But these things Paterson would not write for months yet. He was now gravely ill and could do nothing for himself, nor be removed from the little cabin built for him. From the moment he had been carried away from Caledonia he had slowly relinquished his interest in life. All had gone—his wife, a dream, his friends and companions, and it is possible that he felt so deep a responsibility for the omnipresence of death that he fled from it into silly regret for the loss of some brass kettles and iron pots. In a little while even these were of no importance. His spirit was still, his eyes clouded, his mind gone. The same three Scots who had visited Drummond's ship later came aboard the Unicorn. "The grief has broke Mr. Paterson's heart and brain," they said, "and now he's a child."
Recovering from fever and writing to his brother William, Samuel Vetch had no sympathy for Paterson. He said that all misfortune and disaster might be blamed on the man's "knavery or folly or both". Robert Drummond, also recovered and writing his first report to the Directors, blamed no one by name and Providence only by implication. The responsibility for any future calamities, he further implied, might well be the Company's. "I am afraid I shall have a hard pull to get the ship home, for my people are still dying, being all weak: and men is very scarce here to be had.... With God's help, fourteen days or three weeks hence I design to put to sea. I am not capable by writing to give you an account of the miserable condition we have undergone, first before we came off Caledonia, being starved and abandoned by the world, as also the great difficulty of getting the ship to this place."
The claim that he might put the ships to sea within three weeks was insanely optimistic, and perhaps he did not believe it himself. He could scarcely muster enough seamen to make one crew for the Atlantic passage, even should he be able to provision the ship. And the matter of provisions was his greatest problem. There was a strong Scots settlement in New England. The principal traders of East and West Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York were Scots, and there were more of them to the south in Maryland and Virginia, but although they were rich, influential, and a growing political power, they were watched with intense suspicion. The Proclamations had frightened them, and had effectively choked any more practical sympathy like the dispatch of The Three Sisters to Darien. The Navigation Acts had always been strictly enforced against them—one of their ships had recently been arrested in the Thames—and they were often accused of treason and Jacobite plots. Governor Jeremiah Basse of Jersey, a bigoted Anabaptist minister who sometimes behaved as if he were still fighting the Civil War, believed (with some justice) that many of them were in collusion with pirates. He spoke of the Scots as if they were a creeping disease in the colonies, "their numbers yearly increasing whilst the interest of our nation seems so much declining."
The Governor of New York, Massachusetts and New Hampshire was Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, a high-spirited, impulsive Anglo-Irishman in his early sixties, rightly regarded by his friend the King as "honest and intrepid". He hated corruption and bribery, and had an aristocrat's fine contempt for most of the colonials who attempted to influence his government. The practice of Law in New York, he said, was in the hands of scandalous characters, one of them a dancing-master, another a glover, and the third a Scot who should have been hanged for blasphemy in Edinburgh. He suffered badly from the gout, and was sometimes sorry for his lack of charity when in pain. He worked from five in the morning until ten at night, and preferred the company of his valet de chambre to that of his lazy officers. He was sorry for the Caledonians, but his orders were to give no assistance and he was determined to obey. In any case, he had other things on his mind at this moment. He was away from town, concluding a successful treaty with the Iroquois, and when he returned he would have to deal with the pirate William Kidd. This unfortunate, pock-marked Scot had once been given the Governor's commission as a privateer, had interpreted it as a licence for piracy, and had come back to New England with £1,000 in gold, several ingots of silver, and a handsome enamelled box of jewels which he boldly sent to Lady Bellamont. The Governor impounded the gift and threw its presumptuous donor into prison. He was further outraged when he heard that Kidd had once intended to join his fellow-countrymen in Caledonia. There was no doubt what the Governor's enemies in London would make of that. The Commissioners for Trade had recently censured him for allowing five New England ships to carry provisions to Darien, and they had yet to receive his tart reply that the five were in fact one brigantine, The Three Sisters, and she had sailed before he had taken up his appointment here. From the savage lodges of the Iroquois on Lake Cayuga, he sternly reminded Lieutenant-Governor Nanfan of the Proclamation against the Scots and his obligations thereunder.
