Roanoke

Solving the Mystery of the Lost Colony

Lee Miller

• Publisher: Arcade
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781611453317
• eBook ISBN: 9781611459517
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

November 1587. A report reaches London that Sir Walter Raleigh's expedition, which left England months before to land the first English settlers in America, has foundered. On Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina, a tragedy is unfolding. Something has gone very wrong, and the colony—115 men, women, and children, among them the first English child born in the New World, Virginia Dare—is in trouble. But there will be no rescue. Before help can reach them, all will vanish with barely a trace.
The Lost Colony is America's oldest unsolved mystery. In this remarkable example of historical detective work, Lee Miller goes back to the original evidence and offers a fresh solution to the enduring legend. She establishes beyond doubt that the tragedy of the Lost Colony did not begin on the shores of Roanoke but within the walls of Westminster, in the inner circle of Queen Elizabeth's government. As Miller detects, powerful men had reason to want Raleigh's mission to fail. Furthermore, Miller shows what must have become of the settlers, left to face a hostile world that was itself suffering the upheavals of an alien invasion. Narrating a thrilling tale of court intrigue, spy rings, treachery, sabotage, Native American politics, and colonial power, Miller has finally shed light on a four-hundred-year-old unsolved mystery.

PART ONE

A CASE OF MISSING PERSONS

1 THE DISAPPEARANCE

Roanoke Island, North America—July 1587. A mystery is unfolding. One hundred and seventeen people have landed on a remote island off the North American coast. The men, women, and children, sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, are the first English colonists in America. Despite the care taken for their safety, the explicit instructions, the plans for provisions, all will vanish. The only known survivor will be their Governor, John White — an artist and veteran of Raleigh’s previous Roanoke expeditions. He had known, from the moment they landed, that they could not survive on Roanoke Island.

The commander of the ship that brought them there reported nothing amiss. In the weeks before he left them, the colonists had begun to repair the houses of an abandoned English fort. New cottages were constructed of brick and tile,¹ and on August 18, White’s daughter Eleanor and husband Ananias Dare became the parents of a baby girl. Christened Virginia, she was the first English child born in North America. Several days later, another celebration. A boy was delivered to Dyonis and Margery Harvie.²

And yet the ship’s captain was mistaken, for something was wrong. Terrible events had been set in motion from which there would be no escape. No one on the island knew what form it would take or when it would strike. Defenseless and impotent, they could only wait. In one of the last glimpses we have of them, it has already begun: colonist George Howe has been found dead, floating facedown among the reeds along the shore. With time running out, an envoy is urgently dispatched for help to the neighboring Secotan nation through an Indian liaison named Manteo. There is no response.

August 27. At the height of the turmoil John White abruptly abandons the island. He leaves behind his daughter Eleanor, her baby Virginia, relatives and close friends, and sails back to England, pledging to return within three months. It is a promise he fails to keep.

A Four-Hundred-Year-Old Mystery

From the moment John White left Roanoke, no European laid eyes on the colonists again. He had vowed to rescue them within three months. Yet it was 1590, three years later, and after the opportunity to save them had been lost, before White finally returned . . . and found no one. The colonists were gone and the island deserted. The fort, partially dismantled, lay empty. Everything marking where people had been: houses — boards, nails and all; belongings; supplies; weapons — had vanished without trace.

Years after the tragedy, when the English were permanently settled in North America, tantalizing signs of the colony surfaced. Strange sightings were reported in Virginia and again in North Carolina, in areas widely separated. Search parties dispatched from Jamestown combed swamps and unexplored rivers, offering only hints and incomplete fragments. There were rumors and clues. Some genuine, others hoaxes.³

For four hundred years the disappearance of the Lost Colony has remained a mystery. There is a reason why: it has never been examined as a crime. If it had, it would have been apparent from the beginning that much more was involved than a simple case of missing persons. It is still possible to solve the crime — if only we unravel the clues.

John White’s Letter

In the beginning few people in England were told that the colony was missing. Although White’s failed rescue mission was disclosed to Raleigh in the autumn of 1590, it was not until the winter of 1593 — three years after his attempt to rejoin his family — that White composed a letter to geographer and historian Richard Hakluyt, detailing the sad events.⁴ It appeared to be a farewell letter; afterward, White seemingly vanished. Seven years later it was published:

4 February 1593

To the worshipful and my very friend Master Richard Hakluyt, much happiness in the Lord.

Sir, as well for the satisfying of your earnest request, as the performance of my promise made unto you at my last being with you in England, I have sent you . . . the true discourse of my last voyage into the West Indies, and parts of America called Virginia, taken in hand about the end of February, in the year of our redemption 1590. And what events happened unto us in this our journey, you shall plainly perceive by the sequel of my discourse. . . .

The Discourse

March 20, 1590. Three ships put to sea from Plymouth harbor in Devon: the flagship Hopewell, Captain Abraham Cocke, commander, the Little John under the direction of Captain Christopher Newport, and the consort John Evangelist. In tow are two shallops, small shallow-water boats, vitally important to John White aboard the flagship. In fact, they are the only hope he has of ever seeing his family again.

It has been three years since he left them on Roanoke Island, alone and without supplies. The moment of departure still painful: the memory of parting sorrows, of Eleanor, trembling between hope and despair, clinging to Ananias and their baby, Virginia. White’s eyes lingering upon them, huddled on shore, blurring out of range. Angry at the tiny island receding in the distance, a speck against the wilds of a vast, unknown land.

