THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 10, 1995 TAG: 9509080230
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
ERIC HAUSE, on any given day, is a very busy man. As director of marketing and public relations for ``The Lost Colony,'' he's usually in a whirlwind of work this time of year, preparing to close the season and getting ready for next year's program.
When I caught up with him at the end of August, his whirlwind had turned into a frenzy of preparation for an Elizabethan Festival in Manteo and the show's last performance of its 55th season.
However, on the morning I arrived, things were even busier than I expected for my ``behind-the-scenes'' tour of the nation's oldest outdoor theater production, which first opened on July 4, 1937. Word had reached the Outer Banks of North Carolina to prepare to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Felix.
Before I reached Hause's office, radio reports were reporting that the storm had taken dead aim on the coast of North Carolina and those of us left on the beach were in the cross-hairs of a potential natural disaster with Manteo at the center of a ground-point zero for the storm's landfall.
Never mind natural disasters just hours away, Hause calmly invited me to visit as he conducted a complete hurricane preparation operation for his 120-member cast and 28-acting technicians staff and the complete storing away of the Lost Colony props, costumes and stage lighting worth close to $3 million to replace.
``Well if it's history you came for, looks like we're in for some today,'' Hause said with a warm grin as he hung up the phone. ``In the past, we've lost a season because of German U-boat activity offshore, a fire destroyed the set one year, and of course a hurricane literally washed us away decades ago.
``With Felix on the way, it's anybody's guess about tonight's performance, but the show will go on to the end of the season.
``And the 55th has been great,'' he added with the confidence of a veteran of both ``The Lost Colony'' and the unpredictability of Outer Banks weather. ``But you know I wouldn't trade this experience for any other,'' he said getting up to give me the promised tour and grabbing a two-way radio to stay in touch with the ``shoring-up'' we could hear by the hammers, saws and sheets of plywood stacking in the background.
``Walking outdoors a few feet from my office usually has a calming effect, even now,'' Hause said. ``The sound of the wind overhead in the pines can really take you back to that day on August 27, 1587, when Governor John White sailed from Roanoke Island, leaving the settlers of Fort Raleigh behind. In my spare time, I like to study the history of the colony and when you work here, you can't avoid wondering, like so many over the last four centuries: What happened to the `Lost Colony' ?''
Hause is a walking storehouse of knowledge as he recounts stories of a possible Indian massacre and debates details about why that is the most popularly held belief about the colony's fate.
``Of course there is the theory that they wandered north after giving up hope after three years that Governor White would ever return,'' he said. ``I've heard about the possibility of Colonial artifacts of that period turning up in Indian graves in Virginia Beach.''
Noted Lost Colony historian David Beers Quinn also agrees that they went north to Lynnhaven Bay and settled with friendly Indians there, Hause noted.
I posed the question about the origins of ``Fort Lane'' off London Boulevard in Portsmouth. As early as 1586, documents prove that Governor White and naturalist Thomas Harriot made an expedition to the Elizabeth River and mapped the shores and Indian villages near the sites that would one day be Norfolk and Portsmouth.
Ralf Lane, a military commander of the earlier expeditions, had left a series of forts or ``keeps'' with supplies and a few weapons behind in this area, according to maps that date to this period. Could the Roanoke colonists have been searching for ``Fort Lane'' as they headed north to Lynnhaven Bay?
``The Fort Lane question is an interesting one,'' admits Hause, ``but like all good mysteries, we need really hard evidence to solve it and as of now, the case is still open.''
As we made our way down to the Waterside Theater with its scenic backdrop of the Albemarle Sound, cast members and staff were literally ``battening down the hatches.'' Pondering the moment, I thought maybe it was a day like this during the first evacuation of Roanoke Island when the colonists came to a conclusion it was too dangerous to stay - and perhaps too dangerous to leave.
But disappear they did.
Just then a young man in his 16th century costume came running up with the news that Roanoke Island had to be evacuated immediately.
``We have rooms and shelter further inland,'' Hause said. ``Fortunately, we've taken events like hurricanes into consideration.''
We returned to Hause's office through the pine forests that cover the park. The wind was beginning to gust, the pines' earlier whisper now carried a more serious warning. Like the colonists who left here to unknown fates, it was time for us to leave, also.
On the drive back I kept thinking, perhaps it was a great storm from the sea, like Hurricane Felix, that swept over the region, washing away any remnants of those 100-odd men, women and children now known because of Paul Green and his play ``The Lost Colony.''
At any rate, just as Hause had wished as we said goodbye, the colony's final destination remains just out of reach, perhaps a whisper too faint in the pine forests of Roanoke Island to be heard and deciphered by modern man.
Indeed, as playwright Green wrote in the script for the historical narrative, ``. . . here once walked the men of dreams,'' the mystery of Roanoke Island's Lost Colony will continue to haunt the imaginations of audiences still to come.
``That's the way I like it,'' Hause admitted. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by ALAN FLANDERS
White caps appear behind the ``Lost Colony'' stage as hurricane
Felix approaches. Could such a storm in the 16th century have
washed away remnants of that brave group of settlers?
by CNB