Before we go back to the beginning — to who Marguerite was and how she came to be on that ship — it is worth establishing what she was actually facing.

The island where she was left has been identified by most researchers as one of the islands in the area of what is now the northeastern Quebec coast or possibly in the vicinity of Bonne-Espérance on the Labrador coast — the exact identification is uncertain, but the general location is not: somewhere in the Gulf of St.

Lawrence or along its approaches, where the North Atlantic meets the landmass of North America.

This part of the world in the sixteenth century was not simply remote.