This is the island where 114 people disappeared without a trace of life - The unsolved mystery

 

The strange story began in 1587, when 115 English settlers arrived on Roanoke Island off the coast of present-day North Carolina.


The captain of the new colony, John White, would return to England to load the ship with supplies and transport them back to the new colony. However, as soon as he arrived, war broke out between England and Spain. Queen Elizabeth I ordered every available ship to take part in the war against the mighty Spanish Armada.



Three years later, in August 1590, White managed to return to Roanoke, where he had left his wife, daughter, newborn granddaughter (the first English-born child born in America) and the rest of the settlers. . He just found himself in front of a scary and mysterious surprise.

He found no trace of them. They had disappeared from the face of the earth. The only thing left behind as an item was the word "Croatoan" carved on a wooden stake. In the following centuries the researches took different ways and the conclusions followed one another. But no theory about their disappearance was so satisfactory

. where lived a tribe of natives of the same name. The tribe may have killed or abducted the settlers. Another theory is that the settlers tried to return to England on their own, but either got lost in the ocean or met the Spanish fleet off the coast of Florida.

Still others believe that they moved to the mainland and separated, while there is a possibility that they were struck by a disease of the new world, for which they had no antibodies.


In 2007, DNA analysis was started in the local population in case any connection was found with the Roanoke settlers. Also using modern technology, researchers are looking for mass graves below the earth's surface, while analyzing the difference between maps of that time and today, so that they may discover the path followed by the settlers.

The only thing that is certain is that the disappearance of the Roanoke settlers was a lesson for the next settlers who arrived there 17 years later and settled a little further north, in Jamestown, Virginia, building the first permanent English colony in North America.