The United States will celebrate its 250th birthday this year, and the Daily Mail's Queens, Kings and Dastardly Things podcast is marking the occasion with a special three part series on the Revolutionary War.
In the first episode of The Last King of America, royal historians Robert Hardman and Kate Williams chart the founding of the USA, from the arrival of the first English colonists to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Williams describes how the lives of those early colonists were fraught with danger. The mortality rate was high and the opportunities for personal enrichment vastly overstated.
The historian explained: 'I compare those first settlers to people who say they would go and live on Mars today.
'They knew they would be boarding a ship and going to a place they would likely never come back from.
'They knew they could die on the journey. They didn't know what was waiting for them when they arrived.
'Still, they went because the prospect of making a success of their lives was so entrancing.'
Mystery still surrounds the first failed attempt at establishing a permanent settlement in North America.
Known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke, the settlement was planned and funded by legendary explorer Sir Walter Raleigh on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I.
The Queen had high hopes for the venture, looking to challenge Spain's dominance over the riches of the New World.
Despite the deep pockets of the Crown and the experience of Raleigh, the colony would collapse when all 117 colonists vanished in eerie circumstances.
Williams explores the competing theories over what happened to the lost settlers.
Raleigh entrusted John White, an artist and cartographer, to lead the expedition and govern the new colony.
White had already visited North America in 1585, when an attempt was made to establish a military outpost.
Sir Francis Drake had to evacuate the base a year later after the soldiers stationed there ran out of supplies following clashes with local Native American tribes.
Confident the mistakes of the failed outpost had been learned, White brought his pregnant daughter and son-in-law with him on his return voyage, part of a group of 117 men, women and children.
Their mission immediately got off to a rocky start. The settlers were meant to be dropped off in Chesapeake Bay but the ship’s pilot refused to take them any further, instead abandoning them at the site of the military outpost.
Within days of landing, one colonist was killed in a skirmish with tribesmen. The colonists then retaliated but targeted the wrong tribe, souring relations with all Native Americans in the area.
The settlers burnt through their food stores and without the help of local tribes, struggled to farm the land.
They appealed to their leader White to return to England and come back with the necessary supplies to keep the colony afloat.
Just nine days after the birth of his granddaughter Virginia, the first English settler born in North America, White set sail back to England.
War with the Spanish would delay his return to Roanoke by almost three years. In 1588, Queen Elizabeth I commandeered every vessel to protect England from the mighty Spanish Armada.
Upon White’s return, he found Roanoke completely uninhabited with no obvious clues as to the colonists’ whereabouts.
The only hint as to what might have happened to them was the word ‘Croatoan’ ominously etched into the side of a tree.
Upon White's return, he found Roanoke completely uninhabited with no obvious clues as to the colonists' whereabouts.
'It's a mystery what happened', Williams told the podcast.
'Did they die or where they assimilated into the local population?'
One theory states that the settlers fled the outpost in desperation for food and were massacred somewhere deeper inland or succumbed to starvation.
Many historians believe, as Williams alludes to, that the English instead assimilated into a local tribe.
Archaeologists who support the idea point to excavations of Native American villages on nearby Hatteras Island that have uncovered English pottery, German coins and European sword fragments.
There are also reports that colonists who arrived later to North America claimed to meet native people with blue eyes who could speak perfect English.
If White's settlers did join a friendly tribe, it could also explain the tree etching. Perhaps, one of the colonists wanted to leave a note of where they had gone, joining the Croatoan tribe.
The mystery will likely never be solved, although scientists are conducting genetic analysis of local burial sites in search of European DNA.
The first permanent English settlement in America did not happen for another two decades, with Jamestown in 1607.
It is thought that the failure of the colony at Roanoke contributed to Jamestown’s success, with those settlers working with the Native Americans for access to supplies and information.