Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Jean Ribault

RIBAULT, or Ribaut, Jean (c. 1520-1565), a French navigator rendered famous by his connexion with the early settlement of Florida (q.v.), was born at Dieppe, probably about 1520. Appointed by Coligny to the command of a colonizing expedition (from which the admiral was not deterred by the failure of Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon on a similar mission), Ribault sailed on 18th February 1562 with two vessels, and on 1st May landed at St John's river, or, as he called it, Rivière de Mai. Having settled his colonists at Port Royal Harbour and built Fort Charles for their protection, he returned to France to find the country in the throes of the civil war. In 1563 he appears to have been in England and to have issued The whole and true discoverie of Terra Florida. In April 1564 Coligny was in a position to despatch another expedition under Laudonnière; but meanwhile Ribault's colony had come to an untimely end, the unfortunate adventurers, destitute of supplies from home, having revolted against their governor and attempted to make their way back to Europe in a boat which was happily picked up, when they were in the last extremities, by an English vessel. In 1565 Ribault was again sent out to satisfy the admiral as to Laudonnière's management of his new settlement, Fort Caroline, on the Rivière de Mai. While he was still there the Spaniards under Menendez de Avila, though their country was at peace with France, attacked the French ships at the mouth of the river. Ribault set out to retaliate on the Spanish fleet, but his vessels were wrecked by a storm near Cape Cañaveral and he had to attempt to return to Fort Caroline by land. The fort had by this time fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, who had slaughtered all the colonists except a few who got off with two ships under Ribault's son. Induced to surrender by false assurances of safeguard, Ribault and his men were also put to the sword in October 1565. The massacre was avenged in kind by Dominique de Gourgues two years later.

See Haag, La France Protestante, s.v.; French, Hist. Collections of Louisiana and Florida; Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World.