Uncovering a conspiracy that killed the first English settlers in America

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THE LOST COLONY OF ROANOKE
Uncovering a conspiracy thai killed th
first English settlers in America
I
In 1581 a colony of 123 English men, women and children was
founded on Roanoke Island in Virginia. Three years later their
settlement had disappeared without trace. Now one historian
believes that they were the victims of an English coun
conspiracy, led by one of the most powerful men of the time.
\
he sad account of an English seafarer and artist, John
White, is the primary source for piecing together the
events that doomed the colony of Roanoke. White was
the governor of the first English colony in America,
which was established on Roanoke Island. It was to be
named Raleigh after the expedition's sponsor, Sir Walter
Raleigh. A favorite of England's queen, Elizabeth I,
Raleigh expected to make his fortune from the colony. He had
already invested around £50,000, sending 18 ships to America to
find a suitable location. But he was to finish up destitute,
imprisoned and, finally, executed.
John White's account of the 1587 voyage to Roanoke
. ~ and the subsequent disappearance of 115 men, women
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For White, the tragedy was a personal one.
He sailed back to England, leaving his daughter
and newborn granddaughter with the rest of the
settlers on the tiny island, but it was to be three
years before he could return. The threat of a
Spanish invasion kept English ships in port,
trapping White on the wrong side of the Atlantic
until finally, in 1590, Raleigh persuaded Queen
Elizabeth to allow his relief ships to set sail.
As White reached the treacherous shallows that
guarded Roanoke Island, he may have hoped for a happy
reunion, but could hardly have failed to harbor misgivings
about the fate of the
i'OCl:J(!1TLy
CHARTING A DISASTER The man made
vulnerable settlers. He knew
the
local warriors to be
governor of Roanoke was the artist
hostile.
The week before he
John White. He had mapped the
left, one colonist had been
coastline on an earlier expedition,
indicating Roanoke Island and
shot dead by an arrow.
White found the
Croatoan (both circled). Chesapeake
settlement
deserted. The
Bay is at the top of the chart.
single clue to the settlers' fate was a
lone word carved into a wooden
take: "CROATOAN."
Enduring mystery
Roanoke was meant to be the first
permanent English colony in America
- 33 years before the Pilgrim Fathers
~et foot in the New World. Yet the
olonists disappeared, and were never
een by Europeans again. Now
historians argue that they may have
been pawns sacrificed as part of an
English conspiracy that permeated
the highest echelons of power.
Throughout the 16th century the
thought of conquering North America
captivated English traders and
adventurers. They were lured by the
prospect of mineral riches and the
lucrative returns from "privateering"
- state-sanctioned piracy that in 1580
accounted for 20 percent of English
imports. An American settlement also
had the potential, should an inland
passage to the Pacific be found, of
becoming the great mercantile
gateway to the Orient.
Raleigh had won from the queen
the patent to 8.5 million acres of
American land. But he was undecided
about which land to choose. One
explorer, Captain Arthur Barlowe,
had written of Roanoke that it was
"plentiful, sweet and fruitful... and
bringeth forth all things in
abundance, without toile or labour."
But Raleigh's first attempt to set a
colony on Roanoke had failed, with
the settlers giving up after just ten
months. They fell out with the local
Secotan tribe, and burned one of their
villages after a quarrel over a stolen
silver cup. In retaliation, the Native
Americans withdrew food supplies,
forcing the settlers to hunt for crabs.
Raleigh and his backers decided to
move the settlement some 50 miles
north, to the sheltered deep-water
ports of Chesapeake Bay, away from
hostile neighbors. A small garrison
remained on Roanoke to guard the
old site, but the island was deemed to
be too risky for civilians unless the
Secotan were brought under control.
John White, the prospective governor,
was charged by Raleigh to recruit 150
colonists, each of whom would
receive 500 acres of farmland. Time
was pressing if the colonists were to
reach Chesapeake for the planting
season. Under strength, with only 115
recruits, the ships set sail at the end of
April 1587.
White's account ofthe voyage
shows that they were immediately
beset by puzzling difficulties. It is . ,
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clear that in White's opinion these all
stemmed from one man: his
Portuguese pilot, Simon Fernandez.
Fernandez was a former pirate. His
navigational skills and knowledge of
the eastern seaboard of America were
undoubted - there was even a stretch
of coastline named after him. His
judgment was less assured. White
wrote in his diary how Fernandez
"lewdly" - that is, deliberately abandoned the tlyboat that carried
stores for the settlement as it
foundered in the water off Portugal.
In the Caribbean, White recorded, the
crew failed to take on necessary
supplies of water and salt because of
Fernandez's obstruction.
The expedition made slow
progress. In mid July the ships were
brought to a complete halt for several
days off the coast of Carolina as despite his familiarity with the areaFernandez attempted to get his
bearings. White wrote that "such was
lOCAL INHABITANTS Near the original
Roanoke settlement was the village
of Pomeiooc, populated by Secotan
Indians. At first, relations were good
and there was trading between the
two groups, but the peaceful accord
was short-lived.
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flyboat, carrying surplus provisions.
The settlers decided to send White
back to England on the ship to seek
assistance for their predicament.
Fernandez's ship's log, meanwhile,
shows that he idled on the American
coastline for 36 days - easily enough
time to take the colonists to
Chesapeake Bay. Why did Fernandez,
an investor in the expedition, choose
to abandon the colonists? The answer
lay across the Atlantic Ocean, at the
court of Queen Elizabeth 1.
Court intrigue
DEADLY ENEMIES There was a great
rivalry between Sir Walter Raleigh
(right) and Sir Francis Walsingham
(left) at the court of Elizabeth I.