John Nanfan, a kinsman of Lady Bellamont and no doubt owing his office to her husband, was a fussy, indecisive man who would have been happier had the Earl left his Indian friends and returned to deal with the Scots. Though he loyally disapproved of the Caledonians, and knew that he should be firm with them, he was moved by their deplorable state. "They are so weak from pure fatigue and famine," he wrote to Bellamont, "They have no money, so I desire you will let me know how far the law will allow the barter of stores. Their miserable condition is enough to raise compassion." The Governor was not a hard man, and his gout had been improved by the less indulgent diet his surgeon had advised, and by the astringent air of Massachusetts Bay where he was now in gubernatorial residence. "You know how strict my orders are against furnishing the Caledonians with provisions," he wrote, "Yet if you can be well assured these ships will go directly for Scotland you may furnish them with just provisions enough for their voyage."
Unfortunately, Nanfan could be well assured of nothing. Until he heard from Bellamont he had allowed the Scots to buy immediate necessities on credit, and this had emboldened them to ask leave to provision their ships entirely, offering trade goods in exchange. Robert Drummond, it was true, swore that he intended to return to Scotland, but his brother Thomas was said to be seeking a sloop or a brigantine which he proposed to sail back to Darien. He and other officers, particularly Vetch and Turnbull, also offended Nanfan by their insolent pride. They had been lodged ashore by sympathisers who were delighted to embarrass the Governor, and they walked arrogantly abroad in ragged scarlet, touching their swords at every smirking glance.
Most of the Caledonians aboard the ships could no longer afford pride. Day by day one or more of them died from the fever or the flux. Except for a few gentlemen, and those who were certain of obtaining credit, they were not allowed to land. Roger Oswald went ashore on his hands and knees to find a merchant who was willing to lend him money against his father's name. "I drew the bill sore against my will, but one of them I was obliged to do—either to lose my life or draw that bill." Others less fortunate still ate the sour meal that had kept them alive for so long, or now died for want of better. The August days were hot and airless. Across the East River, New York was neat and sunlit like a canalside town in Holland, tall houses of many-coloured bricks, gabled roofs of crimson tiles. The smell of food. The sound of wheels on cobbles, the cries of children. The sight of women walking. Some men slipped down the bow cable at night and swam or rowed ashore, disappearing into the Colony, swearing that they would never go to sea again in the Company's ships, never return to Darien, nor yet to Scotland if that must be.
Paterson was carried from the Unicorn to friendly lodgings. As he slowly recovered from what men called his "craziness", he asked Nanfan for permission to bring ashore his "wearing clothes and linen, household linen and goods, with some books", and was allowed to have them upon his promise that he would not leave New York except for Scotland. Other gentlemen were also given their small baggage, upon the same assurance and once it had passed through the Customs House. Like the men who had deserted the ships at night, some of them had decided that they were done with Scodand and its Company.
Robert Drummond's three weeks passed, and two weeks more. Neither ship was provisioned, nor her crew fit to take her out into the autumn gales of
the Atlantic. Thomas Drummond was restless, not for the voyage home but for a bolder venture. His sense of duty urged him to return to Darien. As it had once compelled him to pistol a Glencoe child without remorse, to cry on murder with a shout of "What of our orders?", so now it drove him to an act of piracy. He persuaded his brother and Samuel Vetch to agree to the seizure of one of the merchantmen lying in the East River. He would then sail it to Caledonia and hold the settlement until relief arrived.
The ship they selected was appropriately named Adventure. Her master, John Howell, had brought her up the East River on September 9 with half her crew dead of the fever, and now, with a pilot aboard, he was awaiting Nanfan's permission to take her further up for provisioning. She was also Scots, and this may have persuaded the Drummonds that there was some legality in what they proposed, that the Company's Act gave them the power to take, hold, and possess any ship of Scotland they desired. Howell was invited to dine aboard the Caledonia, and when he came he was given a glass of wine and asked to what port he belonged. To Glasgow, he said. "Then you belong to us," said Robert Drummond, "we seize you and you are our prize." Too astonished to answer or protest, Howell listened silently to the reading of an order, signed by the Council of Caledonia, declaring his ship taken and under the command of the Caledonia's guns.
