- published: 30 Jul 2015
- views: 19617
Coordinates: 35°55′42″N 75°42′15″W / 35.928259°N 75.704098°W / 35.928259; -75.704098
The Roanoke Colony on Roanoke Island in Dare County, present-day North Carolina, United States was a late 16th-century attempt to establish a permanent English settlement in what later became the Virginia Colony. The enterprise was financed and organized by Sir Walter Raleigh and carried out by Ralph Lane and Richard Grenville, Raleigh's distant cousin. The final group of colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England. The settlement is known as "The Lost Colony," and the fate of the colonists has never been determined.
On March 25, 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted Raleigh a charter for the colonization of the area of North America known as Virginia. This charter specified that Raleigh needed to establish a colony in North America, or lose his right to colonization. Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to South America's Orinoco River basin in search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado.