Today in history: October 24
The Lost Colony, a daredevil plunge, and a master's last illusion…
This week’s little stories from contemporary historical sources…
Leaving a mystery behind, 1590
The mystery of Roanoke is well known, and continues to draw interest. Only this year, a hidden symbol was identified by shining ultraviolet light on a map made in 1590 by John White, showing a faint red-and-blue fort 50 miles west of the original settlement, and has been suggested as the place that some of the missing colonists had fled.
But let’s backtrack and remind ourselves of the story: in 1587, over 100 English settlers established a colony on Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina, organized by Sir Walter Raleigh1 (who never actually went there) and under the leadership of John White.
Soon after, White returned to England for supplies, but his trip was delayed by the war with Spain. When he finally came back in 1590, the colony was deserted – the homes were dismantled, and the only clue was the word ‘CROATOAN’ carved into a post. There was no sign of struggle or remains, and the fate of the settlers remains unknown. Despite many theories, the disappearance of the Roanoke colonists has never been definitively solved.
So it was that in October 1590, White gave up his attempt to find his former community. In his narrative published as ‘The fifth voyage of M. John White into the West Indies and parts of America called Virginia, in the year 1590’, White tersely wrote: ‘On Saturday the 24th we came in safety, God be thanked, to an anchor in Plymouth.’
The earlier part of his narrative, from August, gives us the shock of finding the colonists were gone:
Before we could reach the place where our planters had been left, it grew so exceedingly dark that we overshot the spot by about a quarter of a mile. There we saw, toward the north end of the island, the light of a great fire through the woods, to which we immediately rowed.
When we came right over against it, we dropped our grapnel near the shore and sounded with a trumpet… [and] played many familiar English tunes and songs, calling to them in a friendly manner. But we had no answer.
We therefore landed at daybreak, and coming to the fire, we found the grass and several rotten trees burning about the place… And as we climbed up the sandy bank, upon a tree on the very top were carved in fair Roman letters the characters “CRO.” We immediately knew these letters to signify the place where I should find the planters seated, according to a secret token agreed upon between them and me at my last departure.
The token was that in any way they should not fail to write or carve on trees or doorposts the name of the place where they should be settled. For, at my coming away, they were prepared to move from Roanoke fifty miles into the mainland. Therefore, at my departure from them in the year 1587, I instructed them that if they should be in distress in any of those places, they should carve above the letters or name a cross ✠ in this form. But we found no such sign of distress.
Having considered this well, we proceeded toward the place where they had been left, among several houses—but we found the houses taken down, and the place strongly enclosed with a high palisade made of large trees, with curtains and flankers, very fort-like. On one of the chief posts at the right side of the entrance, the bark had been stripped off, and five feet from the ground, in fair capital letters, was carved the word “CROATOAN,” without any cross or sign of distress.
After this, we entered the palisade, where we found many bars of iron, two pigs of lead, four iron fowlers, iron sacker-shot, and other heavy things lying here and there, almost overgrown with grass and weeds. From there we went along the waterside toward the point of the creek, to see if we could find any of their boats or pinnace, but we could perceive no sign of them, nor any of the small ordnance which had been left with them at my departure.
The fort found on the map this year suggests perhaps White knew where they’d go – but this may actually be a red (and blue) herring because archaeological evidence found this summer on Hatteras Island – what was then called Croatoan – suggests some of the colonists may simply have assimilated into the native tribes.
White’s journal says no more of what, if anything, was found – strange given that he lost his daughter Eleanor and his granddaughter Virginia – the latter renowned still as the first English child born in an English colony in north America. What happened to John himself back in England (or possibly Ireland) isn’t really known either, though he left a legacy of fine maps and watercolours of the New World now in the British Museum.
No barrel of laughs, 1901
It’s October 24th, 1901 and an American schoolteacher who has fallen on hard times has come up with a fundraising stunt to mark her 63rd birthday (although oddly she claimed to be in her 40s): going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Her name is Annie Edson Taylor, and we can read what happened in her own words:2
[I] took off my hat, street skirt and coat, and entered the barrel, the barrel being placed in the water. I then adjusted a woven stap around my waist, and a strap front the back went through an eye in the foot of the barrel, fastened to a buckle in front to my belt. This was to keep my head from violent contact with the barrel. I placed two cushions on my person extending down to the knees one in the bottom of the barrel. When all was in readiness, the head of the barrel was screwed down perfectly tight. A tube inserted in the chines I held in my hand, and an air-pump was used to fill the barrel with fresh air, I then put a cork in the end of the tube I held in my hand…
Thus, as the rap came on the barrel which told me I was cut loose, and no human power could avail me, for I was started on a trip no traveler had ever taken, my heart swelled, and for some moments I felt as though I were being suffocated, but I determined to be brave. By a supreme effort of will I calmed myself at once, and began earnestly to pray—if it was God’s will to spare my life, if not to give me an easy death.
