Did Roanoke Island colony fall prey to foul play?

Was there a conspiracy to sabotage Sir Walter Raleigh’s expeditions in the late 1580s that attempted to build an English colony in the New World?

 

Anthropologist and author Lee Miller believes so. She has suggested that the “lost colonists” from Roanoke Island, N.C., were the political pawns caught up in the “black web” of a power play in London.

 

Miller thinks the primary saboteur was Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state Sir Francis Walsingham, who also was the crown’s “spymaster.” He was a clever and devious chap, fluent in French and Italian languages, who built an intelligence network of more than 50 agents, working primarily in Europe.

 

Miller said many indicators point to Walsingham as the kingpin of conspirators within the royal court who desperately “wanted to bring down Raleigh, the Queen’s golden boy. Raleigh stood to gain great wealth, as he was awarded a royal patent to all land he could settle in the New World,” wrote By Dale Keiger, the former editor of Johns Hopkins University’s alumni magazine. 

(Miller earned her master’s degree in anthropology in 1987 from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.) 

The importance of what happened at Roanoke Island with the “Lost Colony” is vitally important, she said. “This is the quintessential American story. This is where American history began. It didn’t begin at Jamestown or at Plymouth, it began here. It’s also America’s oldest murder mystery.” 

Walsingham, a smallish man with a swarthy complexion, habitually dressed in black. On the other hand, Raleigh, who was about 20 years younger, was described as “tall, dashing, debonair and flamboyant.” Was it a case of personal jealousy? 

Miller said a key figure in the plot against Raleigh was the Portuguese sea captain Simon Fernandes, who piloted John White’s 1587 voyage. 

Fernandes was supposed to transport the colonists to the Chesapeake Bay area, which Raleigh believed offered great potential for success. 

But first, there would be a pit stop at Roanoke Island to gather up the English soldiers who were left behind during a prior expedition. Obviously, Fernandes knew the way; he had sailed to Roanoke Island twice before, working for Raleigh. 

In 1587, however, Fernandes lollygagged around some in the West Indies before heading to Roanoke Island. The fleet finally got there in mid-July, too late to plant fields. Then, Fernandes announced that “this was the end of the line, folks. Everybody off.” 

He flat-out refused to take White’s party of 117 any farther north. Was this on direct order from Walsingham? 

Miller suggested that Fernandes purposefully dumped them where he knew their odds of survival were skimpy at best. 

Some historians have offered that Fernandes was in a hurry to discharge his passengers, so he could sail off to engage in piracy ahead of hurricane season. 

Keiger reported: “Were this true, Miller asks, why would Fernandes have spent 36 days anchored offshore of Roanoke Island, recaulking his ships and showing none of the urgency that supposedly prevented him from taking the colonists to their planned destination?” 

“And why, once he did depart, did he not hunt for prizes but instead make a beeline for England?” British journalist Alan Freer paints Sir Francis Walsingham as “a black spider at the center of a great web.” Walsingham died in 1590, at age 58, after a long battle with cancer.

Raleigh made news in 1591, when he secretly married Elizabeth “Bess” Throckmorton, who was a lady-in-waiting, a royal attendant of Queen Elizabeth. The queen was furious and imprisoned them both.

Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh

Bess Throckmorton