They all disappeared, all of them. In 1587 when John White, their leader and founder, left for England to return with more supplies, there were 115 settlers in Roanoke, NC, including his wife, daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, Virginia Dare, the first European born in America. When White stepped back onto land after 3 years of hustling for supplies and a ship to return he returned there were none, only this enigmatic carving on a tree: CRO on another: CROATOAN. But, where were all the people? No one knows and to this day, archaeological studies and digs are still occurring. Recently, a new group analyzed a map with an intriguing ‘patch’ over part of it. What does this mean? What is the patch covering? Questions and theories abound.
The lost colonists were the third group of English arrivals on North Carolina’s Roanoke Island. The first group to arrive, in 1584, came to explore and map the land for future groups. John White, an artist, who was on this expedition, explored and drew maps of the area. Here is his map of the Cape Hatteras area. - pretty accurate. Roanoke where he established his village on a later expedition is the pink island to the left of the ship.
A group, which arrived in 1585, was charged with a military and scientific mission. But this second group's trip was far from peaceful. They expected the Natives to supply them with food and tensions grew. Finally, the local tribes drove them out in 1586 but there was blood shed in the process.
The third group arrived in 1587 led by John White, the mapmaker. This was a group of settlers with families, 17 women and 11 children accompanied a party of 90 men. That meant the group wanted to settle in the New World and build new lives. But this group was ill prepared to make a living in a new land and had to rely on the increasingly hostile Natives for their food. The Natives lived in smaller groups, had enough for their group and couldn’t supply all that the new settlers needed. Finally the settlers decided that Smith should go back to England to gather a fresh load of supplies. They told him that, if they left, they would leave him information about where they had gone.
But just as he arrived in England, a major naval war broke out between England and Spain, and Queen Elizabeth I called on every available ship to confront the mighty Spanish Armada, including any ship that Smith might take. In August 1590, 3 years later, he finally returned to Roanoke. He found no trace of the colony or its inhabitants, and few clues to what might have happened, apart from a single word - ‘CROTOAN’ - carved into a wooden post. It looked as if they had disappeared into thin air.
Did they move to another area to settle? Did they split up and move in with Native tribes? Crotoan is the name of another section in the area - did they go there?
Today we visited the original settlement and the National Memorial. There they had an Elizabethan room wooden lined with pictures of the Queen, Sir Walter Raleigh who had conceived of and financed the first Roanoke expedition, and maps of the area.
Outside is the area where the settlement was.
We took a trail that went to the other side of the island.
After we had explored this area, we headed on over to Bodie (pronounced 'body') Island to see the lighthouse. The original lighthouse was blown up by the Confederacy during the Civil War and a this one was built in 1872 as a replacement. It is 150’ high, has a first order Fresnel lens and flashes its 160,000 candle power and can be seen for 19 miles.
The lighthouse itself isn’t open and we couldn’t climb it but there was a neat trail out to the wetlands.
‘A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.’
Paul Dudley White
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