The Lost Colony of Roanoke: 115 People Vanished and Left One Word

In August 1590, John White rowed toward Roanoke Island. Three years earlier he had left his daughter, his son-in-law and his baby granddaughter there, with more than a hundred other English settlers. His sailors blew trumpets and sang across the water. Nobody answered. In the morning the houses were gone, and carved into a post was a single word: CROATOAN. ▶ The 60-second version:    • 115 People Vanished. They Left One Word.   ▶ Watch next: The Battle on the Ice (1242): Did the Teutonic Knights Really Drown?    • The Battle on the Ice (1242): Did the Teut...   ▶ Playlist:    • History's Mysteries   This animated documentary tells the full story: Walter Raleigh's Virginia, Manteo and Wanchese, the soldiers' colony and its violent end, the families of 1587, the pilot who dropped them at Roanoke, the birth of Virginia Dare, the promise to carve a name and a cross, the Spanish Armada, the empty settlement, the storm that kept White from Croatoan, the Jamestown rumours, the theories, the tree-ring drought, the Dare Stones, and what archaeologists on Hatteras Island and at "Site X" have found. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:38 1. A Land Called Virginia 1:24 2. Manteo and Wanchese 2:06 3. The Soldiers' Colony 3:21 4. A Different Kind of Colony 3:56 5. Dropped Off at Roanoke 4:28 6. Virginia Dare 4:57 7. The Promise 5:31 8. The Armada 6:02 9. CROATOAN 7:01 10. So Close 7:24 11. Still Searching 8:25 12. The Theories 9:31 13. Digging for Answers 10:27 14. Lost to Whom? 11:02 Outro A note on the history: nobody knows for certain what happened to the colonists. The number of settlers, Simon Fernandes's motives, the Jamestown rumours, the story that Powhatan killed them, and the dating of the finds at Hatteras and Site X are all debated, and the video says so. The Dare Stones are almost universally considered fakes. Sources include John White's 1590 account (in Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations), the accounts of Ralph Lane and Thomas Harriot, David Beers Quinn, Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Andrew Lawler, Stahle et al. in Science (1998) on the drought, the First Colony Foundation, the Croatoan Archaeological Project, the National Park Service at Fort Raleigh, and the British Museum's John White watercolours and map. What do you think happened to the colonists? And what should we cover next? Tell us in the comments. Subscribe to Drawn Through Time for animated history: @DrawnThroughTimes #Roanoke #LostColony #HistoryMystery