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FILE 112 · VOL XIX · Nobody Came Back Out
115 People Vanished and Left One Word. We Found the Second.
They carved where they were going. Nobody ever asked who told them to.
Based on: The Lost Colony of Roanoke
Intake record
| Recovered from | Cedar fence post pulled from a drainage ditch, Hatteras Island, North Carolina |
|---|---|
| Contents | A carved post, a surveyor's field notebook, a 1590 map facsimile with a pencil circle, a voicemail transcript |
| Finder | Owen Pike, county drainage surveyor |
| Status | The Roanoke colony's fate is unknown. The second carving is not in any record. |
Recovered file
In 1587, about 115 English men, women and children landed on Roanoke Island, off the coast of what is now North Carolina. They were the second attempt at a permanent English colony in America. Their governor was a painter named John White. [1]
That August, White's daughter gave birth to a girl. They named her Virginia Dare. She was the first English child born in the Americas. [1]
A few weeks later, the colonists asked White to sail back to England for supplies. He did not want to go. They insisted. Before he left, they agreed on a signal. If the colonists had to move, they would carve the name of where they had gone on a tree or post. If they were in danger, they would carve a cross above it. [1]
White did not get back for three years. A war with Spain, and the Spanish Armada, held every English ship in port. [1]
He landed on Roanoke in August 1590. It was his granddaughter's third birthday. [1]
The settlement was empty. The houses had been taken down. A tall wooden fence had been built around where they had stood. On one of the fence posts, near the entrance, someone had carved a single word in capital letters.
CROATOAN.
On a tree nearby were three letters. CRO.
There was no cross. [1]
Croatoan was the name of an island about fifty miles south, home to people friendly to the English. White took it as good news. His family had moved. They were safe. He would sail there in the morning.
A storm came. His ships lost anchors. The captain refused to continue. White was taken back to England and never returned to America. He never saw his daughter or his granddaughter again. [1]
Nobody knows what happened to the colonists. Some historians think they went to Croatoan and joined the people there. Some think they went inland. In 2012, researchers studying White's own map at the British Museum found a small patch of paper hiding a symbol, which may mark a fort fifty miles inland. [2] Archaeologists have dug at several sites and found English objects, but nothing that settles it. [3]
The word on the post was the only message 115 people left behind.
Until last spring.
The rest of this file is sealed. The ending, the sources and the archivist's note unseal with the file.
Unseal File 112 ($2.99) · its volume · everything ($49.99)
Built on real, cited records. The stories are dramatized. Disclaimer · If you are in crisis in the U.S., call or text 988.