In 1583, the first stable English colony overseas was founded on the island of Newfoundland. However, it was too far north to establish plantations there and to serve as a port for ships attacking the Spanish galleons carrying the treasures they mined in South America. Queen Elizabeth I was very interested in expanding the British Empire by establishing settlements in the New World… and that they would be profitable and useful in her fight against Spain for control of the Caribbean and the coasts of America.
So in 1584 the “pirate queen” ordered the privateer Sir Walter Raleigh to organize an expedition with the aim of locating a good site in North America to found a British colony there, as well as receiving a blank check to colonize any land ” that it was no longer in the possession of any Christian prince. In other words, any territory not occupied by Spain. In exchange, the Crown would receive 20% of all his ill-gotten gains. What Isabel wanted, and so she let Rayleigh know privately, was that he establish a colony in the northern Caribbean to operate as a base to attack ships on their way to Spain. Although the task was obviously not easy, the chosen place was the Outer Banks of Virginia, a group of islands linked by beaches close to the mainland and with natural resources, perfect for controlling the passage of Spanish galleons. Thus, 108 settlers landed on Roanoke Island (in today’s Dare County, North Carolina) in August 1585, and ships sailed with the promise of bringing them supplies in April of the following year. But June came and the ships did not appear. Luckily, Drake made a stopover on the island in mid-June, after he had lost two-thirds of his crew to malaria. When the resupply ships arrived, the colony was deserted , so fifteen sailors stayed in order to continue maintaining an English presence in the area.
the first colony
A year later, in 1587, Raleigh sent a new group of settlers, led by Raleigh’s friend John White, to settle north of the island, in the Chesapeake Bay. The expedition was made up of 91 men, 17 women and 9 children. The idea was to collect the men who had remained in Roanoke and establish themselves as a colony. But the only thing they found when they arrived was a skeleton . The captain of the fleet ordered the colonists to stay and maintain the colony. On August 18, 1587, good news broke: the first Englishman on American soil, Virginia Dare, the granddaughter of John White, was born . The needs of the colony were increasing, and White returned to England in search of resupply for the colony. When it sailed, it left 117 people and two babies in Roanoke.
At home the priorities were clear: the war with Spain was more important than feeding a hundred lost subjects from the hand of God. So all the existing ships were requisitioned in order to face the feared Spanish Armada. At that time the only thing that White found to try to return to were some small ships whose captains were more interested in assaulting Spanish galleons on their way than reaching Roanoke. The shot backfired on them, and the looters were looted, having to return to England with nothing. In 1590 White’s only option was to join a privateering expedition that would leave Roanoke to him.
When he landed he found no one. The colony was deserted. There was no sign of fighting or fire, and it seemed that everything had been systematically dismantled and removed. All he found was the word Croatoan carved into the only post still standing, and the letters Cro carved into the trunk of a tree.
an unsolved mystery
What happened in Roanoke? There have been many hypotheses that have tried to explain their disappearance: perhaps they were killed or kidnapped by natives of the area, perhaps they tried to return to England on their own and got lost at sea, or that due to lack of provisions they went inland and mixed with a tribe that would welcome them. In fact, at the end of the 18th century, there was talk of the existence of a tribe of Indians who spoke fluent English and professed the Christian religion. With this suspicion in mind, in 2007 work began on collecting DNA samples from families in the area to study possible relationships with those first settlers.
In any case, currently research in Roanoke is focused on the search for archaeological remains. Mark Horton of the University of Bristol initiated the first excavations and Nick Luccketti of the First Colony Foundation is responsible for the second. Everything suggests that the settlers were divided into two groups , and that they joined indigenous communities in the area. Since the late 1990s, the Roanoke site has yielded a variety of archaeological finds: a ten-karat gold ring with an engraved lion, a small piece of slate that was possibly used as a writing tablet, a large ingot of copper or a long bar of iron. But no clue of what could happen to the first English colony in the New Continent.
Reference:
McMullan, Philip S., Jr. (2010). Beechland and the Lost Colony (M.A. in History). North Carolina State University
