Chapter One – A New World Beckons
Every great expedition begins before the first vessel leaves the harbor. It begins with an idea—a possibility powerful enough to persuade people to cross an ocean toward a country they have never seen.
Long before the words Lost Colony entered American memory, there was no abandoned settlement, no mysterious carving, and no unanswered question concerning the fate of 117 English colonists.
Chapter Two – Arthur Barlowe’s New World
Arthur Barlowe’s account of that voyage survives as one of the earliest English eyewitness descriptions of the region that would soon be called Virginia.
He began his narrative simply:
“The 27 day of April, in the yeere of our redemption, 1584, we departed the west of England with two Barkes…”
The two vessels sailed southward toward the Canary Islands before crossing the Atlantic by way of the West Indies—a route familiar to experienced sixteenth-century navigators.
After weeks at sea, the sailors encountered their first sign that land was near.