THE DARIEN DISASTER

by The Darien Disaster (v1. 1) (mobi)

  She sailed at dawn, the guns on Forth Point firing a salute as she cleared the headland. The sound was muffled by the heavy air. The rainy season had begun again.

  "There was none of us but would afterwards be ashamed..."

  Caledonia, April to June 1699

  A Parliament was at last elected and called. It was too late to be effective, and most of the Council had long been cynical about its value. "We found the inconvenience of calling a Parliament," Mackay had written to Roderick Mackenzie, "and of telling the inhabitants that they were freemen so soon. The thought of it made them insolent and ruined command." But it was that insolence and insubordination which finally made a parliament necessary, if only as a token to stiffen the spirit of the colonists and persuade them that they were not servants but partners in the noble undertaking. The election was held toward the end of April, eight representatives chosen in the rain from eight ill- defined districts of New Edinburgh. Watching under guard from the palisades of the fort, Murdoch had been delighted by the open annoyance of the Council when the Caledonians rejected its nominees and elected "an honest subaltern or soldier rather than a knavish captain". Admirable though this was as an expression of political enlightenment, it would before long be fatal to the Colony.

  The delegates were called on April 24, and met beneath the dripping roof of the largest hut in New Edinburgh. Under the guidance of the Council and the presidency of Captain Colin Campbell, they enacted thirty-four Rules and Ordinances for the government of the Colony, the establishment and execution of justice. Those settlers who were not working crowded about the hut, drenched by the rain, listening to the reading of each clause and the voting upon it. The Preamble, as read by Hugh Rose, gave "the Council and Deputees assembled in Parliament" the right to appoint its president, clerk and officers, and to govern under the following ordinances and rules which had "the full force and effect of laws within this Colony and its dependencies by land and sea."

  It was clearly affirmed that such laws were based on the precepts, examples, commands and prohibitions of the Holy Scriptures, and the Caledonians were warned that blasphemy, profanity and disrespect toward the Colony's officers would be punished by hard labour and a diet of bread and water. Hard labour at the public works would also be the punishment for slander, quarrelling and brawling. Death was the penalty for murder, rape, robbery, house-breaking, treason and correspondence with the Colony's enemies. It was also the just punishment for mutiny and sedition, disobedience and the violation of the Council's safe-conducts, for duelling and assault (be that only the striking of another with a stick, whip or sheathed sword), for kidnapping and the abuse of a freeman's liberty. More constructively—and here Paterson's liberal mind can be detected at work —the civil rights of the Caledonians were defined and protected, proper justiciary courts and juries ordained, their duties laid down. No man could be imprisoned for more than three months without trial. The property of a freeman could not be restrained for debt unless there were proof of intent to defraud. No judge or juryman could sit upon a case in which he was in any way interested. Corruption, bribery and the perversion of justice were to be punished as theft, but "benefits received, good services done, shall always be generously and thankfully compensated."

  The first act of the eight Members reflected the mood of the men who had elected them. They appointed a committee to search all the ships for provisions, to make a correct inventory of them, and to organise their transfer to the fort. Both the Caledonia and the Saint Andrew were found to be well-supplied, and their fortunate crews living above the meagre rations of the Landsmen. Pennecuik and Robert Drummond were outraged by the search, declaring that their word alone should have been enough, and although the masters of the Unicorn and the Endeavour obediently sent their provisions ashore, the Commodore and his truculent Vice-Admiral delayed and finally did nothing.

  The food supplies (though "spoiled and rotten" said Paterson) proved to be more than the worst that had been feared, but what there was could not last long. Few men were strong enough for the arduous boat-work of turtling, and the Indians rarely came now with gifts of fowl and plantains. When the Maidstone sailed, Pilkington had promised to direct any merchantman he sighted to the Colony, and to return himself as quickly as he could with beef and flour. But the days passed and no one came.

  In the bay was a sloop which had come with the Maidstone on her first visit, and which Pilkington had left behind in the Colony's commission, without crew or master. The Council and Parliament now decided to send it to Jamaica with what money there was. It would also carry letters. Lying in his hut, sick and desperate with fever, Paterson asked the surgeon to bleed him and so give him the strength and clear mind to write to Roderick Mackenzie.

  I hope ere this comes to hand that Scotland will be sufficiently concerned and busy to support us who are now at the head of the best and greatest undertaking that ever was to the Indies. I assure you that if they do supply us powerfully and speedily we shall in a few months be able to reimburse them all and make the Company the best fund of any in Europe, but if through poorness of spirit, and little humour and jealousies, as well as delays, this little thing should be neglected, then what we have sown others will reap the fruit of, which I hope not to live to see.

  In the clear mind that wrote this there was perhaps more delirium than the fever into which it once more relapsed.

  The sloop left on May 3 under the command of Henry Paton, second mate of the Unicorn. He was told to buy what food he could with the money given him, and to return with all haste. There followed days of spiritless lethargy, of unending rain that washed the earth from the palisades of the fort and turned the mean streets of New Edinburgh into runnels of mud. The Council quarrelled with Pennecuik, and gave no advice or direction to its despised Parliament. A French sloop came, with orders from the Governor of Petit Guaves to examine the wreck of the Maurepas. Her master did this indifferently, sold the Colony a few provisions, and then left. When he was gone the Caledonians must have asked themselves if the man were a fool, or had been amusing himself maliciously at their expense. He had told them that he admired this country for its riches and benign climate, that he would come and live among them, and so would five hundred other Frenchmen.