A boat's-crew, armed with cutlasses, went away to the Adventure where the Dutch pilot, Peter Wessel, was told to bring her under the lee of the Caledonia. Despite the pistol at his temple, he refused, and the Scots weighed anchor and brought the ship up themselves. They then set Wessel ashore, and he was soon hammering on Nanfan's door. Howell was taken aboard his ship by Robert Drummond and locked in his cabin, guarded by two soldiers with drawn swords. And then, at dawn, the Drummonds and Vetch lost some of their courage, sending for Howell and asking him what he thought of the situation. Would he go ashore with them and declare that he had willingly surrendered his ship to the Company of Scotland? Willingly, he said, but once ashore he too was appealing for Nanfan's protection.
At ten o'clock in the morning of September 14 the Drummonds and Vetch were summoned before the Lieutenant-Governor and the Council of New York at Fort William Henry, where they denied the charges laid against them by Howell and Wessel. Samuel Vetch wrote a deposition for all, having the most plausible pen. It was all a misunderstanding. Upon their honour, there had been no intention of seizing the ship. They had taken command of the Adventure because her master and pilot were drunk, and there was a risk of her running afoul of the Caledonia in the night. "We extremely regret that there should ever have happened anything that should have given the least umbrage to a misunderstanding betwixt us and the Government for which (as our duty is) we have all the respectful deference imaginable." If there had been any rudeness to Howell and Wessel, any indiscreet behaviour, it had been committed by the common seamen of the Caledonia, not by the gentlemen who signed themselves in truth and sincerity.
William Paterson was persuaded to write a brief postscript to this disarmingly ingenuous fiction. It sadly indicated the weakness of his will, the anguish of his spirit, and the desperation of his wish to save the Company from further disgrace. "Although I was not present upon the occasion, yet I fully consent and agree to the submission."
Nanfan believed none of it. He wanted to make an example of Robert Drummond, but he was not encouraged by the colony's Attorney. By an exasperating coincidence, the man was also a Scot. "All he would say," Nanfan later complained to Bellamont, "was that it was no better than felony, and he was sorry his countrymen should be so imprudent, but no advice how to act or what to do, although I pressed him as earnestly as I could." He reluctantly accepted the Scots' deposition, promising himself that he would arrest Robert Drummond at once should the rogue ever come ashore from the Caledonia again. Drummond wisely kept to his ship.
Defeated in their attempt to seize one vessel by force, the Drummonds decided to acquire another more circumspectly. They were helped by two rich merchants of New York, Stephen Delancey and Thomas Wenham, who may have been particularly amused by the raid on the Adventure, the foundations of their now-respectable fortunes having been laid by the Madagascar pirates they had once financed. They were willing to supply the Scots with a sloop, the Anna, and to fit her out with stores and provisions for a return to Caledonia, although her destination could not, of course, be made public in New York. In return, the Scots agreed to put ashore a large part of their trade goods as security. As long as these did not change hands, but remained in a warehouse under the care of a Company's servant, it would be difficult for Nanfan to prove that Delancey and Wenham were giving aid in breach of the Proclamation. The only illegal act would be the departure of the Anna without proper clearance.
She quietly slipped her moorings after sunset on Friday, September 20, and under her new name, Ann of Caledonia, was gone from the East River before the Crown officers were aware of it. Her commission had been in Thomas Drummond's pocket for more than a week, and had been signed by Vetch and the weakly acquiescent Paterson while Robert Drummond's boarding-party was rowing away to the Adventure. He was to sail south, to find the relief expedition which must surely have left Scotland, and to inform it "of our circumstances, of the nature and situation both of the harbour and landing." The sloop's master was Alexander Stewart, and he was ordered "exactly and punctually to obey the said Thomas Drummond in everything as you shall be answerable."