Walsingham was notorious for his
underhand methods. A writer of the
time reckoned that "he could
overthrow any matter by undertaking
it and moving it so as it must faIL"
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[Fernandez's] carelessness and
ignorance" that he nearly ran the boat
aground on the Cape of Fear. These
delays had desperate consequences
for the settlers. They had reached land
too late to plant their grain, while the
failure to stock up on food meant that
supplies were running low.
Worse was to come. Raleigh had
instructed White to go ashore at
Roanoke for a conference
"concerning the state of the country"
with the small garrison of men left
there from the 1585 trip. But as White
and 40 of his men were being rowed
ashore, one of Fernandez's deputies
shouted that they would not be let
back on board. The ship would only
stay at Roanoke long enough for all
the settlers to be ferried ashore.
White was dumbfounded. His pilot
had overruled the orders of Sir Walter
Raleigh himself. Fernandez refused
to take the colonists any further; he
said he was too pressed for time.
They were to be marooned with
insufficient supplies, in unseasonal
conditions and in hostile territory.
Alone, and with their only source
of advice, support and protection the
garrison at Roanoke, the settlers' next
discovery was a chilling one. All that
remained of the 15 soldiers were
bleached skeletons. The Secotan had
exacted a terrible revenge for their
destroyed village.
The colony's salvation appeared
only with the late arrival of their
Among all the noblemen jostling for
position and favor at court, Sir Walter
Raleigh stood out. He was only a
courtier, but possessed the wardrobe
and demeanor of a prince, and was a
particular favorite of the queen - "the
darling of the English Cleopatra," as
one Flemish visitor to the court put it.
On foreign policy his buccaneering
style often held sway with her,
overruling her more cautious
advisers, such as the secretary of state
Sir Francis Walsingham. Raleigh was
well rewarded for his loyalty to
Elizabeth. Following the execution of
Anthony Babington (who had plotted
to assassinate the queen), Raleigh
was given Babington's sizable estates.
Raleigh's power and influence
ensured that he was a target for others
with ambition. Few men had the
power to organize Raleigh's downfall,
but one certainly did. Sir Francis
Walsingham had both motive and
means. He was facing financial ruin,
and, as the mastermind behind the
exposure of the Babington
conspiracy, had expected to be
rewarded with the estates that were
given to Raleigh. Walsingham knew
that the Roanoke settlement was
Raleigh's long-held dream - and his
weakest spot. Its failure would lead to
his ruination.
An American historian, Lee Miller,
has argued that the loss of the
colonists stems from Walsingham's
plot to bankrupt Raleigh, and take the
land titles for himself. Miller found
evidence of a vital connection
between Walsingham and Fernandez.
CROWNS
The Portuguese pirate should have
gone to the gallows, but Walsingham
signed papers that released him.
Could Fernandez have repaid this
debt by sabotaging the Roanoke
colony in order to ruin Raleigh?
John White's diary certainly
suggests dark purposes at work. He
wrote how he told the colonists that
"some enemies to him ... would not
spare to slander him, saying he went
to Virginia but politikely ... to lead so
many into a countrey and there to
leave them behind." He could have
been referring to rival entrepreneurs
aiming to discredit Raleigh and set up
their own colonies.
Miller has also found that, on two
occasions, ships Raleigh tried to send
to the aid of the colonists were barred
from departure on the direct orders of
Walsingham. When John White was
eventually authorized to return to
Roanoke in 1590, it was one month
after Walsingham's death.
The missing clue
John White never found his family or
the other settlers. On his first attempt
he was attacked by pirates. His
second rescue ship, the Hopewell,
was damaged by storms and only just
made it back to England. White wrote
in 1604 that he was "committing the
relief of my discomfortable company
the planters in Virginia, to the
merciful help of the Almighty." He is
thought to have died in Ireland at
around this time.
By this time there had been five
rescue missions, all of which were
unsuccessful. Raleigh was running
out of money. He may never have
learnt of the vital "Croatoan"
message carved by the settlers and
found by John White. Ifnot, the
rescuers would have searched in vain
at Chesapeake Bay or on Roanoke,
instead of on Croatoan, which is an
island 50 miles to the south.
Raleigh's legal right to the title to
the land was in jeopardy: it depended
on having settled a permanent colony
within seven years. As the former
favorite descended into ruin and
disgrace, Walsingham's old allies -
AND
CONSPIRACIES
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and
Robert Cecil- eyed up his assets.
Following the death of Elizabeth I,
the new king, James I, was soon
convinced of Raleigh's disloyalty. He
was tried for treason and imprisoned
in the Tower of London in 1606. Soon
after, his land title was won by Robert
Cecil, along with the two men
responsible for the charges against
him: the Attorney General Sir Edward
Coke and Chief Justice Popham.
Epilogue to the mystery
It was reported in 1608 that the chief
of the Powhatan tribe had told settlers
in Jamestown, Virginia, that the
Roanoke survivors had been
slaughtered. Historians now suspect
this was a trumped-up charge against
the Powhatan to justify violent
incursions into their territory.
Then in 1701 the English surveyor
John Lawson wrote of an unusual
group of light-skinned American
Indians he met on the dunes of
Croatoan Island. As far as he could
comprehend it, "several of their
ancestors were white people and
could talk in a book as we do." Could
the settlers have survived to be the
first European colonists in America,
after all? That mystery is one that
may never be solved.
LASTING MYSTERY
The Roanoke settlers
may have been massacred by
American Indians, or they may have
integrated into one of the tribes that
John White painted a decade before
their disappearance.
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