What May Have Caused The Lost Colony?

The men and women of The lost Colony arrived in 1587 and settled on a safe island named Roanoke, the site of a settlement that had thrown in ye old wool and returned to England a couple of years before. Some things in life never change, while it was an island, it hadn't sailed to Europe!

They were under the providence and godspeed of Sir Walter Raleigh, the royal claim to the contenent.

They lived in thatched roofed cottages in a sort of English village where they would say roof walls and fences and Moors All Weather in an Old World accent!

Governer John White went back the old country, he had to wait to return because of the war with Spain and the Spanish armada, defeated by Drake without a single English ship being sunk. He used the clever idea of pitch in flaming boats, it so disoriented the Spanish armada they were in disarray and went in tatters to a large rain that further defeated them without much real boost by Phillip the II or they would not have won!

The granddaughter of John White, who led the Lost Colony, was Virginia Dare, the first English person born in the west. When John White returned in 1590 he says that the village was "taken downe", and the usual word Croatoan you hear in the legend was carved on one of the posts in the wooden wall the villagers had put up since he left.

Some think the settlers may have been massacred by the Croatoans. Or discovered by the Spanish and taken captive to Florida. Or it's thought they may have moved to the Croatoan village for protection from more hostile indians, and intermarried. With advances in DNA science this might be proven or disproven. The blue eyed indians, the Lumbee who are the descendants of the Croatoans are alive and well in the 21st century. I don't consider this the most probable because they wouldn't have trusted the indians even if so no starvation, and if they left just a mile away they would have had lots of time to revisit the village and would have thought on many visits in return to at least leave a Postit memo! They would have no reason to take down the village for wood.

The first two possibilities above that it was caused by indian massacre or that the Spaniards had captured them I think may be discounted because both the Spanish and the indians would have burnt the village to slow further advance of the English. John White would have been deeply moved by the loss of his family and granddaughter, and so with respect for his family, if the village had been damaged by fire it seems he would have said so. In Latin"de mortuis nihil nesse bonum" means "Speak nothing but good about the dead". The English of those times were the noble England of Elizabeth, Shakespeare, and Drake. If their family had died they would have often left more than a passing mention of how, if by fire. If the village was "taken down" just by wind or other more usual events, this would seem to be what John White meant. It wouldn't seem to imply as much of an orderly departure if he had used the words "demolished" "burnt down" or "torn down" instead. I would think "taken downe", the exact words John White used would also be in favor of my conclusion that the village was desperate when no ships with food and other store arrived, so they "took downe" the cottages and used the wood to make the ship. It would be easier to make a boat out of a preowned trailer than to just saw wood all over.

So I consider the best explanation of these is that they may have tried to return to England. And perhaps a hurricane, disease, starvation or fire caused them to leave and they were lost at sea.

There were no hurricanes known, so old historians have ruled this out (other than me, all historians are old!) and because of John White's exact words fire would seem improbable.

The three possiblities left are disease, starvation, or building a boat to try to return to the old world and they were lost at sea. Of these three I think a combination of the third with the other two may be most likely because the rest may be discredited as I say above. They might have been out of food and ill after two or three years, and so built a ship, a major undertaking, depleting the small village's resources. It would seem they would have to have left the village for some purpose because John Whites return ships from the old country would have found remains in the village. They wouldn't have left a memo if they were in a hurry to leave.

So they would have been complacent if they were expecting the return of supplies, then with food running out unexpectedly or in desperation about illness they may have built the ship and "taken down" the village in an orderly way and no remains would be found, explaining what would otherwise seem to be John White's mysterious words. He was a leader so he wouldn't seem to dismiss years of his own labor and his own family with just a passing, prosaic memo of his own. Other than the possibility that they intermarried with the indians, I think because of this the explanation of most worth may be about building the ship in hopes of reaching the mother country. While it may take a lot of exploration to find what's left of the ill fated expedition if it exists, the same was said of Amelia Airhart, and yet they found her shoe on an island in the vast ocean of clouds she sailed, around 2000. The atlantic is a more fathomable realm, and with advances in submarine archeology and other methods if this is so, eventually I think the site of the ship may be found.

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