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Updated: June 29, 2025
"I'll have Webster sworn in this very night, and when I see the captain of the Lane I will tell him what I know about Jack Gray, and will say that his brother did me good service while the fleet was in Croatan and Albemarle sounds. The quartermaster will return your flag at once."
But White, as we have seen, had such confidence in Providence that he left his dear relatives to its care, and made no attempt to visit Croatan. Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for the lost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolous allegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate of these deserted colonists.
The only indication of their fate was the single word "Croatan" cut into the bark of a tree. Croatan was the name of an island not far from that on which they were, but it was the stormy season of the year, and John White, the captain, made this an excuse for not venturing there. So he sailed again for home with only the story of a vanished colony.
White was again sent out, with three ships, from Plymouth, and reached the coast in August. Sailing by Croatan they went to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place they had left the colony in 1587. Going ashore next day, they found no man, nor sign that any had been there lately. Preparing to go to Roanoke next day, a boat was upset and Captain Spicer and six of the crew were drowned.
On either side of the street the doors of the houses stood open, but no person looked out from them or loitered on the doorsteps; the square was empty; there were no women at the well, no children underfoot, no gaping crowd before gaol and pillory, no guard before the Governor's house, not a soul, high or low, to be seen. "Have they all migrated?" cried Sparrow. "Are they gone to Croatan?"
The first thing that attracted his attention, after the Fairy Belle passed the foot of the island, was a steamer, whose crew were busy adding to the obstructions that had already been placed in Croatan Sound. But there was a wide clear space close under the guns of Fort Bartow, and into this Julius held his way, passing so near the steamer that Marcy was able to throw his paper among the crew.
Hawks thinks, "that, driven by starvation, such as survived the famine were merged into the tribes of friendly Indians at Croatan, and, alas! lost ere long every vestige of Christianity and civilization; and those who came to shed light on the darkness of paganism, in the mysterious providence of God ended by relapsing themselves into the heathenism they came to remove.
John White, who was appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as a Council, who were incorporated under the name of "The Governor and Assistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia," with instructions to change their settlement to Chesapeake Bay. Captain Stafford, with twenty men, went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists.
He was very busy, but he found time to ask Marcy a few questions, and gave him pencil and paper with which to draw a map of the channel that led through Croatan Sound. When it was done he compared it with another that lay upon his table, and Marcy learned, from some remarks he exchanged with Captain Benton, that he was not the only pilot whose services had been secured by force of arms.
All about were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up again and scattered, and on a post was carved the name "CROATAN." This signal, which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope that he should find his comrades at Croatan. The men of the abandoned colonies were never again heard of.
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