Original subtitles

It is one of the greatest mysteries in all of American history.

Today, the Outer Banks of North Carolina are an inviting tourist destination.

But 400 years ago, they were quite the opposite.

In 1587, over 100 colonists attempted to build the first permanent English

settlement in North America.

on the eight mile long Roanoke Island.

But just three years later, they had all vanished without a trace.

To this day, no one knows what happened.

Tonight, we head straight to the source and hunt for clues where the colony once

stood.

We'll reveal a hidden map, and a secret message the lost settlers left behind

allowing us to track their possible escape route and

we'll conduct brand new DNA testing that may determine once and for all if there

were any survivors as we go in search of the lost

colony of Roanoke

From an early age, we've all been told about the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth

Rock and the Jamestown settlement in Virginia, two of America's most famous

founding colonies.

But what do you know about the one that came before?

Chances are, not much.

In fact, there's very little known about that first settlement.

That's why they call it the Lost Colony of Roanoke.

In 1587, famed English politician Sir Walter Raleigh sponsored an expedition

the New World.

On board, approximately 116 colonists, men, women, and children,

led by Governor John White.

They arrived here, Roanoke Island, off the coast of present -day North

where they built a small town full of carefully constructed houses.

Soon after, Governor White returned to England for supply, leaving behind his

friends and family.

When he returned just three years later, everyone was gone, and the houses

were completely dismantled.

The mystery of what happened to them has remained unsolved for over 400 years.

But as we're about to find out...

That's just one of many mysteries surrounding this incredible doomed

Author Andy Gabriel Powell has spent over a decade researching the lost

of Roanoke.

Today, he's taking us to the northern end of Roanoke Island, the place where

all started in 1587, at the end of an incredible 4 ,000 -mile journey.

This is a ship that's typical of what the lost colonists would have sailed on.

It's a 50 -tonne barque.

It's one of the queen ships, we can tell because of the flag on the stern here.

Desperate for a better life than they had in England, the Roanoke colonists

spent 76 days crossing the Atlantic, stuck below decks for most of the trip.

But the voyage wasn't entirely uneventful.

There was one moment of intrigue along the way, the first of many mysteries to

come.

Now, rather intriguingly, they were supposed to be going to Chesapeake Bay,

Simon Fernando, the pilot, claimed that he'd run out of time.

And he essentially marooned them here on Roanoke rather than take them to

Chesapeake Bay.

In other words, the colonists never intended to be on Roanoke in the first

place. And according to Andy, this means they were doomed from the start.

If the colony had made it to Chesapeake Bay, I think there's every prospect they

would have survived.

There would have been a resupply voyage in 1588. The Indians were considerably

more friendly. There was far more natural resources available.

But instead, they were stranded on Roanoke.

The colonists had no choice but to try and make things work.

From here, the next mystery unfolds.

The precise site of the Roanoke colony has never been identified, but according

to park ranger Josh Nelson, it must be nearby.

When the colonists arrived in 1587, they're setting foot onto Roanoke

and they're seeing much as we do today. It's forested. It's fairly dense woods.

They describe it as being on the north end of Roanoke Island, probably close to

where we stand today.

There is only one surviving account of the colony's location, Governor John

White's diary.

He says they built their houses on a hilled embankment, surrounding them with

wooden palisade for protection.

Is it possible that this is where they started their new lives?

One new life started almost immediately, courtesy of John White's pregnant

daughter, Eleanor.

They're one of the more prominent families to travel on this expedition,

when they arrive on Roanoke Island, they go down in history as having the first

English child born in North America, and that child's name is Virginia Dare.

But the happy times wouldn't last long.

While the colony's first summer was fairly successful,

They soon realized that they were ill -equipped to continue to survive on

Roanoke.

This group would need more people, and they felt like they needed more supplies

to be able to make this a lasting colony.

Originally, somebody else was going, and the whole colony steps forward and

says, No, John, you need to leave yourself.

In August of 1587, John White sailed for England, leaving the colonists without

an experienced leader.

He hoped to be back in just a few months, but once again, the odds would

even higher against the colonists.

