The Lost Rocks: The Dare Stones and the Unsolved Mystery of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony , livre ebook

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136 pages

English

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What if the 1587 Lost Colony of Roanoke was not lost? What if the survivors left Roanoke Island, North Carolina and found their way to Georgia? That is the scenario scholars contemplated when a series of engraved stones were found in the 1930's. The first, found near the Chowan River in North Carolina, claimed that Eleanor Dare and a few other settlers had made their way inland after an Indian attack wiped out the rest of the colony. Among the dead were Eleanor's daughter, Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, and Eleanor's husband Ananias. The remaining Dare Stones, more than forty in number, told a fantastic tale of how Eleanor and the survivors made their way overland, first to South Carolina, and then to Georgia. If true, North Carolina stood to lose one of its most cherished historical legends. Author David La Vere weaves the story of the Dare Stones with that of the Lost Colony of Roanoke in a tale that will fire your imagination and give you pause at the same time. In this true story that shook the world during the 1930s and early 1940s, the question on everyone's mind was: Had the greatest American mystery – the Lost Colony – finally been solved?

Sujets

Histoire

Colonial Period

United States

History

US

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9780983523611
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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The Lost Rocks
The Dare Stones and the Unsolved Mystery of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s Lost Colony
by
David La Vere

Copyright 2011 David La Vere,
All rights reserved.

Published in eBook format by Burnt Mill Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com

