Bad Leaders Produce Great Disasters

Drake's ships had scarcely left the coast when a vessel appeared with supplies for the fugitive colonists. Finding the post abandoned, the ship returned to England; and a fortnight after it left Roanoke, Sir Richard Grenville arrived with three well-furnished ships, and searched in vain for the settlers. Unwilling to give up the possession of the country, he left fifteen men there to protect the rights of England, and then he, too, returned home.

Raleigh was not dismayed by these mishaps. Lane, whose failure as a leader a leader was conspicuous, gave a gloomy account of the country, but the report of the learned Harriot was so encouraging, that Raleigh found very little difficulty in gathering another colony, and of better materials. They were not gold-seekers, but agriculturists and artisans, with their wives and children, who consented to become permanent settlers in America. John White was appointed governor of the colony, with eleven assistants, and late in April, 1587, a squadron of three ships, fitted out at Raleigh's expense, sailed for the Chesapeake Bay, where the proprietor intended to plant his farming settlement. White went first to Roanoke, and proceeded no further. He arrived there in July, when he found the little fort built by Lane broken down; the huts of the former colonists overgrown by rank weeds and inhabited by wild deer, and a heap of human bones that told the sad fate of Grenville's "protectors of the rights of England."

The new colonists wisely resolved to cultivate the friendship of the Indians, but some of the latter appeared hostile and killed one of the assistants. Manteo, who lived on Croatan Island, came with his mother and relatives, and invited them to make their abode on his domain, when White took the opportunity to have the chief receive the rite of Christian baptism, and to bestow upon him the order of a feudal baron as "Lord of Roanoke," by the command of Raleigh. This was the first and last peerage ever created on the soil of our Republic.

For a time matters went on smoothly, when an unlucky mistake of the English in attacking friendly Indians produced bad blood. At about the same time it became necessary for the ships to return to England for supplies. White was persuaded to go with them that he might hasten their return. He left behind him eighty-nine men, seventeen women and two children. Among these was his daughter, Eleanor Dare, wife of one of his assistants, who had given birth to a daughter since her arrival, to whom they gave the name of Virginia--Virginia Dare. On his way, White touched Ireland, where he left some potato plants, the first ever seen in Europe.

When White returned home, he found his countrymen in commotion on account of a threatened invasion from Spain, and all the great naval captains, as well as Raleigh, were engaged in plans for averting the evil. But the latter, by great exertions, sent White back with supplies in two ships in April, 1588. The greed of the governor made him neglect his first duty. Instead of going directly to Virginia, he chased Spanish ships in search of plunder. Both of his vessels were so much injured that he was compelled to take them back to England, and it was not until 1590, a year after the defeat of the "Invincible Armada" of Spain in the British Channel, that White was permitted to go in search of the colony and his daughter. He sailed with two ships, and found Roanoke desolate. Had the colonists perished, or were they somewhere in the wilderness?

This question has never been answered. An inscription on the bark of a tree seemed to indicate that they had gone to Croatan. It was late in the season, and fearing the fearful storms which he knew prevailed on the coast at that period, White searched no further but hastened back to England with the sad tidings of the uncertain fate of the colonists. It was conjectured that the faithful Lord of Roanoke had saved their lives, and when they seemed to be abandoned by their countrymen, they had been incorporated with a native tribe and amalgamated with them. This conjecture finds plausibility in a tradition of the Hatteras Indians at a later period, which averred that such was the fate of the colony; and some find confirmation of the tradition in the fact that when European settlements were finally made in that region, individuals of the Hatteras family bore the mingled physical characteristics of the Indian and the Englishman. Perhaps when Jamestown was founded on the river of Powhatan, when Virginia Dare was twenty years of age, she was a beautiful young Indian queen on the banks of the Roanoke. Who knows?

Raleigh's means were now exhausted. He had spent about two hundred thousand dollars in vain attempts to colonize Virginia and in assisting other kindred enterprises; and he was compelled to abandon, in a degree, his magnificent scheme. He formed a company of merchants and adventures under his charter, to whom he assigned a portion of his rights. Lacking his spirit and enthusiasm, they did nothing more than carry on petty trade with Virginia for awhile, and at the time of Queen Elizabeth's death, in 1603, there was not a single Englishman settled in all America. Raleigh did not, for a long time, abandon the hope of finding the lost colonists of Roanoke; and it is said that he sent persons five different times, at his own expense, to search for them, but no traces could be found. The failure of Raleigh's colonization scheme was caused chiefly by the incompetence of his agents.