  About the middle of the month, desperate for information and food, the Council sent out a piragua. It went eastward along the coast and was back within the week with news that stunned the Colony. It had spoken with a Jamaican sloop and begged her master to sail to the Colony. He would not, and why he would not was plain in the printed sheet which the piragua brought back to the Council. On Sunday, April 9, Sir William Beeston the Governor of Jamaica had published a Proclamation he had signed the day before.

  In His Majesty's Name and by command, strictly to command His Majesty's subjects, whatsoever, that they do not presume, on any pretence whatsoever, to hold any correspondence with the said Scots, nor to give them any assistance of arms, ammunition, provisions, or any other necessaries whatsoever, either by themselves or any other for them, or by any of their vessels, or of the English nation, as they will answer the contempt of His Majesty's command, at their utmost peril.

  The unprecedented publication of such a proclamation on the Sabbath was explained on Monday. Two sloops, freighted with provisions and about to sail for Darien, were stopped before they could clear Port Royal.

  Throughout all the English colonies, from the border of French Canada to the Caribbean, Governors and Lieutenant- Governors had issued the same Proclamation in obedience to orders sent them by James Vernon. The reasons given by the Secretary were that His Majesty had been unaware of the true intentions of the Scots, that the colony of Caledonia was contrary to the spirit and the word of the treaties he had signed with his allies, that Darien was possessed by His Most Catholic Majesty and therefore the settlement was a breach of the Company's Act and of England's friendly relations with Spain. The phrasing of such fine-edged, diplomatic hypocrisy was one of Mr. Vernon's most adroit exercis
es in clerking. He and his royal master were well aware that in September, 1697, the English Commissioners for Trade had advised the King that Darien was not possessed by Spain, that it ought to be seized by the Crown of England "with all possible dispatch lest the Scotch Company be there before us, which is of utmost importance to the trade of England."

  The news of the Proclamation destroyed what was left of the colonists' morale. They could now expect no supplies, no food, no relief. They believed that England's unequivocal hostility explained their countrymen's failure to reinforce them. "That the long silence," said Paterson, "proceeded from no other cause but that they were brow-beaten out of it, and durst not so much send word to us to shift for ourselves." Their miserable failure and hopeless future were now plain even to the most optimistic. They were weak and hungry, and only a few had escaped fever and flux. Of the twelve hundred who had left the Forth ten months before, between three and four hundred were now dead. Forty more lay in the dungeons of Carthagena, or might well be dead too for all the Colony knew. There was nothing to show for their work but a ridiculous huddle of huts and an uncompleted fort. They were ruled by quarrelsome men who wasted their time in ignoble intrigues. It was raining, and would rain for another six months. Their shoes were rotten, their clothes ragged, their skins itched with inflamed sores, they could scarcely swallow their maggot-ridden food. For weeks they had wished to be gone, and now this Proclamation persuaded them that they might go without dishonour. Through their honest subalterns and soldiers in Parliament they demanded to be taken away.

  So properly expressed, the demand could not be dismissed as insubordinate and mutinous, and on the Council there was none but Paterson to oppose it. Thomas Drummond had been suffering from an intermittent fever since March, and before his election he had asked for, and been refused, leave to return to Scotland for the good of his health. Though his self-respect was injured by the thought of surrender, his family pride wounded by his brother's belief that the Colony should be abandoned entirely, he was now contemptuous of the wretched colonists and agreed that the settlement should be deserted, if only temporarily. The other soldiers on the Council accepted his leadership. Paterson again had himself bled, and came bravely from his bed to fight the motion.

  When I saw there was no talking against our leaving the

  place, I persuaded them what I could, that first rumours of

  things of this nature was always most terrifying and that

  happily our native country knew nothing of all this; and if they did not, but remained firm to the design, there was none of us but would afterwards be ashamed of our precipitant forwardness in going away upon this occasion.

  He was told that the Landsmen were too ill and weak to defend the ditch or the fort, that if there were a Spanish attack they would be over-run. He agreed, but suggested instead that the colonists should be taken aboard the ships, which might then he off the coast until help arrived from Scotland. The Council seemed to agree with him, and issued orders for the loading of the ships. Not unnaturally, a rumour spread that the settlement was to be abandoned and that the fleet would return to Scotland. Paterson protested, demanding a public denial, but the Council said nothing, and it is probable that Pennecuik and Robert Drummond intended to make all sail for home once their ships were clear of the bay. By the beginning of June the Colony was demoralised and disordered, without proper leadership or clear decision. Paterson struggled to prevent the general unease from becoming panic, putting "lets and stumbling-blocks" to the obvious preparations for departure. He said that when Henry Paton returned from Jamaica the sloop should be manned by thirty of the fittest men, cruise off the coast, "and live upon turtling and fishing till we should see if any recruits or news came from Scotland." He volunteered to remain with it. Thomas Drummond supported the proposal, but said that he would stay. Paterson should go home and tell the Company how matters stood with its noble undertaking.

