Neptune's Needle

Bark. Named for the French Dauphin, born the year before the ship's launch, La Dauphine was a French royal ship sailed by Giovanni Verrazzano on his westward voyage in search of Cathay and the extreme eastern coast of Asia, or a passage through any land that might lie in his way. Provisioned for eight months, Verrazzano sailed from Dieppe with La Dauphine and La Normande, which soon returned to France.

Taking his departure from the Madeira Islands on about January 17, 1523, La Dauphine sailed straight west to near Cape Fear, North Carolina. The ship then sailed south about 225 miles before turning north again. Landing briefly near Cape Fear, La Dauphine then sailed along the barrier islands that enclose Pimlico Sound, which Verrazzano initially believed to be the Pacific Ocean, separated from the Atlantic only by the slender Outer Banks.

La Dauphine next stopped at Arcadia (possibly Kitty Hawk), before sailing offshore until arriving at what is now southern New Jersey. The next identifiable anchorage was New York Bay, where La Dauphine anchored the night of April 17 in the Verrazzano Narrows. Heading east they rounded the tip of Long Island and came into Narragansett Bay, passing Block Island, which Verrazzano compared with the Mediterranean island of Rhodes. (Roger Williams later thought he meant Aquidneck, and in time the name was applied to Rhode Island; Verrazzano had actually named Block Island for the French queen mother, Luisa.) A Wampanoag piloted La Dauphine into the future Newport harbor, where Verrazzano anchored for two weeks.

After working her way through Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds and rounding Cape Cod, La Dauphine next landed among the Abnaki near Casco Bay, and worked east from there along the Maine coast. Here, on the Penobscot River, Verrazzano recorded the Abnaki name "Oranbega." Europeans corrupted this to "Norumbega" and used it to refer to the whole region now known as New England. After skirting Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, where the Portuguese and English had preceded him, he sailed for home, arriving at Dieppe on July 8, 1524.

La Dauphine's voyage is important because it was the first to determine that North America was not an extension of Asia. Verrazzano made two subsequent transatlantic voyages, one to Brazil and his last in 1528 when he was killed and eaten by Caribs on Guadeloupe.

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Peter Richards