In 1562, as France was torn by religious strife, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny sent two vessels to the New World to seek a refuge for oppressed Huguenots under the leadership of the Huguenot explorer Jean Ribaut, who charted a new course across the Atlantic and reached the coast of Florida. On Friday, May 1, 1562, Ribaut's party first landed in the New World here on the east shore of Xalvis Island, and in the presence of friendly Indians the Frenchmen fell to the ground and gave thanks to God in the first Protestant worship service held in the New World. Ribaut then sailed up the coast and founded the colonial settlement of Charlesfort, named in honor of his king. Charlesfort did not last, and in 1562 the Huguenot settlement of Fort Caroline was established on the St. Johns, where sometime before 1565 the first Protestant white child was born in what is now the United States. On Ribaut's second voyage to the Americas in 1565, he and his men were shipwrecked near St. Augustine, and the explorer and most of his followers were murdered at Matanzas Inlet near St. Augustine by Spanish Governor Pedro Menendez, who feared French encroachment on Spain's Florida empire.