The trip through the Rapids was nothing but a pleasant sensation. I could feel the barrel toss and often turning partly over, until I come to first drop over a reef, when the bottom caught for a moment. The barrel swerved, and for a moment I thought I would go head first, but with a jerk it loosened, turned foot down, and plunged to the bottom. I felt the water close over my head, but was not hurt. The barrel rose to the surface instantly, and pursued its course toward the mighty cataract.
Again the barrel swerved to the left, and I knew instinctively that should it pursue its course it would be dashed to atoms on the giant rocks near the Canadian shore. But God was good. The barrel paused, raised slowly on its head, then turned over on a rock and pursued its course down to the Brink of the Precipice.
I tore the cushion from my head, placed it quickly under my knees, and dropped to the bottom of the barrel.
As I reached the brink the barrel did what I predicted it would do, paused for a moment and then made the awful plunge of 158 feet to the boiling cauldron below. I thought for a moment my senses were lost. The feeling was one of absolute horror, but still I knew when I struck the water of the lower river. The shock was not so great, but I went down, down until the momentum had spent itself.
Below the surface all was still. Not a sound reached me. Slowly I arose, but unfortunately on coming to the surface I came under the falling of water and was carried back of the sheet that tumbles over the precipice. It was then I began to suffer. The barrel was whirled like a dasher in a churn; lifted, I should think, four or five feet clear of the water, and thrown violently about, at the same time turned around and around with the greatest velocity, struck on the rocks, and each moment water was forcing itself in at the point where the anvil at the bottom had been imperfectly put on. As the barrel turned violently around and around the sensation was terrible.
[Eventually the barrel came to a rest on the rocks.]
…A wrench was brought, the barrel opened, and the fresh air struck me. A man’s voice exclaimed:
“The woman is alive!”
I answered, “Yes, she is, though much hurt and confused.” I was carried to my boarding house, and after suffering great pain was restored to my normal condition. The greater part of my life that remains to me will be devoted to doing good to others.
Good intentions, perhaps… or good publicity. But sadly although Annie briefly dined out on her pioneering adventure,3 she wasted her savings on hiring detectives to track down her barrel after it was stolen, and ultimately died penniless in 1921 at the age of 82 (but now claiming to be 57). So it goes.
A vanishing star, 1926
It’s now October 24th 1926 and we’re at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit. Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance plays in the orchestra it as the night’s star turn begins his show: Harry Houdini. The 52-year-old performer gives it his all, performing various illusions, but something is off, and he doesn’t look well. As the curtain falls halfway through the show, he collapses. He soldiers on through the second act, but a report in the next day’s New York Times tells us what was afoot:
Harry Houdini, famous magician, was reported near death in Grace Hospital tonight several hours after an operation for removal of the appendix had been performed.
The statement issued by physicians attending the magician said:
“Mr. Houdini was operated on at Grace Hospital at 3 o’clock this afternoon for an obscure abdominal condition which proved to be anomalous appendicitis. The appendix had ruptured far over on the left side of the abdomen and a strepococcic peritonitis has developed as a result of the rupture. Grave doubts are entertained for his recovery.”
… Houdini was taken ill Sunday afternoon, but insisted on going through with his performances at the Garrick Theatre in the evening despite the fact that his temperature was 104 and that a physician who examined him at the time declared that he was suffering from appendicitis.
According to Houdini’s manager, the magician complained of severe abdominal pains on the train while traveling to Detroit from Montreal Sunday. The first twinge of pain was felt last week after he had engaged in a friendly sparring match with a newspaper man in his dressing room in a Montreal theatre.4
Detroit physicians say this may have brought on complications that developed into acute appendicitis, although Houdini suffered no inconvenience at the time.
It would be his last show… and a week later he would undertake his last disappearing act, so to speak, never to return. And so it goes.
We’ve encountered Sir Walter’s sexual proclivities here before. And we’ve met John White briefly too.
From her pamphlet Over the Falls, 1902.
Almost pioneering: she sent a cat down two days earlier to test that surviving the trip was plausible.
“Friendly sparring match” seems to be a wild understatement, given that the newspaper man, Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead, delivered a series of what an eyewitness described as “hammer-like blows”.