Pre-1492

Maritime explorations by Norse peoples from Scandinavia during the late 10th century led to the Norse colonization of Greenland and a base camp L'Anse aux Meadows^[1] in Newfoundland,^[2] which preceded Columbus's arrival in the Americas by some 500 years. According to the Vinland sagas, this includes journeys by:

• Unnamed Norse explorers to Greenland^[3]
• Erik the Red to Greenland
• Bjarni Herjólfsson to Newfoundland, Labrador, and Baffin Island
• Leif Erikson to Newfoundland (Vinland)
• Spouses Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir led an expedition to Vinland where they begat their son Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first European born in the Americas outside of Greenland.

Other pre-Columbian transoceanic contact theories involving transatlantic travel have not been supported by enough evidence to be widely accepted.

15th to 16th centuries

• Voyages of Christopher Columbus: 1492-1493, 1493-1496, 1498-1500, and 1502-1504. Departing from various ports in Spain, Columbus led exploration and attempted conquest of the Caribbean coast from Honduras to Venezuela and numerous Caribbean islands. Word of these voyages led to widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas, and a period of Columbian Exchange that permanently altered human cultures and the environment on both sides of the Atlantic.
• Bartholomew Columbus traveled from Spain to the Antilles in 1494 and 1509, in addition to occasionally accompanying his brother Christopher and nephew Diego.
• From 1496 to 1498 John Cabot made two or three voyages to North America from Bristol, landing in Newfoundland, or possibly the Canadian Maritimes. He sailed from England in service of King Henry VII, surveying what he believed to be the coast of Asia.^[4]
• In 1498, João Fernandes Lavrador discovered the North American land named after him.
• In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral reached Brazil, the first European to do so.
• Gonçalo Coelho mapped Brazil in 1501–02 and 1503–04 voyages
• Sebastian Cabot returned to England from a 1504 expedition with North American fish. In 1508–09, his second expedition searched for the Northwest Passage around North America to the Pacific.
• In 1519 Ferdinand Magellan sailed from Spain to the South Atlantic, navigating the straits named after him and entering the Pacific Ocean.
• In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the service of the King Francis I of France, explored the Atlantic coast of North America from Florida to New Brunswick.
• In 1534, Jacques Cartier entered the Gulf of St. Lawrence and reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence River.
• In 1560, the Portuguese carrack São Paulo, captained by Ruy de Mello da Camera, sailed from Recife (Brazil) around the Cape of Good Hope to Sumatra, in whose South coast she was wrecked; actually crossing both the Atlantic and Indian oceans in one non-stop sailing.
• In April 1563, Nicolas Barre and 20 other stranded Huguenots were the first to build a (crude) boat in the Americas and sail across the Atlantic. They sailed from Charlesfort, South Carolina to just off the coast of England where they were rescued by an English ship. Though they resorted to cannibalism, seven men survived the voyage, including Barre.^[5][6]
• In 1566, the first trade route across the Atlantic was inaugurated by Spain with the establishment of the West Indies fleets, a convoy system which regularly linked its territories in the Americas with Spain for over two centuries.
• English soldier and courtier Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed across the Atlantic in 1583, landing in what is now St. John's, Canada and claiming the land for England. His ship sank somewhere off the Azores during the return voyage and he drowned.^[7]
• The first group attempting to found Roanoke Colony crossed in 1585, led by Ralph Lane. The second group crossed in 1587, led by John White. The 1590 resupply crossing found the colony mysteriously abandoned.

17th to 18th centuries

• On 16 September 1620 (New Style), the sailing ship Mayflower, carrying English and Dutch Pilgrims on board, set sail from England to North America, reaching New England on 21 November (New Style) the same year,^[8] founding the Plymouth Colony.
• Over the summer of 1630, the Winthrop Fleet carried hundreds of Puritans from England to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony.^[9]
• In November 1732 the ship Ann crossed the Atlantic, from London to Georgia, carrying British soldier, Member of Parliament, and philanthropist James Oglethorpe. The journey took 88 days, arriving in Savannah in February 1733. Oglethorpe would found the colony of Georgia, of which he was the governor.
• In 1764, William Harrison (the son of John Harrison) sailed aboard HMS Tartar, with the H-4 time piece. The voyage became the basis for the invention of the global system of longitude.

19th century

• In 1870, the small City of Ragusa of Liverpool became the first small lifeboat to cross the Atlantic from Queenstown, County Cork to Boston with two crew, John Charles Buckley and Nikola Primorac (di Costa).^[10]
• In 1896, Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo from Norway became the first people known to ever row across the Atlantic Ocean.^[11]

20th century

• In 1952, Ann Davison was the first woman to single-handedly sail the Atlantic Ocean.
• In 1956, the sail-equipped raft L'Égaré II crossed from Newfoundland to England, after the failure of L'Égaré I.^[12]
• In 1965, Robert Manry crossed the Atlantic from the U.S. to England non-stop in a 4.1-metre (13-foot) sailboat named Tinkerbelle.^[13] Several others also crossed the Atlantic in very small sailboats in the 1960s, none of them non-stop, though.
• In 1969 and 1970 Thor Heyerdahl launched expeditions to cross the Atlantic in boats built from papyrus. He succeeded in crossing the Atlantic from Morocco to Barbados after a two-month voyage of 6,100 km (3,800 mi) with Ra II in 1970, thus conclusively proving that boats such as the Ra could have sailed with the Canary Current across the Atlantic in prehistoric times.^[14]
• In 1980, Gérard d'Aboville was the first man to cross the Atlantic Ocean rowing solo.^[15]
• In 1984, Amyr Klink crossed the South Atlantic rowing solo from Namibia to Brazil in 100 days.^[16]
• In 1984, five Argentines sail in a 10-metre long (33 ft) raft made from tree trunks named Atlantis from Canary Islands and after 52 days 4,800 kilometres (3,000 mi) journey arrived to Venezuela in an attempt to prove travellers from Africa may have crossed the Atlantic before Christopher Columbus.^[17][18]
• In 1985, American boatbuilder, Al Grovers, Sr., made the first outboard crossing of the Atlantic.^[19][20]
• In 1994, Guy Delage was the first man to allegedly swim across the Atlantic Ocean (with the help of a kick board, from Cape Verde to Barbados). Controversy followed because of lack of supervision and the time spent drifting on a support vessel.^[21]
• In 1997-98, the Floating Neutrinos sailed a vessel made from recycled materials across the North Atlantic from Maine to Ireland by way of Nova Scotia & Newfoundland. ^[22]
• In 1998, Benoît Lecomte was the first man to swim across the northern Atlantic Ocean without a kick board, stopping for only one week in the Azores.^[23] The accomplishment was questioned due to the time spent drifting on a support vehicle.
• In 1999, after rowing for 81 days and 4,767 kilometres (2,962 miles), Tori Murden became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone when she reached Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands.^[24]

21st century

• In August 2019, the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, her father and three crew members made a crossing of the Atlantic from Plymouth to New York in 15 days on board the Malizia II. The voyage generated all of its power during the crossing using solar power and an under-water turbine.^[25]