# F. Chronology and what the 1584-1609 English and Spanish record establishes

Drawn from dossier A (every quotation there VERIFIED against the fetched editions). Page numbers are the 1600 Hakluyt pages (vol. III) unless stated.

## Chronology (Old Style dates)

| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Jul 1584 | Barlowe's reconnaissance; Roanoke a palisaded village of nine houses; Chawanook and Menatonon already named; Manteo and Wanchese taken to England | Hakluyt III 246-251 |
| 16 Jun 1585 | 32 men of Raymond's ship landed at Croatoan for c. 20 days: first English use of Croatoan | Tiger journal, III 252 |
| 16 Jul 1585 | Aquascogoc burned over a silver cup: origin of the mainland enmity | Tiger journal, III 253 |
| Aug 1585-Jun 1586 | Lane's colony (107-108 men) on Roanoke; a detachment winters among the Chesepians (c. 130 miles N); Chowanoke visited, Menatonon held; Lane plans to move the whole colony to a Chesapeake harbour via the head of the Chowan | Lane, III 255-264 |
| spring 1586 | Famine; Stafford and 20 men sent to live at Croatoan and watch for ships; the Indians themselves disperse seasonally to Hatorask and Croatoan | Lane, III 262 |
| 1 Jun 1586 | Wingina/Pemisapan killed and beheaded at Dasamonquepeuc | Lane, III 263 |
| 19 Jun 1586 | Lane's colony leaves with Drake | Lane, III 264 |
| Jul-Aug 1586 | Ralegh's supply ship, then Grenville, find Roanoke empty; Grenville leaves 15 (Díaz: 18) men with guns and provisions | III 265; Wright Doc. 65 |
| May-Jun 1587 | Menéndez Marqués searches the coast to 37 degrees for the English settlement and finds nothing (storm) | Wright Doc. 61; Oré |
| 22 Jul 1587 | White's colony (117 arrivals) put ashore at Roanoke by Fernandes instead of the Chesapeake, Ralegh's ordered seat | White, III 281 |
| 23 Jul 1587 | Lane's fort found "rased downe", houses standing; repaired; new cottages built | III 281 |
| 28 Jul 1587 | George Howe killed by Dasamonquepeuc men (Wingina's remnant, with Wanchese) | III 281-282 |
| 30 Jul-1 Aug 1587 | Stafford and Manteo at Croatoan: friendship renewed; the Croatoans ask that their corn not be touched "for that they had but little"; they tell how Grenville's men were attacked, two killed, and the rest rowed away "whither as yet we know not" | III 282-283 |
| 8-9 Aug 1587 | Night attack on Dasamonquepeuc kills a Croatoan by mistake; Dasamonquepeuc already deserted by its owners | III 283-284 |
| 13 Aug 1587 | Manteo christened and made "Lord" of Roanoke and Dasamonquepeuc | III 284 |
| 18 Aug 1587 | Virginia Dare born; c. 24 Aug the Harvie child | III 284, 287 |
| 22 Aug 1587 | White records that the planters "intended to remoue 50 miles further vp into the maine presently"; margin: "Their meaning to remoue 50 miles into the countrey" | III 285 |
| 25 Aug 1587 | The planters' testimony asking White to go for "our knowen and apparent lackes and needes" | III 286 |
| 27 Aug 1587 | White sails; the pinnace and the ships' boats are not recorded as leaving and were gone by 1590 | III 286; 294 |
| Apr-May 1588 | Relief (Brave, Roe; 15 planters, or 7 men and 4 women per Díaz) turned back by a French man-of-war on 6 May 1588; White wounded | Hakluyt 1589, 771-773; Wright Doc. 65 |
| c. 30 Jun-1 Jul 1588 | Vicente González, southbound from the Chesapeake, enters a shallow bar at about 35.5 degrees: a slipway or sloops, remains of English barrels, debris, and no people; the Spaniards never go to the island | Oré (Geiger 44-49) |
| Mar 1589 | Díaz's examination at Havana: he expects the settlers to have "died of hunger" | Wright Doc. 65 |
| 1589-90 | Spanish plan for 300 infantry to 35.5 degrees; dropped | Oré |
| 12-13 Aug 1590 | White's ships anchor a night off the north-east point of Croatoan; no landing | III 289-290 |
| 15-16 Aug 1590 | Smoke on Roanoke and south-west of Kenricks Mounts; guns fired; nobody comes; the second fire had no one at it | III 290 |
| 17 Aug 1590 | Spicer and six others drown at Hatorask bar | III 291 |
| 18 Aug 1590 | Roanoke: fresh footprints; C R O on a tree; houses "taken downe"; a new palisade "very Fortlike"; CROATOAN on the entrance post, no cross; iron bars, two pigs of lead, four fowlers, sacker shot left "almost ouergrowen"; no boats, pinnace, falcons or small ordnance; five chests "long sithence digged vp" and spoiled | III 292-293 |
| 19 Aug 1590 | Decision to go to Croatoan; cable breaks, two anchors lost, near-grounding at Kenricks Mounts; one anchor left, water casks lost; decision to winter in the Indies; the storm of 28 Aug drives the Hopewell to the Azores | III 293-294 |
| 4 Feb 1593 | White's letter: he gives up, in Ireland, still writing of the planters as living | III 288 |
| 24 Oct 1599 | Hakluyt: the colony "as yet remaineth, for ought we know, alive in the countrey" | PN 1599 epistle |
| Mar-summer 1602 | Mace's voyage stays a month at about 34 degrees, never searches Hatarask; the fifth of Ralegh's sendings | Brereton 1602, 14 |
| 21 Aug 1602 | Ralegh to Cecil: neither bark "spake with the peopell"; "I shall yet live to see it an Inglishe nation" | Edwards 1868, no. CX |
| 24-29 Jul 1603 | Gilbert tries for the Chesapeake "to seeke out the people for Sir Walter Raleigh left"; killed on landing | Purchas IV.viii.12 |
| 15 Apr 1609 | Hakluyt names "Ritanoe, neere certaine mountaines lying west of Roanoac" as a copper or gold town revealed by "our owne Indians" | Virginia richly valued, dedication |