Just before his arrival, Queen Elizabeth I has commanded that all ships are to

remain in English port. She's feeling the threat of Spanish invasion at that

point. And what that does is it basically traps John White, and it takes

years before he can finally come over and try to locate this group of people

that he left behind.

And now we've reached the biggest mystery of all.

In 1590, John White describes coming back to Roanoke Island. It's been three

years since leaving the colony. He steps foot on shore.

He talks about walking up a sandy embankment, something like this right

He walks up to the top, and he describes seeing a tree that the bark has been

peeled off of, and the letters CRO have been carved upon it.

According to his journals, White continues on to the settlement, and

finds nothing at all.

His daughter and granddaughter are missing.

In fact, there are no people.

and no houses.

What remains is the wooden palisade that they built, and of course, the CRO

carving that was found.

What could this cryptic message possibly mean?

For John White at the time, he is pretty clear in his journal that he knows

where that's pointing him to.

White believed the carving referred to an island in the south called Croatoan.

inhabited by a Native American tribe of the same name.

Were the colonists attacked by the Croatoan tribe?

John White was desperate to find out.

But in one final cruel twist of fate, White's hopes of finding them were

dashed. The problem is, when he goes back to the vessel, bad weather's coming

up.

Winds continue to push them farther away from Roanoke.

Eventually, it's too late in the year, they are too far away to be able to

return. And so that's the only opportunity that John White had to try

not only his colony, but also his family that had been left behind.

But what seems like the end of the story is really just the beginning.

While each mystery may be unsolvable individually, they all boil down to the

same question.

Where did the lost colonists end up?

For over 400 years, historians have tried to find the answer, with precious

results.

But as we're about to find out, that might all be about to change, thanks to

shocking new theory that could finally lead us in the right direction.

It turns out we may have been looking for the lost colony in the wrong place

this whole time.

What happened to the lost colony of Roanoke in 1590?

Three years prior, the colonists seemed off to a good start in their new home.

But when their governor returned from a resupply mission to England, everyone

was gone.

But what if they left behind more clues than we realized?

In fact, what if we've been looking in the wrong place this whole time?

Ann Poole runs an archaeological and historical society called the Lost

Research Group.

And she thinks the settlers may have built their home in an entirely

area.

I've been searching for the Lost Colony ever since I was 10 years old. I'm going

on 72 now.

According to Anne, in 1587, the shoreline on Roanoke Island was quite

It may have extended over half a mile farther east, but 400 years of erosion

have washed it away.

And if that's the case, experts may have the location of the original settlement

all wrong.

Today, Ann and her team hope to prove this theory by conducting a systematic

underwater dig.

What we're doing is we've got screens that we've sifted the sand in.

We've got shovels. We just bring up a scoop of sand and put it on the screen

sift it and see what's left.

But why are they digging here as opposed to some other part of the shore?

As we've already seen, The Journal of John White describes the colony being

built on a hilled embankment.

But he also mentions one other key detail.

The site had a large growth of scuppernong grapevines.

There is one part of the island with grapevines that old, but it sits three

miles away from the currently accepted location of the colony.

A lot of the geographical features here actually match what John White wrote

about in 1590. He said that when they rode over here to try to find the

that it was high sandy banks, which all this would have been then.

Could this actually be where the Roanoke colony was built?

There's only one way to find out.

Unfortunately, it comes with many challenges.

As opposed to an archaeological dig on land, there's almost no visibility

underwater.

So the team must blindly keep track of their search area as they bring up one

shovel of earth at a time.

What I'm hoping to find is a little ring that says on there, Virginia Day.

You never know.

You could be in this next bucket pool. Here it comes.

I like doing this because of the adventure of it. Not knowing what you're

to bring up from one tablet to the next.

Are we going to solve the mystery?

To search the deeper areas, Ann has also brought in professional divers Duncan

Pinnock and Randy Glaze.

We typically do a lot of diving in blackwater rivers looking for artifacts

fossils. So today we've brought scooters to try to clear sand, which is what we

typically would do in rivers.

