Memorial for the 1585 British settlement site, Fort Raleigh, Fort Raleigh National Historic Site
History tells us that the Americas were discovered in 1492 by Christopher Columbus, though in recent times many others have laid claim to the discovery of the continent: Chinese, Irish Monks, Vikings. The debate may never come to a conclusion, but without question it was Columbus who was responsible for the colonization of the continent. Being a European himself, it was only after his voyages that the super powers of Europe learned of the Americas, and the race to colonize the area and reap dreamlike financial gains was on.
Of the main European powers at the time—Spain, France, Portugal, and England—it was England that fell well behind the pack when it came to exploiting the New World. Spain had plundered Central America from the get-go and had even established a settlement in North America by 1565: St. Augustine (today in Florida). This was established mainly as a base to protect Spanish Galleons filled with treasure from the pirate ships that roamed the Florida coast. However, the very southern portions of North America were as far as the Spanish went with their efforts. They explored much of the Gulf Coast, but in most cases, hostile Indians thwarted their progress, making it very hard to drum up much enthusiasm for settling the area.
France had established a settlement called Fort Caroline (near present day Jacksonville, Florida) in 1564. The only reason St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States today and not Jacksonville is because Spain wiped out the population of Fort Caroline and ended French attempts to colonize the southern portion of North America. The site of Fort Caroline is today a National Park—the Fort Caroline National Memorial—as are two Spanish forts in the St. Augustine area, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument and Fort Matanzas National Monument.
It wasn’t until 1584 that England made an initially successful attempt to establish a colony in America, though prior to this the British were not completely absent in the affairs of the New World. Many of the pirate ships that had been robbing the Spanish for years were from England. The British had been trading with the Indians of Canada since shortly after Columbus’ voyage, but had never put down any roots. Sir Humphrey Gilbert (half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh) had attempted a journey to establish a colony in 1578 (failed) and had claimed possession of Newfoundland in 1583. Unfortunately, Gilbert was lost at sea on the way back to England, and his claim was never recorded.
The cause for colonization was taken up by Walter Raleigh, a soldier, explorer, and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth. In early 1584, Raleigh convinced Elizabeth to grant him a royal patent to sail to America and claim land for the Crown. He was not permitted to go himself, so he organized a voyage that set sail on April 27th. Led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe, the expedition consisted of two ships and eighty men and left with the purpose of searching out a suitable area to establish a future settlement.
The expedition sighted North America on July 4, 1584, and then traveled 120 miles up what today is the North Carolina coast (the English named the area Virginia) in search of a river or inlet that could take them off the open sea. Over the next few days men went ashore to explore. On the third day, the English met their first Indian. Though neither side understood the other, the English gave the Indian a tour of the ship and presented the man with a few gifts.
The next day a party of forty or so Indians arrived, led by the brother of the king, Granganimeo. Barlowe later wrote of how trusting the Indians were despite the fact that the English came to the meeting bearing their weapons. Both sides presented gifts, and within two days active trading had begun. The English continued to branch out exploring the area and searching for the most hospitable of places. Their travels took them up what today is called the Pamlico Sound (which would establish their initial landing spot to be south of Roanoke Island). Their eventual introduction to Roanoke Island came during a visit to Granganimeo’s village.
In August, the English departed back to England, bringing with them two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese. Both became instrumental in the colonization effort and very good friends with the English. The present day Roanoke Island towns of Manteo and Wanchese are named after these men.
The two ships arrived back in England in mid-September. After hearing excellent reports, Raleigh, who was knighted for the success, organized a second expedition, this one with eight ships and 600 men, mainly soldiers and sailors, but with a few scientists as well. The journey was led by Richard Grenville and Ralph Lane, and it departed in the spring of 1585. These men would go on to establish the very first English colony in North America, though it would be very short lived.
