Ed Butts - She Dared. True Stories of Heroines, Scoundrels, and Renegades

ne hundred and seventy-five years before Daniel Defoe wrote his famous novel Robinson Crusoe, there was an even more dramatic castaway story unfolding off the coast of Newfoundland. This one was not the result of stormy seas, but of forbidden love.

Marguerite de la Roque de Roberval was a young girl from an old, upper-class French family and was a relative, likely a niece, of Jean Francois de la Rocque de Roberval. Jean Francois was a flamboyant man who was forever running into trouble. He had financial problems and had borrowed heavily from his relatives, perhaps even from young Marguerite. He had sailed as a privateer and seized English ships, angering King Henry VIII of England. And he was a French Protestant at a time when the Roman Catholic majority in France felt Protestants should be hanged. Luckily he was a personal friend of Prince Francois, who would later be king, and that saved him. The French ruler pretended to be angry with Roberval, while all the time keeping him on as a friend at court.

In 1540 Roberval hatched an idea. He decided that he could regain his fortunes and earn immortal glory by establishing a colony in Canada, the territory discovered just a few years earlier by Jacques Cartier. The French were jealous of all the gold and silver that the Spanish were looting from their New World Empire in Mexico and South America, and hoped that Canada might hold similar riches. Cartier had partially navigated the St. Lawrence River and had heard stories from the Natives that convinced him there were precious metals and gems farther up the great river in a place called Saguenay. The French also believed that the St. Lawrence might provide a passage through the New World to the Pacific Ocean a trade route to China. The French king happily bought in to Roberval's idea and made him Lieutenant-General of the country of Canada. Cartier was appointed second-in-command. This did not go over at all well with Cartier. As the discoverer of the new territory, he had expected to lead a colonizing expedition himself. It made him furious to be reduced to the position of mere guide for a courtier. It probably bewildered him, too, that a Protestant such as Roberval (who may have temporarily rejoined the Catholics) should be given the mission of spreading the holy Catholic faith to the Natives.

By May of 1541, Cartier was ready to go with a fleet of five ships, but Roberval had been having difficulties raising funds and recruiting colonists. As a result, Cartier sailed on ahead, agreeing to meet his commander in Canada.

It took another whole year for Roberval to outfit and supply his three ships: the Anne, the Valentine, and the Lechefraye. To make up for a shortage in manpower, he had to drag convicted murderers and thieves out of prisons. It was quite common in those times to use prisoners for the hard, dirty, dangerous jobs that no one else wanted. Sailing off into the Great Unknown on a crowded little ship was certainly one of those jobs. A sailor's life was tough at the best of times, but for those who embarked on these early trans-Atlantic voyages, it was a downright miserable ordeal of hard work, bad food, and the lash.

The voyage was somewhat more bearable for the aristocrats on board the gentlemen who were to be the pillars of society in the new colony and their ladies. One of the women invited to go on the adventure was Roberval's niece, Marguerite. She was a member of his household and, according to reports of the time, Roberval treated her like a daughter. As a rule, girls of the upper class were married off at a very young age. Marguerite was still single, so quite likely she was young, perhaps in her midteens. We know that she was a young woman of some financial means. Marguerite was coseigneuress with Roberval of an estate northeast of Paris and had property of her own at Perigord and Languedoc to the south. She was probably in a position to lend her uncle money for his expedition.