They're also armed with an underwater metal detector and high -powered lights

cut through the sound, murky water.

There is rumor of cannon potentially with the lost colony. That would be

exceptionally cool.

As the divers head out,

The shallow water team finds their first artifact of the day.

Found an old piece of pottery.

And this piece isn't the only one.

Before long, they start to unearth several more objects from the past.

But unfortunately, these pieces are from the 17th and 18th centuries.

There's absolutely stuff under there from the 1500s. It's finding it.

There's a problem.

You've probably got 5 to 10 feet of sand above it.

If there's stuff out there, it's very well buried under all the sand.

500 years of sand here.

The methodical work continues.

If this site holds proof of the original Roanoke settlement, it could

potentially take years or even decades to find it.

Hey,

I found a piece of pottery!

It may not look like much, but Robbie might have just made an incredible

discovery.

This shard is unlike any of the others found today.

It's made from a different ceramic, and it's much, much older.

Any of the pieces that are the old jugs and containers, you look at the ones

that have been found, and you can tell by the style and what it's made of.

According to Ann, this piece is part of a 16th century jug of the exact style

and time period of the Roanoke colony.

It could be the proverbial needle in the haystack that proves the lost colony

was right here.

Definitely a possibility that they could have been here.

If the lost colony research group is correct, then they may have given us a

breakthrough in our search.

As opposed to the original location thought to be here, could this instead

the site of the colony?

If so, it has serious implications for what happened during their final days on

Roanoke Island.

They carved the letter CRO into a tree in this location, three miles away.

Therefore, they wouldn't have still been at home when the carving was made.

They would have been on the move, headed north.

For the first time, we may have new clues about which direction the

went when they left their settlement.

From here to here.

And if we follow that path, it leads here, into the Albemarle Sound.

So where did they go next?

As we're about to find out, the answer could have been hiding under our noses

this whole time, thanks to a hidden map that knew technology.

has finally allowed us to see.

The question of what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke is among the most

enduring mysteries in the United States.

But we now have a new theory.

That the colonists headed northwest from Roanoke into the Albemarle Sound.

Where did they go from there?

We may already have the answer, thanks to a hidden map that has only recently

been revealed.

In 2012, historians uncovered a shocking new clue in the hunt for the lost

colony of Roanoke.

They examined something called the Virginia Pars map.

It was painted by Roanoke's governor, John White.

The map reveals useful routes for navigating the rough waters of the

as well as many Native American villages.

But in 2012, it revealed quite a bit more.

The British Museum discovered two small patches where extra paper had been

applied over top of the map.

New technology allowed scientists to see beneath these patches without

disturbing them.

And there...

They made an incredible find.

Governor White had painted a fort here, along the coast of the Albemarle Sound,

and then covered it up.

What could this possibly mean?

Could this secret fort, purposely covered up in John White's map,

new home for the relocated colonists of Roanoke?

Archaeologists have named the fort Site X.

And it's here that the mystery deepens.

We're on our way to Site X. It's a little way up the Albemarle Sound.

And it's a possible location for some of the lost colonists to have settled

after 1587.

Looking at the map, it's easy to see how the colonists could have navigated up

through the Sound.

This is an incredibly detailed map. It measures about 18 by 9 inches. It's

small. But even today, it's still recognizable.

You can still see the Outer Banks region, the Roanoke Island, Lake

It's incredibly detailed. It's a beautiful, beautiful map.

It begs the question, how could Governor White have known this much about the

area in such a short time?

And how would he have been aware of a fort over 50 miles away?

As it turns out, 1587 wasn't the first time John White visited the area.

He had been here two years before, as part of an expedition led by Sir Ralph

Lane, who established a fort in Albemarle Sound.

But this early visit to the New World quickly took a turn for the worse, when

the English accused the natives of stealing from them.

As retribution, Ralph Lane burned their village, killing several tribe members.

Soon, those tensions led the English to abandon the fort and return home.

Lane's fort was here, in the exact spot that was marked on John White's map.