On the voyage were three men who would play a very important role in the expedition. Artist John White created maps and make drawings of plants, animals, and Indian life. Thomas Hariot was an astronomer, mathematician, and navigator, as well as the only person on the voyage who spoke the language of the local Indians, which he learned from Manteo and Wanchese. Joachim Gans was a metallurgist from Prague. Such a man was vital to the success of the colony, for investors in the voyages did not put up their money for the good of England. They wanted riches from the New World, and a man like Gans was needed to find the gold and silver that would justify their investments.
Drawings by John White
The ships arrived on the coast of North American on June 23rd. Despite the findings of the 1584 voyage, there was no set site for a settlement. The ships initially landed off of Cape Fear, which is far south of Roanoke Island, close to the border with present day South Carolina. Over the next month the men worked their way up the coast in search of a hospitable settlement site. On July 29th the expedition reached Roanoke Island, and the decision to set up the colony was made. The first order of duty was to build a fort for protection from a possible attack by the Spanish, for England was currently at war with Spain. A month later, Richard Grenville set sail back to England with plans to return with more supplies, promising to return by Easter of 1586. He left 108 men behind and put Ralph Lane in charge.
Relations with the Indians did not go so smoothly this time around. While exploring the coast in search of a settlement site, Grenville had burned the Aquascogoc Indian village because he believed one of the Indians had stolen a silver cup. Lane, in his quest for gold and pearls instead of food, felt the best way to get food out of the Indians was to take hostages and then make exchanges. The colonists endured Indian attacks and even carried out attacks of their own.
When Easter of 1586 rolled around, Grenville had not returned, and food and supplies were running low. In June, Sir Francis Drake stopped by the island. Drake initially offered the men a month’s supply of food and a ship, but during a storm the ship floated out to sea and was lost. Lane then decided to leave with Drake, and the settlement was abandoned. Three men who were off on an expedition were left behind, never to be heard from again. Grenville did eventually depart from England with supplies, but he arrived at Roanoke Island after everyone had left with Drake. Not wanting to abandon the settlement, he left fifteen men behind and returned to England. The fifteen men were also never seen again.
When the men who returned with Drake finally arrived back in England, very few had anything good to say about the New World. Thomas Hariot, on the other hand, realizing that future expeditions were in great jeopardy due to the bad publicity, was the spokesman for how great the place was, going so far as to say the complainers were outright liars. His campaign must have worked, because Raleigh was able to convince many Englishmen and their families to return to Virginia as colonists, promising them 500 acres and a voice in the new government in exchange for financing the voyage.
The new voyage was under the command of John White, the artist from the 1585 expedition, and consisted of three ships, an unknown number of crew, and 118 colonists. Manteo and another Indian, Towaye, were part of the group along with White’s pregnant daughter and her husband, Ananias Dare. She would give birth to Virginia on August 18th, making her child the first baby born to English parents in America.
Despite the ongoing war with Spain, the third voyage took off on May 8, 1587. It had been determined that Roanoke Island was not the best place to start a colony, and that a better spot would be a little farther north in the Chesapeake Bay. The plan was to land at Roanoke Island to pick up the fifteen men left behind to guard the settlement and then sail north to the new settlement site. The colony was to be called Ralegh, spelled one of the many ways that Sir Walter was known to have signed his name (oddly enough, he never spelled it Raleigh). However, the ship’s captain, Simon Fernandez, refused to make a second stop at Chesapeake Bay, forcing everyone off at Roanoke Island in late July.
The colonists arrived to find the old fort destroyed and a partial skeleton of one man. They immediately set about cleaning and fixing up the old settlement. Within the first week, one of the colonists was killed by Indians, and soon afterwards the colonists attacked an Indian village to get revenge. Relations with the Indians had not changed.
For a month Fernandez waited off shore while the supplies for the colony were unloaded. By the time he was ready to depart it was obvious that even more supplies were needed. Nobody wanted to return to England, so the colonists insisted that White depart with Fernandez. While he was gone, it was agreed that if the colonists left to another location that they would carve the name of the destination into a wood post. If they left because of trouble, they would also carve a Maltese cross.
