Roanoke Colony Quotes

What, then, of the liberated slaves and Indians? The saddest part of the story and perhaps the most revealing is that no one bothered to say. None of the accounts either of Drake’s voyage or of the Roanoke colony mentions what became of them.

I am an aristocrat: I love liberty, I hate equality.

From that original colony sprang seven names that still feature on the landscape: Roanoke (which has the distinction of being the first Indian word borrowed by English settlers), Cape Fear, Cape Hatteras, the Chowan and Neuse Rivers, Chesapeake, and Virginia. (Previously, Virginia had been called Windgancon, meaning "what gay clothes you wear" - apparently what the locals had replied when an early reconnoitering party had asked the place's name.)

On August 18, 1590, a privateering expedition on its way back to England from the Caribbean stopped off at Roanoke Island. John White, the governor of the colony and passionate advocate of the new world, took his men ashore. They found the settlement completely deserted. Infrastructure had been dismantled, no trace existed of the hundred-and-eight residents, and they couldn’t find any signs of struggle. The colonists were never found.

In addition to settlers and supplies, Newport brought more instructions from the Company officials. The Colony was not succeeding financially, and it was urged that the Council spend more time in planning the preparation of marketable products. It was urged, too, that gold be sought more actively; that Powhatan be crowned as a recognition befitting his position; and that more effort be expended in search of the Roanoke settlers. These projects, all untimely, were emphasized, and the more pressing needs of adequate shelter and sufficient food were neglected.

America was begun on the shores of the James River, in Virginia, about twenty years after the ill-fated attempts to establish a colony on Roanoke Island and thirteen years before

When Elizabeth I ascended to the throne, her sailors were described as pirates by other nations. The English colony at Roanoke, Virginia was a base for attacks on Spanish shipping.

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the English had been among the pioneers of Atlantic exploration, but during the long reign of Henry VIII (Queen Elizabeth’s father) merchants and mariners had turned away from distant horizons and focused instead on opportunities nearer to home, trading with Europe and countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Other

Early in 1583 Elizabeth granted Ralegh the use of Durham House, a “noble palace” on the Thames, formerly the London residence of the bishops of Durham.

Hariot would make a detailed record of the New World in writing, and White would undertake a series of illustrations and paintings. Together they would be Ralegh’s ears and eyes in America.

HAVING ASSEMBLED the men who would plan and take part in his expeditions to America, Ralegh’s next task was to determine where a colony should be located and what kind of settlement it would be.

Other explorations had set up colonies (most infamously, the “Lost Colony” of Roanoke), but all had failed for various reasons.