The few Landsmen whom Drummond had chosen to go with him were all young, resolute, and free from sickness. Some of them had served with him in Argyll's and were enthusiastically loyal to his leadership. They burned with the humiliation of their retreat, anxious to restore their country's honour and their own self-respect. Robert Turnbull, whose love for the green land of Darien had grown more intense in his absence from it, had been hot for the venture since it was first proposed, but he was almost left behind. He was staying with friends on Staten Island when the sloop sailed, and he pursued her stern-lantern through the night in a small boat until he came up with her. In his lodgings he had left a small nugget of gold, a nose-piece once worn by an Indian woman, and a fine parrot which he had somehow kept alive during the terrible voyage from Caledonia. He hoped that Robert Drummond would carry these small gifts safely to Scotland, and deliver them to Erskine of Carnock.
When Nanfan heard of the sloop's departure, he wrote to Bellamont in fear and frustration. "The Caledonians, by and with the advice and assistance of their countrymen, have played us not fair." This was all he could say, lacking the courage to tell the Earl about the Adventure or the Anna. Bellamont was angered by the prevarication and demanded a full account of all the Caledonians had done, pointing out that this was surely ten times more important than what Nanfan usually wrote in his dispatches. The Governor would be glad when all these troublesome Scots were gone, but he had no sympathy for his whining subordinate. "I wish you had not burnt your fingers with them, and broke the instructions I sent you from the Secretary of State."
Robert Drummond was ready to leave for home. He was daily losing men by death and desertion, and although Vetch had petitioned Nanfan for aid in arresting the deserters, the Lieutenant-Governor had been churlishly unhelpful. It was hopeless now to think that both ships could make the Atlantic crossing, and at the end of September the Unicorn was warped across to Perth Amboy on the Jersey shore. There she was abandoned and would slowly rot, stripped by looters, her timbers splitting in the frost and sun. Once the miserable survivors of her crew and passengers were aboard the Caledonia, Drummond prepared his ship as best he could for departure. By Bellamont's instructions, Nanfan had allowed him to acquire provisions for ten weeks, and he hoped that these would be enough to bring him to the Clyde.
The survivors now began to think of the welcome they might receive in Scotland, and it gave none of them any comfort. Roger Oswald found the coinage at last to write to his father. Perhaps Sir James now knew of that bill he had drawn for £21 Sterling in New York, but, as God was his witness, it
had been necessary. The surgeon had given him no more than two days to live if he did not find food. When he reached Scotland he would not come home. He would lodge with the Widow Finlay by the Stable Green Port in Glasgow, and there wait in hope for his father's forgiveness. "I know that you have good reason to be angry with me, but Sir, if you knew what hardships I have endured since I parted with you, you would excuse me in some part...."
A few days before the Caledonia left, Samuel Vetch told Paterson that he would stay in New York. "He acquainted me that he designed to stay there this winter, and that in the meantime he would look after the effects put ashore to satisfy Messers Wenham and Delancey, and that by that means he would be in readiness to go back to the Colony." Paterson disapproved of the proposal, but since they were the only Councillors left he had no power to influence the man's decision.
Piety was the best policy, Vetch had written to his brother William, and sincere honesty the surest way to honour. He could have added that opportunity boldly seized, and wisely exploited, was the surest way to prosperity. It is probable, even at this moment, that he had no intention of returning to Caledonia, though he was prepared to serve the Company while its interests served him. He had looked upon New England and liked what he had seen, both in general and in particular. That particular was his cousin by marriage, Margaret Livingstone. Her father, Robert Livingstone, was one of the most powerful Scots in New York, with a great estate on the east bank of the Hudson and a merchant-house connected by marriage and contract with such influential families as the Van Cortlands, Van Rensselaers and Delanceys. It was Livingstone who had given the Scots credit when their ships arrived, and had provisioned the Caledonia for its departure. Though he had done this for profit, he also considered it his duty as a political opponent of Bellamont, and a moral obligation to those kinsmen who had served on Darien. One of them, a nephew, was Andrew Livingstone, the surgeon of the Dolphin.
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