They left a group of English on an island in modern day North Carolina..........and went back to England....................they came back to look for them a full two years later......................what the returing English found was a deserted town..........no forced sign of exit...................there was a word carved into a tree.............and the beginning of that same word carved into another tree................the English that came back to find that colony left the next night or something...............a big storm came up and they became scarred..............so they stopped their search and like cowards.........went back to England.............meanwhile the local Indians took care of them..............................

The Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, established on Roanoke Island, in what is today's Dare County, North Carolina, United States, was a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement. The enterprise was originally financed and organized by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who drowned in 1583 during an aborted attempt to colonize St. John's, Newfoundland. Sir Humphrey Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, later gained his brother's charter from the Queen and subsequently executed the details of the charter through his delegates Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's distant cousin.^[1]

The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England. Their disappearance gave rise to the nickname "The Lost Colony." To this day there has been no conclusive evidence as to what happened to the colonists.

Contents

   [hide] 

• 1 Raleigh's charter
• 2 First voyages to Roanoke Island
• 3 The Lost Colony
  • 3.1 White returns to England
• 4 Thomas Harriot
• 5 Investigations into Roanoke
• 6 Hypotheses about the disappearance
  • 6.1 Reports of John Smith and William Strachey regarding the "Lost Colony"
  • 6.2 Integration with local tribes
  • 6.3 Other theories
    • 6.3.1 Chesepians
    • 6.3.2 Spanish
    • 6.3.3 Dare Stones
    • 6.3.4 Virginea Pars Map
• 7 Archaeological evidence
• 8 Climate factors
• 9 Portrayals and re-enactments
• 10 See also
• 11 References
• 12 Further reading
• 13 External links

Raleigh's charter[edit]

See also: Anglo-Spanish War (1585)

On March 25, 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the area of North America. This charter specified that Raleigh needed to establish a colony in North America, or lose his right to colonization.^[2]:9

Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain.^[3]:135 Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado.

Sir Walter Raleigh

First voyages to Roanoke Island[edit]

Further information: List of colonists at Roanoke

On April 27, 1584, Raleigh dispatched an expedition led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the eastern coast of North America. They arrived on Roanoke Island on July 4,^[2]:32 and soon established relations with the local natives, the Secotans and Croatoans. Barlowe returned to England with two Croatoans namedManteo and Wanchese, who were able to describe the politics and geography of the area to Raleigh.^[2]:44–45 Based on this information, Raleigh organized a second expedition, to be led by Sir Richard Grenville.

Grenville's fleet departed Plymouth on April 9, 1585, with five main ships: the Tiger (Grenville's), the Roebuck, the Red Lion, the Elizabeth, and the Dorothy. Unfortunately, a severe storm off the coast of Portugal separated the Tiger from the rest of the fleet.^[2]:57 The captains had a contingency plan if they were separated, which was to meet up again in Puerto Rico, and the Tiger arrived in the "Baye of Muskito"^[4] (Guayanilla Bay) on May 11.

A watercolor of the fort in Guyanailla Bay, which is likely similar to the fort constructed on Roanoke

While waiting for the other ships, Grenville established relations with the native Spanish while simultaneously engaging in some privateering against them.^[2]:62 He also built a fort. The Elizabeth arrived soon after the fort's construction.^[5]:91 Eventually, Grenville tired of waiting for the remaining ships, and departed on June 7. The fort was abandoned, and its location remains unknown.

When the Tiger sailed through Ocracoke Inlet on June 26, it struck a shoal, ruining most of the food supplies.^[2]:63 The expedition succeeded in repairing the ship, and in early July reunited with the Roebuck and Dorothy, which had arrived in the Outer Banks with The Red Lion some weeks previous. The Red Lion had dropped off its passengers and left for Newfoundland for privateering.^[2]:64

During the initial exploration of the mainland coast and the native settlements, the Europeans blamed the natives of the village ofAquascogoc for stealing a silver cup. As retaliation, the settlers sacked and burned the village.^[2]:72 English writer and courtier Richard Hakluyt's contemporary reports of the first voyage to Roanoke, compiled from accounts by various financial backers including Sir Walter Raleigh (Hakluyt himself never traveled to the New World), also describe this incident.^[6]

Despite this incident and a lack of food, Grenville decided to leave Ralph Lane and 107 men to establish a colony at the north end of Roanoke Island, promising to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies. They disembarked on August 17, 1585^[7] and built a small fort on the island. There are no surviving pictures of the Roanoke fort, but it was likely similar in structure to the one in Guayanilla Bay.

As April 1586 passed, there was no sign of Grenville's relief fleet. Meanwhile in June, bad blood resulting from their destruction of the village spurred an attack on the fort, which the colonists were able to repel.^[8]:5Soon after the attack, when Sir Francis Drake paused on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean and offered to take the colonists, including the metallurgist Joachim Gans, back to England, they accepted. On this return voyage, the Roanoke colonists introduced tobacco, maize, and potatoes.^[8]:5 The relief fleet arrived shortly after Drake's departure with the colonists. Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville returned to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind a small detachment both to maintain an English presence and to protect Raleigh's claim to Roanoke Island.