Fernandez was in no hurry to get back to England, delaying the return trip in order to plunder a few Spanish ships. It wasn’t until early November that White arrived back in England, but his streak of bad luck would continue. He quickly assembled a fleet and supplies, but due to an impending Spanish attack on England, he was not permitted to sail with any ship that was battle worthy, leaving him with only two small ships. He took off anyway, but was attacked by French pirates and had his supplies stolen. He was, however, able to sail back to England. It would be the early summer of 1890 before he could finance another voyage to Roanoke Island, nearly three years after he left the rest of the colonists behind.
And thus is the groundwork for the oldest mystery in America.
White returned to the settlement on Roanoke Island to find not only the village deserted, but also most of the village itself missing. All the buildings had been removed, including the support posts. About all that remained were a couple of cannon and a portion of a palisade wall that had been put up around the settlement for protection. On one post was carved the word “Croatoan,” the village of Manteo, but no Maltese cross. Croatoan is what is now called Hatteras Island, and all it would have taken was a trip 50 miles south to see if the colonists were there.
Unfortunately, White was simply a passenger on the ship that brought him to Roanoke Island, so he had no control over its destination. Even if he had hired the entire ship, as the problems with Simon Fernandez demonstrate, ship captains are ultimately going to do what they want to do. And what they want to do is called privateering: state sanctioned pirating. According to multiple accounts, a storm prevented the ship from traveling to Croatoan. After a second, more severe storm, the captain refused to sail south, opting instead to return to England. These guys are pirates after all, so they couldn’t care less about a bunch of colonists living with Indians on Hatteras Island. It is perfectly reasonable that the ship captain and the crew said to hell with going to Croatoan, and instead sailed back towards England in hopes of capturing a few Spanish Galleons on the way. Regardless of the reason, the ship did not travel to Croatoan, and the colonists were never seen again.
Sailing distance from Roanoke Island to Hatteras Island
Rumors surfaced for the next twenty years about groups of white people who were living with the Indians, or groups of white people who were slaves of the Indians. However, none of these reports were ever substantiated. Search missions went on for the next fifteen years, but every one of them played out like a slapstick comedy. Most of the expeditions sailed towards America either to plunder other ships or to find some source of trade goods. Actually arriving at Roanoke Island in search of the lost colonists was a distant second on the travel itinerary. Other expeditions got lost or were pirated themselves. One trip financed by Raleigh in 1602 landed near Cape Fear, but the captain spent a month gathering sassafras to sell when he returned to England, and he never attempted to find Roanoke Island. Even the colonists at the eventual Jamestown settlement (1607) tried to find the Lost Colony, but had no success.
Theories about what happened to the colonists have been presented ever since they disappeared, but no matter how well thought out, each one is full of holes.
1) The colonists were killed by the Spanish.
If the Spanish had killed everyone, they probably would have burned the village and left the bodies. Not only were there no bodies, the structures had been removed.
2) The colonists were killed by the Indians.
It is hard to believe that Indians could wipe out 117 armed colonists at one time, seeing that very few deaths were reported as the result of the fighting that had taken place during the 1585 expedition and the 1587 expedition prior to John White leaving. Furthermore, if the Indians had killed everyone, they may not have burned the place, but they would have left the bodies or buried them nearby.
3) Everyone starved to death or died of a disease.
Again, no bodies, no graves, and no village.
Because no bodies were found, the buildings had been dismantled, and CROATOAN had been carved into a wood post, it is more than reasonable to assume the colonists packed up and moved and that nobody was killed at the settlement. The most plausible scenario is that they left to Croatoan with Manteo. Why would they carve CROATOAN and then go someplace else? When John White left the colonists to return to England, he did leave behind a pinnace (a decent sized ship) and a few smaller ships, so the colonists certainly had the means to travel by sea.
4) They moved somewhere else on Roanoke Island and all met death in one way or another at the new location.
