Fantastic Metropolis

We know that Roanoke was first settled in 1586 after a two-year process of seeking a suitable location, but that native resistance and a lack of food drove the colonists off. The next year, Governor John White and somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred men and women arrived on the island. It was their intent to support the colony and become self sufficient by a combination of farming and trading wild sassafras, but the island was less rewarding than they had hoped and White had accidentally led his men on an attack on the Powhatan tribes that instead ended with them accidentally attacking the Croatoan tribe instead. (There’s a theory that a member of the expedition, a former pirate named Simon Fernandez, served as a traitor on behalf of the Spanish, preventing the colony from gaining food as part of plan to strike directly at Raleigh by the Spanish. Fernandez would also have been involved in the mistaken attack on the Croatoans in this theory. I should mention that some proponents of this theory blame the Spanish, and others believe that Sir Francis Walsingham did it.) As the Croatoans were the best local source for supplies (and now were less than inclined to provide them) White made the choice to go back to England to gather supplies for the hundred or more colonists on Roanoke Island. He left in 1587: he would not return to Roanoke until 1590, due to war with Spain. One assumes that the attack of the Invincible Armada of Phillip II of Spain was a bit more of a priority for Sir Walter than an ass-pimple of a settlement in the middle of nowhere, and it was White’s misfortune to arrive with his hat in his hand at the exact moment that his patron was busy preparing to do battle with Spain. Raleigh was fast at work constructing the Ark Royal in 1587 and probably had little time to talk to White about re-provisioning the colony, and in 1588 found himself alongside Sir Richard Grenville (his cousin, and famous for his death in 1591 when the Revenge was captured) preparing for the Spanish to invade Devon and Cornwall… luckily for them, Drake took the sting out of the Armada with his daring fireship raid of their home ports and the weather did the rest.

Interesting correspondences abound here. For instance, it was Raleigh’s half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert who first proposed massive (and I mean massive) colonization in the New World. As in, 9 million acres to be colonized and the mass extermination or exile of the native population. Gilbert’s death in 1583 while attempting a second expedition to the Americas placed Raleigh in the driver’s seat of the effort. (Interestingly, massive storms were what prevented Humphrey’s first attempt to colonize the New World in 1578.) Also interestingly, it was Sir Richard Grenville who commanded the Tyger and established the first attempt at a colony on Roanoke in 1585–86, the one that failed and was supplanted by White’s colony the year later. Grenville’s colony was even shored up by an appearance by Sir Francis Drake, and it was Drake’s fleet that brought them and their “governor,” Ralph Lane, back from Roanoke in 1586. (Grenville and Lane did not get along at all well. Lane actually took the step of writing nasty letters about Grenville, so strongly they disagreed about everything, and I don’t doubt that Grenville was glad to wash his hands of the man.) Still, it’s fascinating to see the men who would play so prominent a role in the defense of England against the Spanish… Drake, Raleigh, Grenville… all deeply involved in the Roanoke settlement effort.

It wasn’t just England’s great naval warriors who took part in the drama, however. Raleigh had other supporters.