Colonisation by the European powers has always had its seamier side and the first attempt to settle English people on the North American mainland - by one of Queen Elizabeth's favourite courtiers, Sir Walter Raleigh - was no exception. The hunt for prize ships and cargoes was a major attraction for the sea-captains and their crews who sailed across the Atlantic in the years 1584-7. For the promoters, including Raleigh, it was usually the prime consideration, the only way of making the voyages financially viable. But for many generation of Americans, especially the people of North Carolina, Raleigh's colonising efforts, however immediately unavailing, sowed seeds of endeavours whose fruits were later gathered by the settlers of Virginia, Maryland and also New England. Englishmen wintered on Roanoke Island a generation before Jamestown.

The papers published here, each by an expert in the period, were delivered at a conference held at the University of Exeter in May 1985 to mark the Quadricentennial of the founding of English America. Privateering, ship design, contemporary English society, the Lost Colonists, the drawings of John White and, of course, Sir Walter Raleigh himself and his adoption as one of America's folk heroes, are all dealt with in an authoritative way, each essay embodying the results of the most recent research, and all are eminently readable, making this a book both for the more informed reader and also for the general public.