Dutch, English, and French Maritime Expansion

England's earliest transatlantic venture predates the more famous 17th-century colonies: the Venetian-born navigator John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), sailing under a commission from King Henry VII, reached the coast of Newfoundland in 1497 while searching, like many navigators after him, for a Northwest Passage to Asia through or around North America. Later English expeditions by Martin Frobisher (1570s) and Henry Hudson (who explored the river and bay that now bear his name in 1609–1611, employed at the time by the Dutch) continued this long, ultimately fruitless search for a northern route to the Pacific.