The Lost Colonies of Roanoke analysis

This essay will look into John White, the first person to know about the disappearance of the colony, the history of the colony as well as the theories regarding the disappearance of the colony. The Colony The story of how the colony found themselves in then Virginia(currentlt north Caroina) is clear. In 1584, Sir Walter Releigh sent an exploratory expedition that was later followed by a larger military expedition a year later. The military expedition, stayed for a year during which time, the military expedition built a fort before going back to England. In 1587, a group of men, women and children went to then Virginia with the intention of building a permanent residence called the City of Raleigh (Belval, p. The 1570s decade was a difficult time in England.

Due to being excommunicated by the Pope, there were catholic revolts throughout the country. For example, on August 22, 1572, a day known as the St. Bartholomew Day massacre, more than thirty thousand protestants were killed by Catholics and the rest were given just under three weeks to leave the country or be condemned to death. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was a soldier fighting for the protestant and worked for Queen Elizabeth in crushing the various Catholic revolts in Ireland. This was the beginning of the animosity between the colonists and the natives. In addition to this, some of the natives including John White went inland to look for precious metals and other areas to colonize and showed clear aggression towards the natives by burning their villages.

During the winter, and without any food to last them the period, a part of the expedition decided to go back to England for supplies. 107 men, women and children were left in the fort in Roanoke without food, supplies and no help from the natives (Kent, p. The English continued harassing the natives, brutally raping and killing them and even beheading some of the natives that were clearly their friends and acted as translators. In this year, the Spanish docked in Florida to look for the English colony in order to destroy it but they found it already abandoned and overgrown. It is until the February of 1590 that the queen allows a privateer ship to sail back to England and it is under the command of a notorious captain known as John Watts.

Watts allow White into his ship but with limited cargo and under the understanding they were going to pirate first in the Caribbean Islands. John White Arriving in Roanoke After much convincing, John White convinced the pirate captain to leave the Carribean Islands for Roanoke. 15 sailors left for Roanoke but storms struck and 11 of them perished before arriving at Roanoke. John convinced then to go pirating in the nearby Islands and come back in the spring by a huge hurricane blew them back to England (Neville, p. John never managed to go back to the new land. His desire to see his family again was hindered by the fact that Walter Raleigh had fallen out with the queen and was imprisoned for being an atheist and being betrothed to one of the Queen's maids.