The question is, if John White and the rest of the Roanoke colonists knew about

the fort,

Could this be where they went after abandoning their own colony?

We are now in the area known as Site X.

This is being explored and some archaeological excavations have taken

with the First Colony Foundation.

Many people believe that some of the colonists would have settled here. It is

the location that is hidden on the map by a little piece of paper.

Excavations in this area have turned up signs of life, including a mix of

pottery, some from the local tribes and some from a lot farther away.

They've uncovered some borderware, quite a few fragments of borderware, and

three pieces of North Devon balusterware, which is very typical of

storage jars of the period.

In other words, pottery from England has been discovered on this site.

Could this have come from the survivors of the lost colony of Roanoke?

Researchers here are convinced that it could, but Andy isn't so sure.

The important thing to understand about border ware was that it was prolific. It

was the pottery of choice for London.

Essentially, you could find this stuff everywhere you go in London. It was

produced right up until the mid -19th century.

And there's one more reason the colonists might not have relocated here.

Their safety.

The biggest flaw with the idea of the colonists relocating to the area

is the existence of the Mango Acts and the Chuanists, who Ralph Lane records

fighting with back in 1585.

John White knew that the natives here were hostile.

Ralph Lane's expedition barely managed to escape their wrath.

So the question is, were the Roanoke colonists desperate enough to enter this

dangerous territory, or did they eventually change course and head

else? That's almost certainly why the decision was made to move to be with the

more friendly Native American Indians.

But what is absolutely certain is that the lost colonists needed the help of

the Native American Indians to survive.

Did the natives at Site X suddenly have a change of heart and become friendly

toward the colonists?

Or was it a different friendly tribe that took them in?

Imagine you leave your hometown.

Maybe you're going off to college or a tour of duty in the military.

Three years later, you come back, and your town is gone.

What would you do?

Where would you start looking?

This is exactly what happened to Governor John White when he returned to

Island on August 18, 1590.

His daughter, his granddaughter.

Dozens of dear friends, the entire colony he had worked so hard to

all vanished.

That day, he searched the island and found the letters C -R -O carved into a

tree.

Some of White's men assumed the colonists had been attacked and killed

Croatoan tribe, but the governor had a different idea.

He thought the colonists went peacefully to join the Croatoan at their home on

Hatteras Island.

Unfortunately, he was never able to find out the truth.

Governor White attempted to sail south to Hatteras, but severe storms kept

pushing his ships in the opposite direction.

Eventually, the crew was forced to return to England.

But was White's theory correct?

Is it possible that the colonists successfully relocated to Hatteras

So far, we've tracked the colonists from here, where they may have originated,

to here, where they carved their cryptic message into a tree.

From this point, they had only two options.

Continue straight up the Albemarle Sound into hostile territory, or turn left

and sail south towards Hatteras.

It's a journey that historian Scott Dawson is taking today, because he

he has absolute proof that the colonists did indeed join the Croatoan tribe.

We are now embarking on the same path that the Lost Colony took to go from

Roanoke Island to Croatoan, which is now called Hatteras.

Scott believed this would have been their best chance of survival, because

were no friendly tribes left on the mainland.

The colony came to Croatoan for pretty simple reasons.

Everybody else wanted to kill them.

They had nowhere else to go.

Today, Scott is taking us to the site of a Croatoan village, where he claims

he's found a great deal of evidence.

that this is where the colonists ended up. We're on our way to one of the main

dig sites.

This is a real cornucopia of artifacts from the colonists. It's the closest

thing to time travel you'll ever do.

Scott is convinced that the Roanoke colonists lived with the Hatteras

the remote northern edge of the island.

Scott and archaeologist Mark Horton have conducted yearly digs here for the past

decade.

After each dig, they must recover the site for protection.

But without fail, every time they come back, they find more and more evidence

that the Roanoke colonists may have ended up on Hatteras.

So this right here, this clearing, is where some of your colonists ended up

living with the Croatoan Indians. We found, right where I'm standing, a giant

longhouse with fire pits in it.

And you've got a mixture of European and Croatone artifacts throughout.

