Soon after Spain’s King Phillip halted trying to settle Spanish Florida in 1561, the French made plans to take it.
King Charles of France strongly disagreed with Spain and Portugal being granted exclusive rights to the New World in 1494. In defiance, the French started a settlement in southeast Canada in 1543. But the inability of the Spanish to settle Florida over the couple of decades inspired another opportunity to challenge the status quo.
In 1562, King Charles sent Jean Ribault, a Protestant Huguenot, and naval officer, with a fleet and 150 colonists on a secret mission to found a colony on the Atlantic coast of Spanish Florida. He landed first near Jacksonville and then at Port Royal Sound in present-day South Carolina, where he built a small fort — named in honor of the king — and left 50 men to protect their claim to the land.
Archaeologists and historians have unearthed the remains of the short-lived Charles Fort and one of Ribault’s ships.