Jean Alfonse

Who was Jean Alfonse?

Jean Fonteneau dit Alfonse de Saintonge was a French navigator, explorer and corsair, prominent in the European age of discovery.

Born Jean Fonteneau, he married a Portuguese woman named Victorine Alfonse, hence his nickname "Alfonse". Taking to the sea at age 12, he joined the Portuguese commercial fleets as they sailed past the seven seas to the coasts of Brasil, Western Africa, and around the Cape to Madagascar and Asia. His writings talk of days lasting three months, possibly suggesting he had approached Antarctica. By the 1540s he was a renowned pilot, leading fleets to Africa and the Caribbean and reputed to have never lost a ship. André Thévet mentions a conversation where Alfonse described looting Puerto Rico as a corsair. It was long thought that the Rabelaisian hero Xenomanes was based on Alfonse.

In 1542-43 Alfonse piloted Jean-François de la Roque de Roberval's attempt to colonize Canada on the heels of Jacques Cartier's third voyage there. Alfonse established that one could sail through a passage between Greenland and Labrador. The crew of 200, including prisoners and a few women, spent a harsh winter on the shores of the St. Lawrence River, hit by scurvy and losing a quarter of the colonists before sailing back to France.