![]() ![]() Another attempt made in 1587 under the leadership of John White also ended in failure and the disappearance of 117 men, women, and children (known since as the Lost Colony of Roanoke). ![]() In 1585, Sir Walter Ralegh sponsored a colony on Roanoke Island, off the mainland of North Carolina, which ended the following year with the abandonment of the settlement. The Jamestown expedition was not the first attempt to establish a colony on the mid-Atlantic coast. Altogether, thirty-nine mariners and 105 adventurers set out to found what would be England’s first permanent colony in America. ![]() The Godspeed followed with fifty-two men on board, while bringing up the rear was the tiny pinnace Discovery, which carried twenty-one men crammed together wherever they could find space in between provisions and equipment. The largest of the ships, the heavily armed, 120-ton merchantman Susan Constant, carried seventy-one passengers and crew, including the experienced commander of the fleet, Captain Christopher Newport a highly successful privateer during the sea war with Spain, he had made many voyages to the Caribbean in the 1590s and early years of the seventeenth century and knew as much about American waters as any Englishman alive. Shortly before Christmas 1606, three small ships left London’s Blackwall docks to establish a settlement on Chesapeake Bay, in North America. ![]()
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