In 1586 Sir Francis Drake arrived off the coast of present day North Carolina with a massive fleet, ships heavy with Spanish gold and riches he’d stolen privateering in the Caribbean, South America, Florida. He came to check in on the Roanoke colony - a group of 108 Englishmen who had set up a fort on the North end of Roanoke Island, part of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. He came bearing these stolen gifts to give to the colony he thought was surely flourishing by now. He found them in bad shape and whisked them back to England to save them from near certain death. But did you know, Drake had more than gold and silver aboard his ships? He had a reported 500 enslaved Africans and Indigenous South Americans that he had also stolen from the Spanish. Did you know that when he returned to England, 400 of them were missing? And did you know that despite the fame and infamy of the English Lost Colony that would disappear a year later, there may have been a whole nother lost colony left behind by Drake that no one even cared to look for? Let’s fix that. 

Sources:

• "The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand" by Michael Oberg
• Washington Daily News "The People Left Behind"
• Smithsonian Magazine "Did Francis Drake Bring Enslaved Africans to North America Decades Before Jamestown?"
• Family Tree Magazine "The Mystery of the Melungeons"

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