Some of the European artifacts that we found from the 16th century, we've got a

sword, we've got a gun.

They also discovered 16th century German stoneware, a copper ring, and a 16th

century coin called a Nuremberg token.

The natives here didn't have glass, they didn't have iron, they didn't have

guns, they didn't have swords. These are all European items.

With ten years of evidence to back him up, Scott is convinced that this is the

exact place the lost colony fled to for safety.

Even though the dig site is currently covered up for the summer, there is

one area where artifacts can be found.

Ten yards south of the dig site, lies a large pile of discarded shells and other

materials, the remnants of a centuries -old trash heap.

While 400 years ago it may have been considered garbage, today it could hold

significant value.

Sometimes we will go back through a spoil heap like this because there are

artifacts that get missed, but you just kind of rake through and give it a once

-over, and there, yep.

This is actually a good piece. This is the lip of a bull.

And you can tell that because they put these markings by the lips.

Through here.

Here's another piece.

This is part of the body.

The fertile trash heap also turns up a few other items, including a nail

to what the colonists would have used.

And that's not all.

Oh, here we go.

Buried deeper, Scott has found a small piece of copper that could potentially

European in origin.

He decides to take it in for chemical analysis.

If we can drill into it and take out some of the inner shavings to test in

lab, we will be able to tell if it is in fact made by Croatoan or if it came

over with the colony.

For 400 years, historians have had very few clues that they know for certain the

Roanoke colonists left behind.

But over the past decade, historian Scott Dawson thinks he has unearthed

more potential evidence on Hatteras Island, 50 miles away.

He believes the colony relocated here to live peacefully with the Croatoan

tribe.

Today, He's testing a newly found piece of copper from Hatteras to see if it

could have been left behind by the lost colonists.

This, if we can prove that it came from England, and we know how it got here, it

is from the 16th century. It's at that level, but the Indians did have some

copper of their own. You can actually drill into this and find out if it came

from North Carolina or if it came from England.

The testing process begins by drilling to the center of the artifact to pull a

metal sample that hasn't been tainted by the outside environment.

If the artifact is from the Croatoan tribe, it will be pure copper panned

the nearby rivers.

But if it might be from the Roanoke colony, it will contain traces of

which was used in England to refine the metal.

Scott is already convinced that the lost colony ended up on Hatteras. This test

could further confirm his belief.

If we test this copper and discover that it's European, it's definitely from the

colony.

Very exciting news. The results from the arsenic and isotopes is it is in fact

from either England or Ireland.

This really reaffirms that it is in fact from the colony.

The findings at Hatterith could be the first actual proof that the lost colony

of Roanoke managed to escape their original settlement.

If they fled to Hatterith or Sidek or somewhere else, there is only one

left to solve.

Were the colonists killed, or did any manage to survive?

In the early 1700s, John Lawson was the first Englishman to explore the Outer

Banks after the colony was lost.

He reported that many of the natives on Hatteras had European traits, such as

light -colored eyes.

Some wore English clothes and spoke English words.

Today, there are still families living in the area with the same last names as

the original colonists, including Dare, Barry, and Bishop.

Many claim mixed Native American ancestry.

Does this prove that the colonists indeed survived, blending in and

families with members of the Croatoan tribe?

It's an interesting theory.

But of course, there's only one real way to find out.

Computer scientist Roberta Estes is convinced that modern DNA testing can

determine what happened to the lost colony of Roanoke.

Her organization, the Lost Colony DNA Project, is searching for definitive

biological proof that the colonists survived after joining a tribe and that

their descendants are still living in the area.

The thing that brought me to this was the science and the puzzle. Being able

solve. the oldest mystery in america you know the oldest cold case in america

what happened to these 117 people and could we use the science to unravel it

invited people from north carolina and that area to come if they had the

of the colonists and a lot of people did and they thought they might be

descended from the colonists because a lot of people have oral history about

that But is it actually possible to prove someone survived after more than

years have gone by?

Roberta is convinced the answer is yes, by proving that they procreated.

