Where did an entire settler colony go?

The 1587 expedition to Roanoke Island differed from the earlier ones. Before that, soldiers had been brought here - to hold out for a season and leave. This time, craftspeople arrived with wives and children: they planned to stay. That same August, Virginia Dare was born on the island, the first child of English colonists in America.

Food was scarce from the start, and Governor John White sailed back to England for supplies - for a few months, everyone thought. He returned 3 years later.

The houses had not burned down or been looted - they had been dismantled log by log. That's what people do when they leave unhurriedly and take the boards with them. The site was enclosed by a new palisade, and "CROATOAN" was carved into one of its posts - the name of a nearby island where people friendly to them lived. On a nearby tree were 3 letters: "CRO."

Before leaving, they had agreed on a sign: if you leave, carve where you went; if you leave in distress, add a cross above it. There was no cross. They could not reach Croatoan: a storm snapped the anchor cables, the ships were carried out to sea, and they never came back to shore.

Tree rings later showed that 1587-1589 were the worst drought in this area in about 8 centuries. With no harvest, the colony would have had to go to people who had food. On Hatteras - the very same Croatoan - archaeologists find 16th-century English objects; there is another such site farther west. But the objects could have reached local people through trade, without any resettlement.

That leaves 4 versions, all based on the same fragments. The calmest one: the colony split up and moved in with local communities, and their descendants blended into them. The second: some went inland, westward, where English pottery from the same century has been found. The third: the colonists had a small vessel left, which may have set out for England and failed to make it. The fourth: the people died. Twenty years later, in Jamestown, people repeated secondhand rumors that survivors had been killed.

No version explains everything: no documents from inside the colony survive, and the sea has swallowed part of the shore where its buildings stood.

The mystery rests not on a miracle, but on a gap in the sources. The uncomfortable part is this: where the data end, your hand reaches on its own to fill the gap with a beautiful version.