Walter Raleigh

From Raleigh's patent to the abandoned palisade — reusable across the Roanoke, John White, and early-colonisation pages.

1. 25 March 1584

   Raleigh receives his royal patent

   Elizabeth I grants Raleigh the right to plant colonies in North America; a reconnaissance voyage reaches Roanoke Island that summer.

2. 1585

   First (military) colony

   Ralph Lane's garrison winters on Roanoke Island, antagonises neighbouring peoples, and returns to England with Francis Drake in 1586.

3. 22 July 1587

   The 1587 colonists land

   About 115 men, women, and children under John White arrive, intending Chesapeake Bay but put ashore at Roanoke.

4. 18 August 1587

   Virginia Dare born

   The first English child born in the Americas; White, her grandfather, sails for England for supplies nine days later.

5. 1588

   The Armada year

   England's war with Spain closes the Atlantic to relief voyages; White's attempts to return are turned back.

6. 18 August 1590

   White returns to an empty settlement

   The houses are dismantled, the site palisaded, and 'CROATOAN' carved on a post without the agreed distress cross; weather prevents White reaching Croatoan, and no Englishman ever searches it.

7. 1607

   Jamestown founded

   Later Jamestown-era reports of sightings and of mixed-ancestry people among the region's tribes are the last period evidence bearing on the colonists' fate.