Jean Ribault (also spelled Ribaut) (1520 – October 12, 1565) was a French naval officer, navigator, and a colonizer of what would become the southeastern United States.

A Huguenot and officer under Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, Ribault led an expedition to the New World in 1562 that founded the outpost of Charlesfort on Parris Island in present-day South Carolina.

As Charlesfort was now abandoned, the expedition decided to found a new colony on the banks of the St. Johns River, the same area Ribault and company had explored on the prior voyage.

[7] Fort Caroline sustained itself for the next year, but Ribault found himself caught up in the fresh outbreak of war in France and was unable to set sail at the appointed time.

As a result, the colony experienced food shortages and deteriorating conditions, and some soldiers mutinied and became pirates, attacking Spanish vessels in the Caribbean.

[2] In the meantime, the Spanish, who had long maintained a claim over Florida, had made preparations to find and oust the French from Fort Caroline.

In early September Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, newly-appointed adelantado of Florida, encountered Ribault's ships at anchor off the River of May.

After a brief naval skirmish, the French ships cut their anchor lines and fled, and Menéndez retreated to the next inlet to the south, landing his men on 7 September and establishing the settlement of St.

[2] The Spanish hastily threw up palm-log and earthworks around an existing Timucua Indian village at their newly founded settlement and began unloading their ships.

Jean Ribault did attack only hours later, and almost captured Menéndez who was on a smaller vessel offshore, but the Spaniard risked crossing the sandbar at the mouth of the inlet and made it to the harbor.

In the eyes of the king of Spain, the Protestant religion and acts of piracy committed from Fort Caroline made the entire settlement a dangerous nest of pirates, heretics, and trespassers on Spanish territory.

[citation needed] The same hurricane that masked the approach of Menéndez's troops on Fort Caroline, utterly destroyed all of Ribault's fleet, driving them up on the beach many miles south of their intended target.

Several hundred soldiers and sailors made it ashore barely alive and then walked from near present-day Daytona Beach to Matanzas Inlet, 14 miles south of St. Augustine.

In Beaufort and adjacent Port Royal, SC, Ribaut (spelled without the l) Road is a major thoroughfare; as a segment of US 21 it passes near the Charlesfort site.