The historic object of chief interest at Fort Raleigh is the fort built
by Ralph Lane during 1585-86 and called by him "the new Fort in
Virginia." As the settlers of the Lost Colony of 1587 are known to have
rebuilt for their own use the houses which Lane's men constructed about
the fort, it may be safely assumed that this same fort served them also
for a time, at least until they found it necessary to erect the great
stockade made of tree trunks that Governor White found enclosing their
settlement area in 1590.
[Illustration: _Aerial view of the restored fort._]
In an earlier part of this book, the history of the fort between 1586
and 1896 has been traced. During 1935-46, National Park Service
historians made intensive historical studies of all available
documentary and map data relating to the fort. They concluded that the
fort surveyed for the Roanoke Colony Historical Association, in 1896,
was Lane's fort and surmised that its shape was similar to that of the
fort built by Lane in Puerto Rico in 1585. They could only surmise this
because, unlike Lane's fort in Puerto Rico which is shown in a drawing
by John White now in the British Museum, no picture or plan of Lane's
fort on Roanoke Island has survived. National Park Service archeological
work carried on under the direction of Archeologist J. C. Harrington
during the summers of 1947, 1948, and 1950 established the truth of the
conjectures of the historians. The true shape of the fort was made
known. Enough of the fort moat, or ditch, was found intact to justify
the restoration of the fort, and valuable artifact materials were
recovered at the fort site and west of the fort entrance.
[Illustration: _The fort during the work of restoration._]
As the fort stands today, the greater part of the ditch is the original
moat of 1585-86, but the parapet has been restored. In the interval
between 1586 and 1947, wind, rain, and snow had washed the parapet of
the fort into the fort ditch. Leaf mold had also accumulated there.
Archeological studies of these materials indicated that the fort was of
great age. After careful archeological work at the fort and its environs
in 1947 and 1948, it was decided in 1950 to restore the fort which had
been shown to be the remains of an Elizabethan work. The earthen fill
was removed from the ditch, or moat, of the fort and was placed where
the parapet had been and the parapet built up once more. Except for the
fact that the archeologists worked slowly with painstaking care to
follow the lines of the original ditch, and Lane's soldiers must have
worked rapidly with shovels, the new and the old process of building the
parapet of the fort must have been much the same. The amount of earth in
the original ditch, as disclosed through archeological methods,
determined the height of the parapet, which was shaped in accordance
with normal angles of repose and data from contemporary manuals on
fortification such as Paul Ive's, _The Practice of Fortification_,
(London, 1589).
Lane's fort, as revealed and restored by the archeologist, is basically
a square, with pointed bastions built on two sides of the square and an
octagonal bastion built on the third side of the square. This
last-mentioned bastion is suggestive of the arrowhead bastion of Lane's
Puerto Rican fort as pictured by John White. It is also suggestive of
the octagonal bastion shown on the plan of St. George's fort built in
Maine by Popham in 1607. As the fort carries the distinctive features of
Lane's Puerto Rican fort, the pointed bastions built on the sides of the
square instead of at the corners as in later fortification technique (a
system either peculiar to Lane or at least quite rare), the conclusion
is irresistible that Lane was the original builder.
The parapet of the fort encloses an area approximately 50 feet square.
The interior had been dug into so many times and in so many places by
Indians, later settlers, soldiers of the Civil War period, and by
Talcort Williams that the National Park Service archeologist was unable
to say for sure what structures had been inside of the fort. Traces of
what may have been one long structure or two short ones were found near
the center of the fort at right angles to the main entrance. Presumably,
there were a well and a powder magazine. The few brickbats found may
relate to the footings or chimneys of the structure, or structures, in
the fort or to the magazine. The one measurable side of one of the brick
fragments found was of the proper gauge to have been of the Elizabethan
period, when the sizes of bricks were regulated by law.
[Illustration: _Typical section through the original fort ditch and
the reconstructed parapet._]
The location of the fort, not far from the water's edge, commanding a
channel of Roanoke Sound in use for small boats even in later colonial
times, bespeaks its purpose of defending the colonists not only against
the Indians but also against an always probable attack from Spain. An
enemy ship approaching from Port Ferdinando (Hatoraske) or Trinety
Harbor, north of Hatoraske, would have come under the guns of the fort,
consisting of some brass cannon and at least "four iron fowlers" (light
cannon). Some of the cannon fired "iron saker shot," which would be iron
balls weighing about 6 pounds. Today, large dunes lie between the fort
and the sound and obstruct the view. However, as archeological tests
show that the dunes are later than the period of settlement, it is clear
that the fort originally commanded a view of Roanoke Sound.