Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, North Carolina

by III Charles W. Porter

RESTORED FORT.

The historic object of chief interest at Fort Raleigh is the fort built by Ralph Lane during 1585-86 and called by him “the new Fort in Virginia.” As the settlers of the Lost Colony of 1587 are known to have rebuilt for their own use the houses which Lane’s men constructed about the fort, it may be safely assumed that this same fort served them also for a time, at least until they found it necessary to erect the great stockade made of tree trunks that Governor White found enclosing their settlement area in 1590.

Aerial view of the restored fort.

In an earlier part of this book, the history of the fort between 1586 and 1896 has been traced. During 1935-46, National Park Service historians made intensive historical studies of all available documentary and map data relating to the fort. They concluded that the fort surveyed for the Roanoke Colony Historical Association, in 1896, was Lane’s fort and surmised that its shape was similar to that of the fort built by Lane in Puerto Rico in 1585. They could only surmise this because, unlike Lane’s fort in Puerto Rico which is shown in a drawing by John White now in the British Museum, no picture or plan of Lane’s fort on Roanoke Island has survived. National Park Service archeological work carried on under the direction of Archeologist J. C. Harrington during the summers of 1947, 1948, and 1950 established the truth of the conjectures of the historians. The true shape of the fort was made known. Enough of the fort moat, or ditch, was found intact to justify the restoration of the fort, and valuable artifact materials were recovered at the fort site and west of the fort entrance.

The fort during the work of restoration.

As the fort stands today, the greater part of the ditch is the original moat of 1585-86, but the parapet has been restored. In the interval between 1586 and 1947, wind, rain, and snow had washed the parapet of the fort into the fort ditch. Leaf mold had also accumulated there. Archeological studies of these materials indicated that the fort was of great age. After careful archeological work at the fort and its environs in 1947 and 1948, it was decided in 1950 to restore the fort which had been shown to be the remains of an Elizabethan work. The earthen fill was removed from the ditch, or moat, of the fort and was placed where the parapet had been and the parapet built up once more. Except for the fact that the archeologists worked slowly with painstaking care to follow the lines of the original ditch, and Lane’s soldiers must have worked rapidly with shovels, the new and the old process of building the parapet of the fort must have been much the same. The amount of earth in the original ditch, as disclosed through archeological methods, determined the height of the parapet, which was shaped in accordance with normal angles of repose and data from contemporary manuals on fortification such as Paul Ive’s, The Practice of Fortification, (London, 1589).

Lane’s fort, as revealed and restored by the archeologist, is basically a square, with pointed bastions built on two sides of the square and an octagonal bastion built on the third side of the square. This last-mentioned bastion is suggestive of the arrowhead bastion of Lane’s Puerto Rican fort as pictured by John White. It is also suggestive of the octagonal bastion shown on the plan of St. George’s fort built in Maine by Popham in 1607. As the fort carries the distinctive features of Lane’s Puerto Rican fort, the pointed bastions built on the sides of the square instead of at the corners as in later fortification technique (a system either peculiar to Lane or at least quite rare), the conclusion is irresistible that Lane was the original builder.

The parapet of the fort encloses an area approximately 50 feet square. The interior had been dug into so many times and in so many places by Indians, later settlers, soldiers of the Civil War period, and by Talcort Williams that the National Park Service archeologist was unable to say for sure what structures had been inside of the fort. Traces of what may have been one long structure or two short ones were found near the center of the fort at right angles to the main entrance. Presumably, there were a well and a powder magazine. The few brickbats found may relate to the footings or chimneys of the structure, or structures, in the fort or to the magazine. The one measurable side of one of the brick fragments found was of the proper gauge to have been of the Elizabethan period, when the sizes of bricks were regulated by law.

Typical section through the original fort ditch and the reconstructed parapet.

The location of the fort, not far from the water’s edge, commanding a channel of Roanoke Sound in use for small boats even in later colonial times, bespeaks its purpose of defending the colonists not only against the Indians but also against an always probable attack from Spain. An enemy ship approaching from Port Ferdinando (Hatoraske) or Trinety Harbor, north of Hatoraske, would have come under the guns of the fort, consisting of some brass cannon and at least “four iron fowlers” (light cannon). Some of the cannon fired “iron saker shot,” which would be iron balls weighing about 6 pounds. Today, large dunes lie between the fort and the sound and obstruct the view. However, as archeological tests show that the dunes are later than the period of settlement, it is clear that the fort originally commanded a view of Roanoke Sound.