Good thing that ocean was there or 1600s Virginia would have claimed the entire planet with their innovative "peeling the label off a biscuit can" approach to real estate.
Of course. They couldn't though, because the Spanish had already claimed the whole Pacific ocean as their territory. (/s, but only on the connection between the two things)
Reminds me about the Treaty of Zaragoza between Castile (Spain) and Portugal, where they divided the world in two half between each other. Just claim big.
Context: The "new world" was just discovered 35 yeas earlier and the world map was still very crude in the east indias and the new amazonas region - worldmaps 1530
The Portuguese perfected early cannons and had pretty good ships. You can win lots of coastline if you can just aim 20 guns at a city in the 1500s. That's like having jet aircraft in the 1800s.