The Mysterious Disappearance of 112 Settlers of 'The Lost Colony' in NC

Governor Ralph Lane established Roanoke Colony in 1585 on Roanoke Island in what is now Dare County, North Carolina. Lack of supplies and strained ties with several of the nearby American Indian tribes plagued Lane's colony.

After Sir Richard Grenville's resupply voyage was postponed, Lane left the colony and traveled back to England in 1586 with Sir Francis Drake. Two weeks later, Grenville showed up and went home as well, leaving a small force to defend Raleigh's claim.

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In 1587, John White led a second voyage that made landfall on the same island and established a new town. He was dispatched by Sir Walter Raleigh to found the "Cittie of Raleigh" on the Chesapeake Bay. The attempt's inhabitants mysteriously vanished, and it was dubbed the Lost Colony. White and his colonists were compelled to stay on Roanoke by flagship pilot Simon Fernandes during a stop to see how Grenville's soldiers were doing.

In 1588, White and Fernandes went back to England with the intention of bringing additional supplies. When he finally returned to Roanoke in 1590, because the Anglo-Spanish War had delayed his return, the town was fortified, but completely abandoned. White deduced that the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island when he discovered the mysterious word "CROATOAN" carved into the settlement's fence enclosure. The mission had to return to England due to unfavorable weather conditions and a missing anchor, before he could pursue this path.

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Today, we still don't know what happened to the around 112-121 colonists. Writings from as far back as 1605 mention the possibility that they had blended in with the local Indian communities. The Jamestown colonists' investigations yielded reports of massacres of the Roanoke settlers and accounts of European-looking individuals spotted in Indian towns, but no hard proof was discovered.

Before, George Bancroft released his account of the events in A History of the United States in 1834, interest in the subject began to wane. Bancroft's portrayal of the colonists, especially White's little granddaughter Virginia Dare, captivated the public's interest and established them as pivotal actors in American history. In spite of this resurgence of interest, archeological evidence to account for the colonists' disappearance has not been discovered by contemporary investigation.

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