The Roanoke Colony was the very first attempt to set up a village in North America. It was established on Roanoke Island, in what is today North Carolina. It came about because England was far behind Spain, Portugal and France in claiming parts of the New World as colonies.

Queen Elizabeth I was very keen that the English should have a colony, but she couldn't afford to pay for it herself. So Sir Humphrey Gilbert paid for, and organised it.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert had a much more famous half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh. Before Gilbert could set out on his effort to start the colony he drowned, and so the instructions to set up a colony (which were written in a royal charter) were transferred to Sir Walter Raleigh. He, in turn, instructed Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's cousin.

Raleigh not only wanted to find riches from the New World similar to those the Spanish had found, he had more pressing matters. He was being employed as a privateer (official pirate) and he needed a base just north of the Spanish Main from which to send his privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain.

So on April 27, 1584, Raleigh sent an expedition led by Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe to explore the eastern coast of North America. They arrived on Roanoke Island on July 4, and there they found the native American Secotans and Croatoans. Barlowe sailed back to England with two Croatoans called Manteo and Wanchese. They told Raleigh much about the area, and it was based on this information that Raleigh organised a second expedition. This time it was led by Sir Richard Grenville.

Grenville's ships left Plymouth on April 9, 1585. They were the Tiger, the Roebuck, the Red Lion, the Elizabeth, and the Dorothy.

Unfortunately, when the expedition arrived at Roanoke, they soon ran in to trouble with the native Americans, who they believed had stolen a cup. The new English settlers burned the native village. Then they ran out of food. They had imagined they would be able to grow their own food, or hunt and gather, but they had arrived in a swamp.

Grenville left Ralph Lane and 107 men to build the colony at the north end of Roanoke Island. He intended to return in April 1586 with more men and fresh supplies. They built a small fort on the island and built some houses in the Tudor style of the day.

During 1586 Sir Francis Drake stopped at Roanoke on his way home from a successful raid in the Caribbean, and offered to take the colonists back to England. They gladly accepted, for they had seen no sign of Grenville. But they did take with them some of the items that would soon be among the most important in the world: tobacco, maize, and potatoes. Grenville did return to Roanoke, but by this time the colonists were on their way back with Raleigh. So he left a small force to look after the colony.

In 1587, Raleigh sent a new group of 115 colonists led by John White, an artist who had already been to Roanoke on the earlier expedition. When they arrived at Roanoke on July 22, 1587, they found only a single skeleton remaining of Grenville's man.

Difficulties with the native Americans continued, and White agreed to return to England to ask for more help from England. So the 115 colonists - and White's newly born granddaughter Virginia (who was thus the first English child born in the Americas) were left at Roanoke.

Of course, in those days, travel was slow, and the journey back took months. When White got back, he was not able to persuade people to set out with a relief fleet. No one wanted to cross the fierce Atlantic when there was a chance of autumn and winter gales. Then the Anglo-Spanish War broke out, and that needed every ship England had.

So it wasn't until the spring of 1588 that White was able to hire two small ships. However, these were captured by the Spanish.

White couldn't make another attempt to send supplies for three long years. White landed on August 18, 1590, on his granddaughter's third birthday, but found the settlement abandoned. There was no sign of the colonists, nor any sign of a fight with the native Americans. All they found was the word "Croatoan" carved into a fencepost and another carved into a nearby tree. The fort and houses had all been taken down, not burned. So where had all the people gone, with their belongings and everything? White thought they had moved on to "Croatoan Island" (which is now called Hatteras Island), but no sign has ever been found of them going there. To this day, no one knows what happened to them.