The Lost Colony of Roanoke

Located on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Roanoke Island is home to one of America’s most enduring mysteries: the disappearance of an entire colony without a trace.

Roanoke Island was first surveyed by English explorers in 1584, when the Spanish Empire was still the dominant colonial power in the Americas. The English statesman Sir Walter Raleigh sought to establish a colony in the region to give the English Crown a foothold on the continent and build a base of operations for privateering—the state-sanctioned practice of raiding foreign commercial vessels. The reconnaissance mission identified Roanoke Island as a promising location, with its soil described as “the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world.”

Roanoke Island’s natural bounty notwithstanding, the colonization project proved more challenging than expected. Six hundred men arrived on the island in late June the following year, with little time to prepare for the coming winter. Making matters worse, storms damaged an anchored ship storing most of the group’s supplies off the coast, leading to food shortages for the fledgling colony. 

These food shortages, paired with disease brought by the Englishmen, escalated tensions between the local Algonquian population and colonists, who turned back to England in the summer of 1586.

In 1587, another expedition led by John White set sail with 118 women, men, and children. Upon their July arrival, colonists started rebuilding and improving upon the infrastructure left behind by the previous colony. But tensions with the local population continued to rise, ultimately leading to an incident where colonists mistakenly attacked a Croatoan village in retaliation for the killing of a colonist by members of the Secotan tribe.

A month after their arrival, on August 18, John White’s granddaughter was born, the first English child born on the North American continent: Virginia Dare. Soon after, White set sail back to England for supplies and additional settlers, expecting to return the following year.

However, White’s return voyage to Roanoke was delayed by several years due to an escalation of the Anglo-Spanish War and increased English interest in colonizing Ireland. When he finally mustered a fleet and arrived on Roanoke Island on August 18, 1590, the settlers were gone, having left few clues aside from a carving of the word “Croatoan.”

Speculation about what happened to the colony abounds, but the colonists’ fate remains a mystery. Popular theories include a hurricane, a famine, a Spanish attack, integration with nearby native populations, or migrations to new locations along the coast. However, to this day, no archeological evidence has been found to support these theories, and many are contradicted by White’s account of arriving at the colony, which did not describe signs of a storm or violent struggle.

Today, visitors to Roanoke Island buy tickets to see “The Lost Colony,” by the late playwright and Pulitzer winner Paul Green, which first opened on July 4th in 1937, and is performed at an amphitheater on the coast. The area also features a visitor center with a museum dedicated to the lost colony, and manicured grounds and nature trails for a leisurely stroll.