The Story

[The Weather Gage]

The Virginia Company is looking to expand for a second settlement somewhere else on Virginia’s coast and look farther south, to the Pamlico Sound where previous attempts at colonization have been made, with little success. However, they believe that Ocracoke Island offers an excellent jumping off point for exploration into the interior, with plentiful pines for building and the production of pitch and turpentine until more profitable products can be produced. This new colony is intended start as a sort of farming and fishing community to facilitate and maximize later resource gathering. The Company is especially interested in any metals, particularly copper and gold that may be found. In winter 1608, Captain George Elwood was appointed governor of this prospective settlement and dispatched with 150 men to build the basis of this community. The ships that deposited him and his men in spring 1609 returned safely to England with reports that Elwood had gotten right to work and that a fort had been completed before the ships departed.

It is now 1610, and the company has dispatched more settlers, mostly laborers, fishermen, loggers, and soldiers, to build on Governor Elwood’s work and create a truly permanent presence in the region.

But it is not an entirely rosy picture for those venturing to Ocracoke. There are the typical dangers of settling this vast, new frontier; ocean crossings, savage natives, disease, but there are also other things that could sink the entire venture. There are rumors that certain Virginia Company investors hope to turn Ocracoke into a base for privateers to harass and capture Spanish shipping. The Spanish are not deaf to these rumors, and still ache from the depredations wreaked by Sir Francis Drake. Indeed, the Spanish ambassador regularly protests the existence of any English colony in the Americas to King James. Then, there is the mysterious disappearance of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke colony in 1590 when relief ships arrived and were greeted by an entirely empty town. Some say the Indians or the Spanish wiped them out. Others contend that the settlers ran low on food and took to staying with the savages and may still be found far to the west. Still others say that the Roanoke settlers upset the savage Indian gods who then did unspeakable things to them.

But all that Indian magic stuff is just hogwash and it all happened twenty years ago anyway! Besides, we’re at peace with Spain! And should trouble arise, Jamestown is only a week or so away by boat!