It’s one of early America’s enduring mysteries: What happened to the 100 English colonists who vanished from their Roanoke Island outpost in 1587?
Now archaeologists have discovered new evidence that at least one part of the lost colony may have ended on the Chowan River in Bertie County, some 50 miles from Roanoke Island. Dozens of artifacts, including bale seals to verify cloth quality, 16th century nails and pieces of pottery jars including Border Ware, used for stirring dried and salted fish, have been excavated in an 850 square foot area.
When Archaeologist Edward “Clay” Swindell described these findings at the North Carolina Museum of History recently, he acknowledged that while the artifacts do not prove the colony residents lived there, they show they certainly could have.
The rural site south of the Chowan River bridge has been inhabited for centuries, first by native Americans, then by early English settlers. When a developer in 2007 planned a large subdivision on the site, researchers began looking for historically significant artifacts, including a map John White drew in the 1580s. Before leaving for England to resupply in 1587, he had instructed the colonists to “remove 50 miles into the main.” When he returned three years later, the colony was gone. All that remained was the word “Croatoan” carved on a post and “CRO” on a tree.
The British Museum’s re-examination of a 16th-century coastal map using 21st-century imaging techniques has revealed hidden markings that show an inland fort where the colonists could have resettled after abandoning the coast. The watercolor map in the British Museum’s permanent collection was drawn by the colony’s governor, John White.
White’s map, which the British Museum exhibited in 2007, appeared to hold no clues until Brent Lane, a scholar with the First Colony Foundation, asked if the two patches on the map might conceal any clues. The patches themselves had been dismissed as probable repairs or corrections. When Lane’s inquiries prompted folks at the British Museum to investigate the map, he says they did an admirable job of examining it through a variety of technical means. Under one patch they found a red and blue symbol that could represent a fort. This supported the theory that the settlers followed through on White’s injunction to move 50 miles inland. (The Bertie County site is 49.6 miles inland.)
The findings also suggest that the symbol marking the fort was deliberately hidden, perhaps to shield it from espionage in the spy-ridden English court. An even more tantalizing hint of dark arts tainted the map: the possibility that invisible ink may have marked the site all along.
As Lane has noted, “Hiding something under a patch seems a bad idea only likely to draw more attention to the spot – a strategy likely to work for no more than 400 years!” The second patch may cover a coastline correction but Lane isn’t convinced. “The fact that this fort was overlooked for so long,” he says, “makes you wonder what else we are not seeing.”
Brent Lane did not see the actual map until late 2012.
“I had done my research remotely and via digital imagery. Ironically, the map itself was part of a freshly mounted exhibit of the John White drawings that had toured US museums in 2008 – including the North Carolina Museum of History.”