Nor was the site the best obtainable.

The settlers finally abandoned the place and scattered to various points along the northern coast.
In 1669 the Lords Proprietaries sent out from England three ships, the Carolina, the Port Royal, and the Albemarle, with about a hundred colonists aboard.

Taking the old sea road, they came at last to Barbados, and here the Albemarle, seized by a storm, was wrecked.

The two other ships, with a Barbados sloop, sailed on anal were approaching the Bahamas when another hurricane destroyed the Port Royal.

The Carolina, however, pushed on with the sloop, reached Bermuda, and rested there; then, together with a small ship purchased in these islands, she turned west by south and came in March of 1670 to the good harbor of Port Royal, South Carolina.
Southward from the harbor where the ships rode, stretched old Florida, held by the Spaniards.