The choice was surprising, though it may be explained by the connections Lane had in the area, including with the Sheriff of Northamptonshire as well as his London residence, intended to be less costly than if he had served from Higham Ferrers itself.

The voyage began on 9 April 1585, when Lane set sail from Plymouth with Raleigh's cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, a sailor who upon return to England wrote a book about his findings in the Chesapeake.

The voyage on the Tiger proved difficult, as Lane quarrelled with the aggressive leadership of Grenville, whom he found a person of "intolerable pride and insatiable ambition".

[9] : 63  The expedition managed to repair the ship, and in early July met the Roebuck and Dorothy, which had come to the Outer Banks a few weeks earlier.

[9]: 72 Despite this incident and the shortage of food, Lane and 107 other settlers were left on Roanoke Island, Virginia, on 17 August 1585[2][12] to establish a colony on its north end.

They built a small fort, probably similar to the one at Guayanilla Bay, but Lane and Grenville fell out with each other, a foretaste of the troubles that dogged the colony until the end.

The English treated them with suspicious harshness; on several occasions the colonists kidnapped Indians to extort supplies or extract information.

Lane's military background led him to rely more upon arms than diplomacy, and that approach soured his dealings with the natives from the start.

[14]: 5  The Account of Ralph Lane first appeared in Richard Hakluyt's Principall Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation in 1589.

Finding the colony abandoned, Grenville returned to England with the bulk of his force, leaving behind a small detachment to maintain a British presence and protect Raleigh's claim to Virginia.