## What the record establishes (and what it does not)

1. The colonists' stated plan on 22 August 1587 was a move of about fifty miles "further vp into the maine", to be made "presently", by carriage of goods. White repeated in 1590 that "alway they were prepared to remoue from Roanoak 50 miles into the maine". The 1587 seat had been forced on them; the ordered seat was the Chesapeake, 130 miles north by Lane's reckoning.
2. The only name they carved was CROATOAN, the island of Manteo's kin, about 47 statute miles south-south-east and not on the mainland. Under the agreed code the word means "the place where they should be seated" at the time of carving; the absence of the cross means they did not leave in distress. The code says nothing about whether all went, or whether they moved on afterwards.
3. The Roanoke site was left in order: houses dismantled, a palisade built after August 1587, everything portable and every boat and light gun removed by water, only the heaviest iron and lead left. The chests had been dug up "long sithence". By July 1588 a Spanish reconnaissance saw the harbour works and English debris on the banks and no people.
4. Croatoan could not feed a hundred and sixteen extra people for long on its inhabitants' own statement (1587) and on Lane's use of it (1586) as a twenty-man fishing and lookout post. A first move to Croatoan and a later move to the mainland are both consistent with the record; so is a split.
5. No English party set foot on Croatoan after 1 August 1587. White anchored off it in 1590 without landing; the searches of 1602 and 1603 never reached the sounds; the 1603 search aimed at the Chesapeake.
6. Nothing in the 1584-1603 English or Spanish record connects the colonists with Powhatan; Spain never attacked the settlement; Pedro Díaz's contemporary guess was famine.
7. England presumed survival through 1599 (Hakluyt) and 1602 (Ralegh). No report of the colony's fate reached print before the Jamestown reports of 1608-1612.
8. Precedents in the same record: the Secotan tradition (Barlowe 1584) of shipwrecked white men who built boats and were lost; Grenville's men (1586) who rowed off "whither as yet we know not"; Lane's dispersal of his colony to Croatoan, Hatorask and the mainland to eat (1586).

## Points the sources do not settle

- Whether the pinnace could have made an ocean passage with any number of people: its tonnage is not given (the 1588 relief pinnaces were 25 and 30 tons); Lane's pinnace "drew too deep water for that shallow sound".
- The Spanish wording of what González saw (Geiger: "a ship-yard, indicated by the presence of sloops"; Quinn, unverified here: "a slipway for small vessels" and "wells made with English casks"). Not obtainable (López 1931 not online; HathiTrust and Google Books searches blocked).
- The 1587 charter's list of Assistants; White's 1587 letter to Ralegh and Ralegh's letter to the colonists (both lost); Harriot's "Chronicle" (lost).