In early 1611 Sir Thomas Roe, on a mission to the West Indies for Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, sailed his 200-ton ship, the Lion's Claw, some 320 kilometers up the Amazon, [http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-01882011000100016&script=sci_arttext&tlng=en#nt1 Alírio Cardoso, "The conquest of Maranhão and Atlantic disputes in the geopolitics of the Iberian Union (1596–1626)," ''Rev.