with any safety to be brought into the harbour: seeing furthermore,
our hope for supply with Sir Richard Greenville, so undoubtedly
promised us before Easter, not yet come, neither then likely to come
this yeere, considering the doings in England for Flanders, and also
for America, that therefore I would resolve my selfe with my company
to goe into England in that fleet, and accordingly to make request to
the Generall in all our names, that he would be pleased to give us
present passage with him. Which request of ours by my selfe delivered
unto him, hee most readily assented unto: and so he sending
immediately his pinnesses unto our Island for the fetching away of a
few that there were left with our baggage, the weather was so
boisterous, and the pinnesses so often on ground, that the most of all
we had, with all our Cards, Books and writings were by the Sailers
cast overboard, the greater number of the fleet being much agrieved
with their long and dangereus abode in that miserable road.

From whence the Generall in the name of the Almighty, weying his
ankers (having bestowed us among his fleet) for the reliefe of whom
hee had in that storme susteined more perill of wracke then in all his
former most honourable actions against the Spanyards, with praises
unto God for all, set saile the nineteenth of June 1596, and arrived
in Portsmouth the seven and twentieth of July the same yeere.

[1] Ralph Lane went out to Virginia in 1585 with the ships
dispatched in that year by Raleigh and commanded by Sir Richard
Grenville, the company numbering one hundred householders. After
landing at Roanoke, Grenville returned to England for supplies,
leaving the colony in charge of Lane. Lane has left an important
account of the experiences and sufferings of the colonists during
the absence of Grenville, whose return was delayed. Drake,