Raleigh had selected Roanoke for its inaccessibility. A jagged sliver of island, caressed by a sheet of water thin as tissue paper.⁵ The sound is so shallow, in fact, that only light craft, buoyant as eggshells, can float upon it. Not warships. Beyond it, the Atlantic rages against miles of unyielding barrier islands. Sand-dune sentinels pressing hard against the sea. Hiding the coast. Its unforgiving shoals and bars forcing shipping into the safety of the open road beyond this Skeleton Coast.⁶ Impatiently rolling with the waves.

The only way to reach Roanoke is by coaxing small vessels through the treacherous channels to skitter, butterfly-like, into the protected sounds. White eyes the shallops anxiously as they trail behind the Hopewell on his heart’s lifeline, too little attention paid them by the boatswaine’s negligence. Five days out they sink.

John White must wonder what he is doing here. After daily and continual petitions, he at last has secured passage on these privateering vessels bound for the West Indies and absolutely determined for Spanish riches. In point of fact, they are pirate ships, but for the legal distinction of bearing a license from the Queen. All three vessels are outfitted under the special charge of the celebrated John Watts of London. Master John Watts, merchant. The Spaniards know him differently. They will tell you he is the notorious John Watts, greatest pirate on the high seas.⁷ It is the best ride that White can get if he wishes to reach Roanoke.

Twelve days out the Hopewell encounters a London merchantman, and two shipboats are purchased to replace the loss of our shallops. The convoy must intend them to pull double duty in prizetaking; otherwise White might not have expected such good treatment. His relief must be tempered by that fact.

The West Indies

By April’s end, after a skirmish off the Canary Islands, the expedition reaches the Caribbean. The Hopewell and John Evangelist strike out alone, leaving the Little John plying off Dominica hoping to take some Spaniard outward bound to the Indies. Without her, they glide past Guadeloupe and St. Kitts. The Spaniards report many corsairs about, who are bold.⁸ The voyage, which has made good time crossing the Atlantic, now slows down, and down again. Tracing serpentine paths through the islands. Searching for plunder.

Past the Virgines, through the milky blue water of the Passage, the Hopewell and John Evangelist approach Puerto Rico. The Spaniards see them, and know what they see. They discerned us to be men of war. Fires glimmer across the darkened, wave-lapped shoreline as the ships pick their way along, for so their custom is, notes White, whenever warships are observed on their coasts. He is no closer to Roanoke.

Patrolling the northern end of the island, the Hopewell captures a Spanish frigate hailing from Guantanamo, Cuba, laden with hides and ginger.⁹ While they unload her, a man escapes. He is Pedro, a Mulatto. An evil turn. He carries with him knowledge of all our state. Whether or not he talks to the Spanish authorities hardly matters: on the southern tip of Puerto Rico the John Evangelist does.

From his headquarters, Governor Diego Menendez de Valdés composes a hurried letter to the Spanish Crown. Reporting, in blotched ink, the English ship’s presence, armament, and munitions. More importantly, he relays crucial information gathered from an unguarded word spoken by the crew. The English ship was going, the Governor noted pointedly, to Florida to take off 200 English cast away there.¹⁰

Here, at last, is tangible evidence of a permanent English settlement which the Spaniards have long suspected, and dreaded. Search parties had combed the coast for it, sending alarming reports across the Atlantic. Yet its location remained elusive. Roanoke was too well hidden. In 1588, Captain Vicente Gonzalez was dispatched to scour the eastern seaboard of North America and, though he came up empty-handed, he made a significant discovery: on the Carolina Outer Banks, he spotted a slipway for vessels, English casks sunk into the sand, debris.¹¹ The Spaniards did not find the colony, but Gonzalez narrowed the field considerably. And now the English Governor rides off the Puerto Rican coast, a passenger in a pirate ship that shows little sign of leaving. Valdés sinks pen into ink and hurriedly notifies Spain.

As far as John White is concerned, circumstances are completely altered. If he had been anxious to reach Roanoke before, he is doubly so now. Spain will swiftly mount an investigation. With frantic urgency, he realizes they must reach the Carolina coast before the Spaniards beat them to it. Spain, aware of all our state. But Watts’s ships are in no hurry, and the futility of White’s situation is made painfully clear. If only, he said, my daily and continual petitions to keep their promise had taken any place.

Sea Fight

Days slip into weeks. The ships lay off and on the islands, hoping to take some of the Domingo Fleet: the treasure-carrying galleons. There is sporadic action, small skirmishes. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Reports stream in to Spanish officials from all quarters of the Caribbean. English corsairs are about. The shamelessness of these English ships soon reaches the powerful Audiencia of the Council of the Indies. From Havana, it is reported that the Hopewell and her consorts have seized or chased every vessel entering or leaving the harbour.¹² And then word of depredations arrives from Jamaica: the long-awaited Santo Domingo fleet was sighted and attacked.

The English are jubilant. But who could have predicted the awful irony? The commander of the Santo Domingo fleet is none other than Vicente Gonzalez. Intelligence gathered from his crews, captured and released by the Hopewell, enables the Spanish a...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Illustrations
• Maps
• Part One A Case of Missing Persons
• Part Two A Case of Murder
• Part Three A Case of Conspiracy
• Part Four Who are The Mandoag?
• Appendix A: Wingina and the Secotan
• Appendix B: The Meaning of Mandoag and Nottoway
• Notes and References
• Bibliography
• Index