This is certainly plausible, for White did not search the island when he arrived in 1590. But again, why carve CROATOAN if you were going to move to another part of the Roanoke Island?
5) The ship sank on the way to Croatoan.
Sounds plausible until you realize that Croatoan was just fifty miles south, a distance that can be covered in a day with a good wind, and it is very windy at the Outer Banks. When the colonists carved their destination into the wood post, they did not carve a Maltese Cross, the signal that they left due to danger. Thus, they were not in a hurry. It would take a hurricane to sink those ships, and being just a day’s voyage, why would they leave with storm clouds looming in the sky? Just leave on a nice, sunny day. If they hit a sandbar and ran aground, the islands would not be far away. In fact, they would always be sailing within sight of land.
6) They tried to return to England and were lost at sea.
There certainly would be plenty of opportunities to be lost at sea during a two-month voyage back to England. But remember, White left to replenish short supplies to begin with. They would need two months’ worth of supplies to return to England, and it’s doubtful they had such supplies.
7) They moved to Croatoan and lived with the Indians.
This is probably the most feasible explanation, but even this can be shot full of holes. First off, the opponents of this theory say the Indians barely had enough food to feed themselves, let alone 117 more colonists, so they certainly would not have been welcome at one Indian village. Many theorize that the colonists split up into smaller groups to live with various friendly Indian tribes. However, Hatteras Island is pretty big, and there is no reason why the colonists had to rely on the Indians for food. There certainly would have been no shortage of seafood on the island.
And then there are the rumors of settlers running into blue-eyed Indians who claimed they had white ancestors. There were about a dozen kids on the voyage. Two babies were born in 1587. If they had lived to be 50 or 60 years old, they would have been alive 30-40 years after the settlement at Jamestown was founded (1607), and their children would have been alive 40-60 years after Jamestown began. If a settler had run into a “blue-eyed” Indian, not only would this Indian have spoken English, but also he/she would have immediately said, “My dad was a Roanoke colonist. He got left behind.” Even by 1700, when reports of such encounters were still coming out, these blue-eyed Indians would only have been three or four generations removed from the Roanoke colonists. Something as traumatic as getting left behind is certainly a story that would have been passed down for a number of generations, yet every encounter with the blue-eyed Indians suggests they were just vaguely familiar with their white ancestors. It just seems strange that nobody ever ran into a blue-eyed Indian who said definitively, “Yes, I’m related to the colonists who got left behind on Roanoke Island.”
Furthermore, why would every offspring of the colonists be a mixed race person? Women whose husbands had died most likely would have remarried another white colonist. The kids probably would have married each other. There could easily have been a second or even a third generation that was 100% white, yet no such people were ever found.
What about all of the ships that traveled up and down the coast of America over the years? Any that passed by Virginia (now North Carolina) would certainly have passed within view of Hatteras Island. With a scope, the sailors could clearly see settlements on the islands, perhaps even white people running around. Yet, again, no such contact was ever made.
When new white settlers arrived to the area, this news was passed between Indian villages. The surviving colonists or their children would have heard such news as well and would have wanted to travel to meet other white people. Conversely, the new white settlers would certainly hear about white or mixed raced people on Hatteras Island and would have tried to make contact (Jamestown was 200 miles away by sea from Hatteras Island). The Lost Colony was big news in England—the Amelia Earhart story of the day—so anyone coming to America in the early 1600s would have been aware of these colonists. In fact, many of the rumored sightings came from these new settlers.
There would have been many opportunities over the next one hundred years to locate the colonists, their children, or the grandchildren, and it just never happened. People spotted them, but could somehow never make contact. Sounds like stories of Big Foot. It’s a shame that all it would have taken was a 50-mile journey south to Croatoan by White’s rescue ship for the mystery to possibly have been solved, but it never happened. As it is, the Lost Colony remains America’s oldest mystery.
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Last updated on November 13, 2024
