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The Lost Colony
In 1584, explorers Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe were the
first English explorers to set eyes on the North Carolina. They
had been sent to the area by Sir Walter Raleigh with the mission
of scouting the broad sounds and estuaries in search of an ideal
location for settlement. Amadas and Barlowe wrote glowing
reports of the Albemarle Region, and when they returned to
England a year later with two Natives, Manteo and Wanchese, all
of Britain was abuzz with talk of the New World's wonders.
 Queen
Elizabeth herself was impressed, and she granted Raleigh a
patent to all the lands he could occupy. She named the new land
"Virginia", in honor of the Virgin Queen, and the next year,
Raleigh sent a party of 100 soldiers, craftsmen and scholars to
Roanoke Island.
Under the direction of Ralph Lane, the garrison was doomed from
the beginning. They arrived too late in the season for planting,
and supplies were dwindling rapidly. To make matters worse,
Lane, a military captain, alienated the neighboring Roanoke
Indians, and ultimately sealed his own fate by murdering their
chief, Wingina over a stolen cup. By 1586, when Sir Francis
Drake stopped at Roanoke after a plundering expedition, Lane and
his men had had enough. They abandoned the settlement and
returned to England.
Raleigh was angry with Lane but not deterred from his mission.
He recruited 117 men, women and children for a more permanent
settlement, and appointed John White governor of the new "Cittie
of Raleigh.". Among the colonists were White's pregnant
daughter, Eleanor Dare, his son-in-law Annanias Dare, and the
Croatoan Indian chief, Manteo.
Raleigh had since decided that the Chesapeake Bay area was a
better site for settlement, and he hired Simon Fernandes, a
Portuguese pilot familiar with the area, to transport the
colonists there. Fernandes, however, was by trade a privateer in
the escalating war between Spain and England. By the time the
caravan arrived at Roanoke Island in July 1587, Fernandes had
grown impatient with White and anxious to resume the hunt for
Spanish shipping. He ordered the colonists ashore on Roanoke
Island.
Because of the deteriorated relations with the natives, the
colonists were uneasy at the prospect of remaining on Roanoke
Island. But Fernandes left them no choice. They unloaded their
belonging and supplies and repaired Lane's fort. On August 18,
1587, Eleanor Dare gave birth to a daughter she named Virginia,
the first English child born on American soil. Ten days later,
Ferndades departed for England, taking along an anxious John
White, who hesitantly decided to return to England for supplies.
Upon his arrival in Britain, White found himself trapped by the
impending invasion of the Spanish Armada. Finally, two years
after the stunning defeat of the Armada, he again departed for
Roanoke Island. He arrived on August 18, 1590--his grand
daughter's third birthday--and found the Cittie of Raleigh
deserted, plundered, and surrounded "with a high pallisado of
great trees, with cortynes and flankers, very fort-like". On one
of the palisades, he found the single word "CROATOAN" carved
into the surface, and the letters "CRO" carved into a nearby
tree.
 White
knew the carvings were "to signifie the place, where I should
find the planters seated, according to a secret token agreed
upon betweene them and me at my last departure from them...for
at my coming away, they were prepared to remove 50 miles into
the maine". He had also instructed the colonists that, should
they be forced to leave the island under duress, they should
carve a Maltese cross above their destination. White found no
such sign, and he had every hope that he would locate the colony
and his family at Croatoan, the home of Chief Manteo's people
south of Roanoke on present-day Hatteras Island.
Before he could make further exploration, however, a hurricane
arose, damaging his ships and forcing him back to England.
Despite repeated attempts, he was never again able to raise the
funding and resources to make the trip to America again. Raleigh
had given up hope of settlement, and White died many years later
on one of Raleigh's estates, ignorant to the fate of his family
and the colony.
The 117 pioneers of Roanoke Island had vanished into the great
wilderness.
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