If the colonists did join the Croatoan tribe, many would have taken native

in order to continue their family lines.

If that's the case...

Roberta believes she can still identify their offspring through male Y

chromosome DNA lines.

So the Y DNA is inherited by sons from their father, and it's not changed

for very rarely there's a little mutation. And those mutations are what

useful to genealogy because we compare those mutations to each other in that

line. And if the mutations all match, then we know that it's from the same

paternal ancestor.

And so we're looking for matches.

Roberta has received a DNA sample from a North Carolina man with a surname

Brown, which was shared by two Roanoke colonists.

Today, she's ready to test this sample with the help of Dr. Connie Bormans at

the Family Tree DNA Lab in Houston.

They're looking for evidence that this man could be related to lost colonists

William or Henry Brown.

This is the DNA extraction step. What we're doing now is we are removing

everything except the DNA.

Once the DNA is isolated, Mr. Brown's genetic markers will be compared with a

pool of potential English and Native American ancestors to determine his

makeup, also known as his haplogroup.

Is there a chance he's directly descended from a Roanoke colonist?

We're about to find out.

Today, DNA scientists are closer than ever to proving that the lost colony of

Roanoke may have actually survived.

If their theories are correct, descendants of the colonists must still

likely with mixed Native American and English ancestry.

which could potentially be tracked and matched back to the original colonist's

male DNA line.

They're currently testing a North Carolina man with a surname Brown,

just the right mix of genetic markers.

So now Mr. Brown's results are back. And I've taken a look here at the computer

to see what it tells us.

And Mr. Brown is known to be both native...

And European. That's his background, his family history.

But the only part that we're interested in is his Y DNA that he inherited from

his father, who inherited from his father.

The question is, could Mr. Brown's line of inherited DNA lead all the way back

to Roanoke colonists William or Henry Brown?

If so, then his Y DNA must bear European traits.

If instead it's Native American.

then he can't be a match.

This is the moment of truth.

Could today's Mr.

Brown possibly prove that the lost colonies survived?

First of all, he does match other brown men, so that's good. We know that he has

a common brown ancestor on his paternal line.

And I looked at his haplogroup. His haplogroup is his clan.

So that means that I can tell whether he's Native American, African.

European or Asian at a quick glance.

And Mr. Brown is European.

So Mr.

Brown is a good candidate to be one of our lost colonists.

And Mr. Brown is not alone.

Roberta believed there could potentially be thousands of other descendants out

there.

Someday, she may even be able to create a complete list of precisely which

colonists survived.

For now, she's well on her way to identifying at least one potential

Today's Mr.

Brown shares a surname with two of Roanoke's original settlers.

He lives in the same area the colony once stood, and his genetic background

just the right combination of Native American and English.

Thanks to this test result, Mr. Brown could be the link that finally proved

the lost colony of Roanoke survived.

Roberta continues to press on, finding more and more potential matches, hoping

that each will eventually connect back to the original colonists' lines in

England.

It would be a defining moment in our history.

And I think that's one of the reasons why so many people have tried. But you

can't do it without the DNA. This is the last step.

The DNA is not the first step. It's the last step. It's the confirming step that

we need. And I would love to be able to do that. And if I can't find it, maybe

somebody else can someday.

Our search for the lost colony of Roanoke.

has led to a number of compelling possibilities.

We now have new theories on the colonists' movements and where they

ended up.

We also have evidence that at least some of them may have survived and built

families whose descendants still live in the area.

But there are still some mysteries left to be solved.

What made the colonists leave Roanoke in the first place?

Did they visit Site X or head straight to Hatteras Island?

And if they did find safe harbor with a friendly native tribe, did they ever

wonder why no one came looking?

We will never know their thoughts, but we do know their names.

William and Henry Brown, Morris Allen, Rose Payne, Virginia Dare,

and over 100 others.

Gone.

but most certainly not forgotten.

It's the oldest missing persons case in America, and yet today there are more

people dedicated to solving it than ever before.

Thanks to their efforts, the lost colony of Roanoke might not be lost for much

longer.

The search continues.