White finds 'Croatoan' marker at empty Roanoke, colony lost

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Key facts

• In the 1580s Elizabeth I granted Sir Walter Raleigh the right to explore, map and settle the land the English called Virginia, intended as a base for privateers raiding Spanish treasure fleets
• John White, a mapmaker who had already painted some of the earliest images of the North American coast and its Indigenous peoples, was appointed to oversee the colony
• About 150 colonists arrived on Roanoke Island off North Carolina; signs of earlier failed settlements had been reduced to the bones of one man
• Eleanor White gave birth to Virginia Dare on August 18, 1587, described as the first Anglo-American child born on the continent
• Within days of arrival, one colonist was killed by 16 arrows while fishing for crabs alone
• White sailed to England for supplies; the outbreak of war with England and Spain delayed his return for three years
• His first resupply ship was ambushed and seized by French pirates, killing about two dozen crewmen and shot White twice; he returned two years later with two armed privateering ships, one of which was capsized by a rogue wave
• On arriving at Roanoke at night in 1590, White found a fire burning brush and no one coming out; by morning the houses had been taken down and a small fort built in the middle of the island, indicating a planned relocation rather than abandonment in panic
• White found the letters 'CRO' carved into a tree near the bank and a wooden plank with the word 'CROATOAN' carved into it
• The absence of the prearranged cross carved above the settlement's name indicated the colonists had not left in danger
• Croatoan was the name of the only friendly Indigenous group on that stretch of coast; White interpreted the marker as a sign the colonists had moved roughly 50 miles south to Croatoan Island
• A hurricane and exhaustion of freshwater drove the ship off the coast before White could check Croatoan Island; he never funded another voyage and died in Ireland, never confirming the colony's fate

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