School History of North Carolina : from 1584 to the present timeMoore, John W. (John Wheeler)
History
School History of North Carolina : from 1584 to the present time
Moore, John W. (John Wheeler)
North Carolina -- History
It must have been a sore trial to Sir Walter Raleigh when he
learned that his colonists had returned to England. He had sent
over a ship with abundant supplies, which reached Roanoke only a
few days after Sir Francis Drake sailed away with his fleet.
Finding no white people upon the island, the ships returned to
England. Sir Richard Grenville also touched at the same point,
with three other ships, about fifteen days later. The folly,
avarice and timidity of agents such as Ralph Lane have, in all
ages, crippled the noblest efforts for human advancement.
2. Sir Richard Grenville left fifteen men in the fort built at
Roanoke by Lane, lest the English claim to the country should be
lost through want of its being occupied. They soon fell victims
to Indian vengeance after Grenville had hoisted his sails and
gone in search of Spanish treasure ships.
1587.
3. Once again, in 1587, Raleigh collected a fleet of transports,
and, with John White as Governor, sent about one hundred and
fifty men, women and children to Roanoke for permanent
settlement. They brought over farming implements, wisely
determining to give up the useless search for gold, and to look
to husbandry as a means of livelihood in their new home. On
arriving at Roanoke, on the 22d of July, Governor White, with
forty of his best men, went ashore for the purpose of finding the
men who had been left there by Grenville. The fort was
destroyed, the houses were in a dilapidated condition and no
trace of the colonists was found except a single skeleton which
lay bleaching in the sun in front of one of the cabins,
indicating that some fearful tragedy had been enacted.
4. Sir Walter Raleigh had ordered White to go to Hampton Roads,
in the region of Chesapeake Bay, instead of Roanoke, but this
command was disregarded under the plea that, their pilot, a
Spaniard, would not show the way. But as Governor Lane had sent
a party there the year before, the location must have been known
to others of the expedition besides Fernando, the pilot. It was
like everything else done by John White while connected with the
effort of colonization--very foolish and culpable.
5. Manteo was still the warm friend of the English, and, with his
mother, welcomed them. to his home on Croatan. He was, on the
13th of August, as a reward for his faithful services, baptized
by order of Sir Walter Raleigh, and created a nobleman, with the
title of "Lord of Roanoke," which was the first title of nobility
ever conferred by the English in America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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