René Goulaine de Laudonnière

Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière (c. 1529–1574) was a French Huguenot explorer and the founder of the French colony of Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida. Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a Huguenot, sent Jean Ribault and Laudonnière to explore potential sites in Florida suitable for settlement by the French Protestants.

Laudonnière was a Huguenot nobleman and merchant mariner from Poitou, France. His birthdate and family origins are uncertain. One school of historians attaches him to a branch of the Goulaine family seated at Laudonnière, near Nantes. A competing claim insists that he was a Burdigale (or Bourdigalle) from the port town of Sables d'Olonne. No contemporary records have been published to substantiate either theory.

In 1562, Laudonnière was appointed second in command of the Huguenot expedition to Florida under Jean Ribault. Leaving in February 1562, the expedition returned home in July after establishing the small settlement of Charlesfort in present-day South Carolina.

After the French Wars of Religion broke out between French Catholics and Huguenots, Ribault fled France and sought refuge in England. Meanwhile, the Huguenots planned another expedition to Florida and Laudonnière was placed in command in Ribault's absence. In 1564 Laudonniere received 50,000 crowns from Charles IX and returned to Florida with three ships and 300 Huguenot colonists.

Laudonnière arrived at the mouth of the May River (today called the St. Johns River) on June 22, 1564. He sailed up the river where he eventually founded Fort Caroline, which they named for King Charles, in what is now Jacksonville. He made contact with the Saturiwa, a Timucua chiefdom who were friendly to the colonists and showed them a shrine they had built around a monument left behind by Ribault. When some of the men complained about the manual labor, Laudonnière sent them back to France.

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