Our fleet――being in number three sail, viz., the admiral,[211] a ship of one hundred and twenty tons, a fly-boat,[212] and a pinnace――departed the six and twentieth of April from Portsmouth, and the same day came to an anchor at the Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, where we staid eight days.... The two and twentieth of July, we arrived safe at Hatorask, where our ship and pinnace anchored. The governor went aboard the pinnace, accompanied with forty of his best men, intending to pass up to Roanoke forthwith, hoping there to find those fifteen Englishmen which Sir Richard Grenville had left there the year before, with whom he meant to have conference concerning the state of the country and savages; meaning, after he had so done, to return again to the fleet, and pass along the coast to the Bay of Chesapeake, where we intended to make our seat and fort, according to the charge given us among other directions in writing, under the hands of Sir Walter Raleigh. But, as soon as we were put with our pinnace from the ship, a gentleman by the name of Ferdinando, who was appointed to return for England, called to the sailors in the pinnace, charging them not to bring any of the planters back again, but to leave them in the island, except the governor, and two or three such as he approved, saying that the summer was far spent, whereupon he would land all the planters in no other place. Unto this were all the sailors, both in the pinnace and ship, persuaded by the master; wherefore it booted not[213] the governor to contend with them, but [we] passed to Roanoke; and the same night at sunset went a-land[214] on the island, in the place where our fifteen men were left: but we found none of them, nor any sign that they had been there, saving only we found the bones of one of those fifteen which the savages had slain long before. The three and twentieth of July, the governor, with divers of his company, walked to the north end of the island, where Master Ralph Lane had his fort, with sundry necessary and decent dwelling-houses, made by his men about it the year before, where we hoped to find some signs or certain knowledge of our fifteen men. When we came thither, we found the fort razed down, but all the houses standing unhurt, saving that the nether rooms of them, and also of the fort, were overgrown with melons of divers sorts, and deer within them feeding on those melons: so we returned to our company, without hope of ever seeing any of the fifteen men living. The same day, order was given that every man should be employed for the repairing of those houses which we found standing, and also to make other new cottages for such as should need.