A Kingdom Strange

On August 18, 1587, Virginia Dare was born on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The first English person born on American soil, she was, fittingly, the granddaughter of John White, a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and the man who had led the colonists to the New World. When White set sail back to England in 1590, it was the last he would ever see of his granddaughter—or any of the colonists. The disappearance of the colony remains one of history’s greatest mysteries.

White, an artist, had been to Roanoke three years before. In 1584, tasked with visually documenting the area and its inhabitants, he had joined England’s first expedition to colonize what was referred to as Virginia—named after the “virgin queen” Elizabeth I. The operation was eventually cut short, and the force returned to England, leaving behind a garrison of 15 men. White’s mission in 1587 was to pick up the soldiers and sail north with the colonists—117 men, women and children—to found the “City of Raleigh” on the Chesapeake Bay area. Strategically speaking, the mission was a critical part of Sir Walter Raleigh’s plan to establish a powerful presence in the New World, enabling England to raid Spanish ships in the Caribbean and prevent King Philip from building a Catholic empire in America.

Landing at Roanoke in July 1587, White found the garrison destroyed and the bleached skeleton of a British soldier—the only sign of life, deer feeding on an overgrown patch of melons. Despite this foreboding scene, White decided to settle temporarily at Roanoke and move up the Chesapeake at a later date. The colonists set to work building homes and planting seeds.

Six days later, the body of a colonist named George Howe was discovered in a creek two miles from the settlement, his body bristled with 16 arrows. The scene set the tone for the weeks to come. With supplies quickly diminishing and a native population getting more and more aggressive, the colonists began losing their nerve. White returned to England to organize a rescue operation. The plan was delayed for various reasons, and White and the rescue party didn’t return until August 1590—his granddaughter's third birthday. Everyone was gone.

With A Kingdom Strange, James Horn, a professional researcher and the author of A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America, provides a comprehensive but highly engaging volume about the Roanoke mystery. He places the story in historical context, examining the expedition’s political and social origins, while conveying the human experience from the colonists’ arduous journey across the ocean to the fear and uncertainty they experienced during their brief but intense stay on the island.

Using new archival material, Horn tells the complete story of what happened to the Roanoke colonists and their descendants. Riveting, detailed and current, A Kingdom Strange is essential reading for anyone interested in our national origins.