The lost colony of Roanoke Island, North Carolina, was England's first bold experiment in civilian empire building and the first attempt at peaceful co-existence between Native Americans and the English. It disappeared without trace, defeating intense efforts (at the time and later by historical detectives) to find it. More than one hundred men and women, plus two babes-in-arms, were abandoned there. They proved expendable pawns in an international power game, played by warring nations, grasping financiers and rapacious sailors. Even their powerful patron, Sir Walter Ralegh, lost interest in their welfare as he vainly intrigued to maintain his own position at court. The only man to risk his life in the lonely, heart-breaking battle to get relief supplies to the colony was the artist John White, Roanoke's unlikely choice for governor and, in the end, its sole survivor. The colony included his own daughter and new-born grandchild. This new account of the tragedy gives a convincing explanation of how the whole project was doomed from the start.

Phil Jones sets the tragedy in its global context and lays bare the myth of Elizabethan sea power, examining the true motives of its supposedly selfless heroes, who conveniently managed to reconcile patriotism with profiteering. With officially sanctioned piracy and plunder the only incentive for sailors in a private-enterprise war against Spain, it is hardly surprising that making money became the overriding priority to which everything else was sacrificed, including the desperate civilians of Roanoke Island. The subsequent search for them among the local Indian tribes brought to light a grisly tale of ethnic cleansing. It heralded a race war of genocidal proportions, as Europeans and Native Americans fought for the control of a continent, a battle in which imported alien disease rather than the superiority of European technology and culture was triumphant.