Governer Lane's colony gets resupplied.

IOTL; Walter Raliegh started a colony on Roanoke Island under governor Lane, but a planned resupply didn't arrive arrived and the colony was in a bad way. Francis Drake arrived with a fleet and attempted to resupply the colony and give it a ship but a storm blew up and the resupply failed so Drake evacuated the colony. A mere 3 or 4 days after the colony was evacuated the planned but much delayed resupply ship arrived with plenty of stores. This was soon followed by Grenville with a flotilla of 6 ships with stores and more colonists, but finding the colony empty he left a mere 15 soldiers on Roanoke.

WI the much delayed supply ship hadn't been so delayed, it arrived some time before Drake? Would the colony hold on if it was well supplied when Drake arrived? What about Grenvilles flotilla, would it leave more than 15 soldiers? Would the lost colony settlers still be sent if Lane was still there plus whoever Grenville left? Would this create a critical mass to carry the colony through the Spanish Aramda and being cut off for several years?
 
An interesting topic, and one I almost created a thread on myself. The colony was in real trouble to be sure, it wasn't just as simple case of running low on supplies. The colony was filled with people ill-suited to being new frontier colonists (there was an absurdly high number of country gentlemen, something like 40% of all the colonists, who weren't prepared to do hard work) plus very few farmers. The colony had failed to procure crops in a suitable sowing period so it had no food to feed itself with, save for what they could buy off the local natives. On top of this, they had thoroughly overstayed their welcome, using up food that the natives needed for winter and causing the early colonial version of diplomatic crises, as well as being associated with bad omens by the natives' 'astrologers'. Essentially they were days away from being massacred, and that's why the Lost Colony ran into problems (they went back to the same location and instantly came under threat). On top of even that, Governor Lane loved the hard life, even saying he preferred to have to fight for his survival to having an easy life, and the colonists were growing to resent the poor standards of life he was happy to refuse to improve. The supplies would help, would get them through the winter and would probably give them the leverage to buy their safety for a few weeks from the natives but they would need to use them wisely and they would need for Raleigh to have sent a better sort of colonists - predominantly men used to growing crops. In addition, they would need to follow the advice they'd received and decamp, moving to Chesapeake, and somewhere around Jamestown (but not Jamestown itself, largely because Lane was far cleverer than to pick that terrible location for a settlement). It would also need things to go right for them, and probably annual resupplies for a few years with none of them going missing (which happened disturbingly often). The colony also needed a source of cash, such as the tobacco which became in vogue a few years on, to make the colony worthwhile.

But it's an interesting question. It definitely could go well if so many things didn't keep going wrong. Before the Jamestown colonies there were also a fair few different ideas about the running of the colony which would be interesting to see develop. For instance, a number of the investors were nobles who had essentially bought the right to become American Lords, and the colony's charter granted these men and Raleigh's appointed governors the right to vassalise the native tribes and issue their own colonial laws. Also, Raleigh wanted the colony to become a base for privateers. I'm quite tempted to try writing a TL based on it, except I'm not sure I could do it justice.
 
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