  And then, on June 5, Paterson's weakened body collapsed, his mind fled into the wildest delirium yet. The next day a French ship came into the harbour, and her captain brought terrifying news. He had come from Carthagena, he said, where a new Governor had recently arrived from Spain. This man had placed his predecessor, Don Diego, under arrest and was mounting a great force of ships and soldiers against the Colony. Now the last of the Scots' resistance crumbled into panic, officers and men fighting for a place in the boats on the shore. By June 10 most of the company commanders, and all of the Councillors with the exception of Paterson and Drummond, were aboard the ships with their servants and baggage. Little attempt was made to organise the evacuation, and it took a week of mounting fear and confusion. The Planters boarded what ships they could, angrily demanding that they set sail at once. The guns which had been mounted in the fort would have been abandoned but for Thomas Drummond. Gathering a few men by force and threat, he tore a breach in the palisades that had cost so much in labour and death, and dragged the guns down to the boats, standing by with an armed guard until they were ferried out to the flagship.

  Ashore in his hut, in a delirium for most of the time, soaked by the rain that ran through the roof, Paterson was ignored. "None visited me except Captain Thomas Drummond, who, with me, still lamented our thoughts of leaving the place, and praying God that we might but hear from our country before we left." Though Drummond had little respect for Paterson, and was usually scornfully impatient with him, he recognised the sick man's courage at this moment and honoured it with his loyal attention. In one of Paterson's rare periods of consciousness, the grenadier captain brought him news of a disquietening rumour aboard the Saint Andrew. Pennecuik, it was said, had no intention of sailing to Scotland. He proposed a cruise along the coast as buccaneers, saying that since the Scots had been called pirates and were certain to be hanged as such if caught by the English or Spanish, they should take what profit they could and be damned. Moreover, if the ships went home to Scotland the seamen need not expect an ungrateful Company to pay the wages owing them. Paterson sent a desperate message to the other Councillors, imploring them to meet him ashore and to place Pennecuik under guard if the report were true. None came, and those who troubled to reply said that they were too ill to leave the ships.

  Paterson remembered little of the last two or three days. On June 16 he was hurriedly carried aboard the Unicorn, probably by Drummond or Turnbull. His few articles of clothing, the sad relics of his wife's possessions, were brought out that night, "almost all of them damnified and wet, which afterwards rotted most of them." Like a thwarted child, he vainly asked for several brass kettles and sixteen iron pots, loaned to him by a friend in

  Jamaica and now left behind in the ruins of his hut. He became angry in his fever, demanding the immediate payment of £72 Sterling which he had spent on sugar, tobacco and resin for the Colony. In such a mood of sick petulance did he leave his great dream for ever.

  On the morning of June 18, a northerly wind making it impossible for them to sail through the sea-gate, the Caledonia, Unicorn and Endeavour were warped out of the bay. They lay by off Forth Point and Thomas Drummond was rowed across to the Unicorn from his brother's ship. He brought papers which he was anxious for Paterson to sign. "I was very ill and not willing to meddle," remembered Paterson, "but he pressed it, saying there could be no quorum without me. Upon this I signed." He could recall little of what the papers said, but he thought there were orders for the ships to sail to Boston or Salem in New England, for the Councillors aboard to sell what goods they could for provisions, and to carry the remainder to Scotland. Pennecuik's bold scheme for a buccaneering venture, if indeed he had truly proposed it, was forgotten. They were going home.

  When Drummond got back to the Caledonia a sunset gale blew her and the Endeavour out of sight to sea. Ineptly handled by her weary crew, the Unicorn was struck broadside by a wave that smashed her long-boat in the waist and tore her away from her bow anchor. She ran in to the lee of Golden Island where she dropped another from the stern and rode out the n
ight in danger and fear. The next morning the Saint Andrew was sighted to the east, under full sail and making for the open sea. She ignored the Unicorns signal and was soon hull down. Without the strength to weigh anchor, the Unicorn cut her stern cable and followed.

  Behind in Caledonia Bay were left decaying huts, muddy tracks, the slipping palisades of Fort Saint Andrew, and six men. Too exhausted to fight their way to the boats, they had been left to die at their own request. "Poor silly fellows," Roger Oswald called them, having crawled to the shore himself, "who being so weak did not dare adventure themselves to sea." The Indians, who had watched the departure of the ships with sad incomprehension, came out of the trees and offered them shelter. These six men would have been surprised to know that they, alone of all the colonists, would later be admired and respected by their countrymen.

  Some weeks later a Spanish brigantine slipped cautiously into the bay. Her captain, Juan Delgado, went ashore and wandered among the ruins of a hundred empty huts. He counted the twenty-four embrasures of the fort and a dribble of cannon- balls by the breach in its palisade. He counted the graves too, four hundred in battalion ranks and two inside the fort. He sent an armed party into the forest. It came back with four frightened Indians and a white man, one of the abandoned Scots. Delgado treated him with gentle kindness.