes on the mainland. After his death the crew continued exploring as far north as Oregon.
  
  The English privateer Francis Drake sailed along the coast in 1579 north of Cabrillo's landing site while circumnavigating the world. Drake had a long and largely successful career attacking Spanish settlements in the Caribbean islands and the mainland, so that for the English, he was a great hero and fervent Protestant, but for the Spanish he was "a frightening monster." Drake played a major role in the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, but led an armada himself to the Spanish Caribbean that was unsuccessful in dislodging the Spanish. On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbor to repair his damaged ship. On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California near Point Reyes. While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I of England as Nova Albion or New Albion. To document and assert his claim, Drake posted an engraved plate of brass to claim sovereignty for Queen Elizabeth and her successors on the throne. Drake's landfalls on the west coast of North America are one small part of his 1577-1580 circumnavigation of the globe, the first captain of his own ship to do so. Drake died in 1596 off the coast of Panama, following injuries from a raid.
  
  From 1609 to 1611, after several voyages on behalf of English merchants to explore a prospective Northeast Passage to India, English mariner Henry Hudson, under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), explored the region around present-day New York City, while looking for a western route to Asia. He explored the Hudson River and laid the foundation for Dutch colonization of the region. Hudson's final expedition ranged farther north in search of the Northwest Passage, leading to his discovery of the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay. After wintering in James Bay, Hudson tried to press on with his voyage in the spring of 1611, but his crew mutinied and they cast him adrift.