To give England a foothold in the Far East, Queen Elizabeth I chartered the East India Company in 1600. In 1602 the company sent George Weymouth to find a passage through the continent to the Pacific Ocean, but he did not sail beyond Labrador.

Another expedition the same year, under Bartholomew Gosnold, explored the New England coast. When the Virginia Colony was founded in 1607, John Smith and other settlers hoped to find a waterway across the country that would lead them to the Pacific.
England had another motive for entering the competition: to weaken Spain as a European power. In the 1500's England had established a national Protestant church. Spain wished to restore the pope's authority over England. The Spanish military was largely supported by the gold and silver from Mexico and Peru.

Another source of revenue was the high duty levied on the Spanish traders, who held a monopoly on bringing black slaves into Spanish colonies. John Hawkins, an English sea rover, began smuggling blacks from Africa into the Spanish West Indies. He made three such voyages and reaped huge profits. On his third voyage
he was attacked by a Spanish fleet and lost all but two ships.
Adventures of Drake

Hawkins escaped the Spaniards, taking with him his partner and cousin, Francis
Drake. Drake realized that England could gain more by seizing Spanish treasure
in the West Indies than by smuggling slaves. He sailed to the Caribbean Sea on a
raiding expedition, but the Spaniards were well guarded and he won little spoil.
Then he planned a bolder move. Knowing that the Spanish ships and ports on the
Pacific were unprotected, he sailed from England, passed through the Strait of
Magellan, and fell upon the Spaniards off Chile and Peru. He took so much
plunder that he used silver for ballast. He sailed north, seeking an eastward
passage through North America. Failing in this, he sailed across the Pacific and
followed the route of Magellan's party back to Europe.

The English raids on the Spaniards in America helped plunge the two nations into
open war. In 1588 the great Spanish Armada preparing to invade England was
completely crushed. Spain's sea power swiftly declined and with it Spain's
strength to keep England from the opportunities of the New World.

The riches of Spanish America prompted many Englishmen to search for gold in
their own holdings in North America. In 1576 Martin Frobisher found samples of a
"black earth" that he thought was a gold ore. He was wrong, but for a time
England thought it was on the track of great wealth. Walter Raleigh sent out
parties between 1584 and 1587 to explore and colonize the area named Virginia,
but his ventures failed.

The French in Canada

While the conquistadores were busy in Central America, Spain and France were at
war at home. Francis I, king of France, wanted a share of the Oriental trade to
finance his armies. He commissioned a Florentine navigator, Giovanni da
Verrazzano, to find a passage to Asia. In 1524 Verrazzano touched the American
coast at North Carolina and then sailed north to Newfoundland. His report to the
king contained the first description of the northeastern coast of North America
and gave France its claim to American lands.

The next French explorer was Jacques Cartier. He made three voyages between 1534
and 1541 in quest of the Asia route. He ascended the St. Lawrence as far as the
site of Montreal. After Cartier's voyages, a series of religious wars at home
stopped France from sending out other parties. France made attempts, however, to
establish two colonies as refuges for the Huguenots. One colony, in Brazil
(1555-58), was destroyed by the Portuguese. The other, in Florida (1562-65), was
wiped out by the Spaniards. Starting about 1540, French fishermen annually
fished off the Newfoundland coast and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Under the vigorous rule of Henry IV (1589-1610) France was again united and at
peace. Once more French explorers began to seek a strait to the Pacific.

The Dutch Come Last

The Netherlands was the last to begin exploration in the New World. For years
the Dutch struggled to win their independence from Spain. During this struggle,
Spain in 1580 annexed Portugal and gained control of the Oriental trade. The
Dutch realized that Spain might be weakened by striking at its trade. They
formed the Dutch East India Company and dispatched Henry Hudson, an English sea
captain, to find a shortcut to the Orient. Hudson entered the Hudson River in
1609 and ascended it to the site of Albany.