Just as "the Dragon" returned to England another party of Raleigh's colonists was approaching the American coast. There were about 150, including 17 women. John White, a man deft with water-colours, who had been the artist of Lane's expedition, was their governor. Their settlement was to be made on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, but first they must stop at Roanoke Island and pick up the fifteen men left on watch by Grenville. Through some carelessness or misunderstanding or bad faith on the part of the convoy, the people once landed were left in the lurch with only one small vessel, and thus were obliged to stay on that fatal Roanoke Island. They soon found that Grenville's little guard had been massacred by red men. It was under these gloomy circumstances that the first child of English parents was born on the soil of the United States. The governor's daughter Eleanor was wife of Ananias Dare, and their little girl, born August 18, 1587, was named Virginia. Before she was ten days old her grandfather found it necessary to take the ship and return to England for help.
The Invincible Armada, 1588.
But the day of judgment for Spain and England was at hand, and lesser things must wait. Amid the turmoil of military preparation, Sir Walter was not unmindful of his little colony. Twice he fitted out relief expeditions, but the first was stopped because all the ships were seized for government service, and the second was driven back into port by Spanish cruisers. While the anxious governor waited through the lengthening days into the summer of 1588, there came, with its imperious haste, its deadly agony and fury, its world-astounding triumph, the event most tremendous, perhaps, that mankind have witnessed since the star of the Wise Men stood over the stable at Bethlehem. Then you might have seen the sea kings working in good fellowship together,—Drake and Hawkins, Winter and Frobisher, with Howard of Effingham in the Channel fleet; Raleigh and Grenville active alike in council and afield; the two great ministers, Burghley and Walsingham, ever crafty and vigilant; and in the background on her white palfrey the eccentric figure of the strangely wayward and wilful but always brave and patriotic Queen. Even after three centuries it is with bated breath that we watch those 130 black hulks coming up the Channel, with 3,000 cannon and 30,000 men on board, among them ninety executioners withal, equipped with racks and thumbscrews, to inaugurate on English soil the accursed work of the Inquisition. In camp at Dunkirk the greatest general of the age, Alexander Farnese, with 35,000 veterans is crouching for a spring, like a still greater general at Boulogne in later days; and one wonders if the 80,000 raw militia slowly mustering in the busy little towns and green hamlets of England can withstand these well-trained warriors.
Defeat of the Invincible Armada.
Battle of Cadiz, 1596.
In the English fleet there were about as many ships as the enemy had, much smaller in size and inferior in weight of metal, but at the same time far more nimble in movement. Of cannon and men the English had scarcely half as many as the Spaniards, but this disparity was more than offset by one great advantage. Our forefathers had already begun to display the inventive ingenuity for which their descendants in both hemispheres have since become preëminent. Many of their ships were armed with new guns, of longer range than any hitherto known, and this advantage, combined with their greater nimbleness, made it possible in many cases to pound a Spanish ship to pieces without receiving any serious hurt in return. In such respects, as well as in the seamanship by which the two fleets were handled, it was modern intelligence pitted against mediæval chivalry. Such captains as served Elizabeth were not reared under the blighting shadow of the Escurial. With the discomfiture of the Invincible Armada before Dunkirk, the army of Farnese at once became useless for invading England. Then came the awful discovery that the mighty fleet was penned up in the German Ocean, for Drake held the Strait of Dover in his iron grip. The horrors of the long retreat through northern seas have never been equalled save when Napoleon's hosts were shattered in Russia. In the disparity of losses, as in the immensity of the issues at stake, we are reminded of the Greeks and Persians at Salamis; of Spaniards more than 20,000 perished, but scarcely 100 Englishmen. The frightful loss of ships and guns announced the overthrow of Spanish supremacy, but the bitter end was yet to come. During the next three years the activity of the sea kings reached such a pitch that more than 800 Spanish ships were destroyed.[17] The final blow came soon after the deaths of Drake and Hawkins in 1596, when Raleigh, with the Earl of Essex and Lord Thomas Howard, destroyed the Spanish fleet in that great battle before Cadiz whereof Raleigh wrote that "if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured."[18]
Mystery of the fate of White's colony.
It was not until March, 1591, that Governor White succeeded in getting to sea again for the rescue of his family and friends. He had to go as passenger in a West Indiaman. When he landed, upon the return voyage, at Roanoke Island, it was just in time to have celebrated his little grandchild's fourth birthday. It had been agreed that should the colonists leave that spot they should carve upon a tree the name of the place to which they were going, and if they should add to the name a cross it would be understood as a signal of distress. When White arrived he found grass growing in the deserted blockhouse. Under the cedars hard by five chests had been buried, and somebody had afterwards dug them up and rifled them. Fragments of his own books and pictures lay scattered about. On a great tree was cut in big letters, but without any cross, the word Croatan, which was the name of a neighbouring island. The captain of the ship was at first willing to take White to Croatan, but a fierce storm overtook him and after beating about for some days he insisted upon making for England in spite of the poor man's entreaties. No more did White ever hear of his loved ones. Sixteen years afterward the settlers at Jamestown were told by Indians that the white people abandoned at Roanoke had mingled with the natives and lived with them for some years on amicable terms until at the instigation of certain medicine-men (who probably accused them of witchcraft) they had all been murdered, except four men, two boys, and a young woman, who were spared by request or order of a chief. Whether this young woman was Virginia Dare, the first American girl, we have no means of knowing.[19]
Significance of the defeat of the Armada.
Nothing could better illustrate than the pathetic fate of this little colony how necessary it was to destroy the naval power of Spain before England could occupy the soil of North America. The defeat of the Invincible Armada was the opening event in the history of the United States. It was the event that made all the rest possible. Without it the attempts at Jamestown and Plymouth could hardly have had more success than the attempt at Roanoke Island. An infant colony is like an army at the end of a long line of communications; it perishes if the line is cut. Before England could plant thriving states in America she must control the ocean routes. The far-sighted Raleigh understood the conditions of the problem. When he smote the Spaniards at Cadiz he knew it was a blow struck for America. He felt the full significance of the defeat of the Armada, and in spite of all his disappointments with Virginia, he never lost heart. In 1602 he wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation."