The destination was the territory around what is now the St.

Lawrence River valley — country that the French explorer Jacques Cartier had already visited on earlier voyages and that was becoming an object of French colonial ambition.

Roberval was supposed to build on Cartier’s explorations and create something lasting: a French settlement that could serve as a base for further exploration and as a claim of French sovereignty over this part of the New World.

The crossing of the North Atlantic in the sixteenth century was not a routine undertaking.