ISBN-13: 978-0-9835-2361-1

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

For Jack and Carol Mills
Best in-laws ever

Preface
A Colony Lost
From the deck of the Hopewell , Governor John White spied the column of smoke rising far off to the northwest. He was ecstatic. It seemed directly over Roanoke Island, right where he’d left his colony three years earlier in 1587. It was obvious. His people had spotted the Hopewell and the Moonlight anchored off the coast and were signaling them. While it was too late in the day to make a landing, White figured that by this time tomorrow he would be reunited with his daughter, Eleanor, her husband, Ananias Dare, and best of all, his granddaughter, Virginia. He tried to imagine how she'd grown. At three, she would surely be walking and talking—though it was too much to hope that she would remember him.
The next morning, the sixteenth of August, 1590, Governor White, Captain Abraham Cocke of the Hopewell , Captain Edward Spicer of the Moonlight , and a crew of sailors set out in a couple of landing boats for Roanoke. The Island was a long ways off as it sat sheltered from the Atlantic behind a string of sandy barrier islands. The master gunner on the Hopewell was ordered to fire signal cannons at intervals to alert the colonists to the governor’s arrival. But as the two small boats neared the gap between barrier islands, White saw another column of smoke rising from the large sand dunes on Hatarask Island just to the south. He directed Captain Cocke to make for Hatarask instead.
It was all a waste of time. The column of smoke was much further away from where their boats came ashore. The search party spent hours trudging through deep sand, and when they finally reached the fire, they found no evidence that it had been a signal intended for them . “We found no man nor signe that any had bene there lately, nor yet any fresh water in all this way to drink,” a dejected White wrote. 1 And then, thirsty and exhausted, they had to march all the way back to their boats. By that time, it was again too late in the day to make for Roanoke. Fortunately, they found a source of fresh water among the beach dunes. The boats headed back to the Hopewell and Moonlight to try again the next day.
By the morning of August 17, the bad luck that had been dogging John White for the past three years caught up with him again. Instead of getting an early start, Captain Edward Spicer of the Moonlight used his landing boats to ferry casks to Hatarask Island for fresh water. It wasn’t until ten o’clock that White, Captain Cocke, and their boat managed to make for Roanoke Island. Even then, the most dangerous part of the whole voyage lay before them: getting through the gap between the barrier islands. It was dicey work trying to pass over a barely submerged sand bar while fast-running currents and breaking waves tossed the boats around like driftwood. Roughening seas and a freshening wind foretold the approach of a nor’easter. White’s boat had just gotten into the breach when a huge wave broke over the boat, almost capsizing it and half filling it with seawater. White claimed it was only “by the will of God and carefull styrage of Captaine Cocke we came safe ashore, saving only that our furniture, victuals, match and powder were much wet and spoyled.” 2
Captain Spicer of the Moonlight was not so fortunate. Spicer’s landing boat followed into the breach but was halfway through when a great wave hit the boat and overturned it. A few sailors were thrown overboard but managed to hold on to the boat’s side. Then the next wave crashed on top of it, driving the boat down into the sandbar, breaking their grip. Now the sailors swirled in the surf, struggling to stay afloat. Another wave and then another pounded them. Some tried to wade ashore, while others clung to the twisting boat. White witnessed it all from the beach, watching the waves beat them down “so that they could neither stand nor swimme, and the boat twice or thrise was turned the keele upward.” 3 Captain Cocke and other sailors immediately went to their rescue. Of the boat's eleven men, they managed to save four, but seven, including Captain Spicer, were drowned. Their deaths put such a cloud over the sailors in Cocke’s boat that many refused to go any further. Only by Captain Cocke’s commands and Governor White’s persuasiveness were the sailors convinced to row on to Roanoke Island and the rescue of White’s colonists.
It was dark by the time the landing boat reached Roanoke. As the weary men rowed around the northern tip of the island, they caught sight of a large fire in the woods. Unsure of its origin and unwilling to stumble around in the dark, White ordered the boat anchored just off the island’s shore. In hopes again that their settlers had set the fire as a signal, the men “sounded with a trumpet Call & afterwards many familiar English tunes of Songs, and called to them friendly; but we had no answere.” 4 The sailors spent a cramped night in the boat and at daybreak landed to investigate the fire. Again White was disappointed. It had been just a wildfire of grass and rotten trees with no one about.
From there, the landing party made their way through the woods to the western side of Roanoke, the part of the island that faced the gentler waters of a large sound, where White had left his colonists three years earlier. Where he hoped he might come upon a bustling colony and reunite with his granddaughter Virginia, Governor White found the site completely deserted. In August of 1587 he had left 117 men, women and children here. Now there was not a single person to be found. A few prints of bare feet indicated not the leather-shod English, but Indians. The settlers' fort was overgrown and in disrepair. A nagging dread inched up White's spine. It was clear no one had lived here for some time.
Gone were the colonists' houses, but there was no evidence the buildings had been burned or destroyed. The structures appeared to have been dismantled and moved elsewhere.
Signs of activity presented a strange and disturbing puzzle. About the fort lay four iron fowling pieces, some iron shot, as well as heavy bars of iron and lead. White believed these had been left because they were too heavy. His own personal belongings, which he had stored in trunks and buried for safekeeping, had been dug up. His maps, papers, books, picture frames, pieces of now-rusted armor all lay strewn across the ground. He blamed this on the Indians. But his people, his daughter and granddaughter, his colonists, all of them, their effects, and the small boat they had for navigating the sounds were gone. Vanished like a forest mist under a hot sun. Still, he was somewhat relieved. If his colony was missing, at least there was no sign of war or destruction. They had not been attacked and overwhelmed, but had made an orderly relocation away from Roanoke. That gave him hope.
As White saw it, the colonists must have put into motion their plan to move away from the inhospitable Roanoke. That meant they must have left clues to their whereabouts. A quick search found them. Carved on one of the large posts next to the fort’s entrance was the word CROATOAN — the name of an Algonquian village on a nearby barrier island. As if to emphasize the signal, the letters CRO were carved on a tree closeby. In neither case was there a cross carved above, the agreed-upon sign if they had been attacked. White took comfort that his English had not been driven from the Island. To the governor the message was clear. “I had safely found a certaine token of their safe being at Croatoan, which is the place where Manteo was born, and the Savages of the island our friends.” 5
Back on the Hopewell , White convinced Captain Cocke to sail to Croatoan, about a day’s run to the south, where he expected to find his colonists. But bad luck clung hard to John White. That evening was stormy. Fierce waves forced them to abandon the ship’s freshwater cask on the beach.
By the next morning, the weather was a little better and the wind favorable. Cocke’s plan was to hurry south to Croatoan, rescue the colonists, then return for the water cask, a job well done. But as the sailors were hauling in the anchor, the cable broke and they lost the anchor — the second one lost on the voyage. Even worse, without the anchor’s tension, the Hopewell now shot toward the shore. Racing toward destruction, Captain Cocke ordered another anchor dropped. It caught just in time to prevent the ship from running aground. Cocke was just able to maneuver the ship into a deeper channel, saving his command but losing a third anchor in the process.
Cocke knew when to cut his losses. With three of the ship’s four anchors gone, Captain Spicer and six others from the Moonlight drowned, food scarce, the freshwater cask left behind, and the weather shaping up into a hurricane, Cocke explained to White that they could not continue to Croatoan. Instead, they would make for the Caribbean to resupply and then return to the island next year. White had no choice but to agree with his captain's expert recommendation. But as the weather worsened, the backup plan proved unworkable and Cocke steered east toward the Azores and home. White would not reach Plymouth, England, until October 24.
John White would never see his family again. But he thought of them every day. Others thought about them, too. England wanted to