John Prebble

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

  The squabbling and bickering in Pennecuik's great cabin lasted until nightfall, by which time a heavy fog had come down and the Caledonia was lost in it, despite Pennecuik's orders that all ships were to close in to his stern-lights at dusk. Robert Drummond and the two Councillors who sailed with him, Montgomerie and Jolly, were grudgingly allowed to stay aboard the Commodore's ship until the dawn look-out sighted the Caledonia's topsails above the sunbright mist. They went away to her in an ill-humour, and with Drummond convinced that Pennecuik was an ignorant fool. The first meeting of the Council had set the pattern of acrimony and suspicion of all that were to follow. Factions were already forming, jealousy and vanity marking the division between landsmen and seamen. "Our Marine Chancellors," said William Paterson, in his report to the Directors more than a year later, "did not only take all upon them, but likewise browbeat and discouraged everybody else, yet we had patience, hoping things would mend.

  The Commodore had no choice now but to order his fleet to make for the Orkneys and there wait for more provisions to be sent from Leith. Meanwhile all aboard were placed on short rations. On July 24, as the ships beat up from Duncansby Head to the Orkneys, a fog came down again. First a mist moving gently on a changing wind and then, in a few hours, so thick and white a curtain that nothing could be seen beyond the bowsprit head. For a while they kept within hail, the Saint Andrew's lookout singing each ship's name and, if answered with a cry of "Success!", calling back "God grant!" When voices could no longer be heard Pennecuik fired a signal gun every half hour, and anxiously counted the muffled musket volleys that replied. Groping blindly under shortened sail, no captain could say for certain where he was, and all were in fear of running aground. There was no thought now of making an anchorage in the Orkneys, if indeed they could be found, only a desperate desire to get clear of this nightmare of fog, rocks and a rising sea. Once, when the fog lifted, there was black land to the north and south, unrecognisable and unknown. Aboard the Unicorn some said it was the Orkneys, and others Shetland, and yet more that it must be the Outer Hebrides. On the Saint Andrew Pennecuik counted topmasts in the spray, and thanked God and his own skill that his squadron was still together.

  But not for long. A sudden gale blew out of the north, cold and bitter from the Arctic and with grey seas running. When wind and sea dropped at nightfall the fog came on again and there was soon no reply to the Saint Andrew's appealing gun. The white darkness lasted for three days during which, by some impossible miracle, the ships passed safely between the Orkneys and Shetland. When it lifted, at dawn on July 31, each vessel was alone in the Atlantic with a skein of gulls. Off the Butt of Lewis, under clear skies and before a north-westerly wind, Pincarton rightly believed himself to be the furthest south of the squadron. He put the Unicorn about and told his maintop man to keep a sharp eye to the north. Before ten o'clock the man cried a ship astern, and Pincarton shortened sail and waited for her to come up. She was the Endeavour, a lost child happy to be found, but her master John Malloch knew nothing of the others. Although he would willingly have waited, Pincarton could not ignore a favourable wind, and with the pink to starboard he set course for Madeira. The next day they passed the cloud-head of Saint Kilda, and the sick and miserable landsmen aboard the Unicorn stared at the black wall of rock until it was gone and there was nothing about them but the sea.

  On August 2, tacking across the mouth of the Minch between Cape Wrath and Lewis, the Saint Andrew found the little Dolphin, and later the Caledonia. Together they sailed southwest and south, believing the others lost.

  Little was left now of the high spirits in which the settlers had left the Forth. Some of them were to remember the miseries of that northern voyage more vividly than the horrors they were still to suffer. "For God's sake," William Paterson would write to the Directors, "be sure to send the next fleet from the Clyde, for the passage north about is worse than the whole voyage to the Indies." Kept below decks by the unsympathetic seamen, sick with the stench of their own bodies and the rolling of the ship, maddened by incessant noise and choked by the fog that seeped through the hatches, angered by short rations and foul water, never clean, never alone, never told where they were or where they might be to-morrow, never seeing the sun and rarely the sky, most of them had lost all heart for the venture long before the ships broke out of the fog. What strength they had they wasted in pettish quarrels, resenting the small privileges of those above them and jealously preserving theirs against those below. During the gales they clutched each other in fear, or closed their eyes and wished for death. No one left any record of how Mrs. Paterson and the few other women aboard endured this wretchedness. Only the very young kept their courage. Colin Campbell, whose family had sent him aboard the Unicorn under Pincarton's protection in the hope that he might learn enough to make the sea his trade, somehow managed to make daily entries in the journal he was writing for his brother. Nothing a seaman would admire, he modestly admitted, for there was no man aboard who was ready or willing to give him the simplest lessons in navigation. Patiently he recorded the winds and the weather, the changing latitude, the sight of a distant and unspoken ship, the day when the Unicorn lay becalmed and her foretop-men went aloft to repair a trestle-tree that had been broken in the Orkney gales. On August 15, west of Cape St. Vincent, there came to the ship two white pigeons, lifting the hearts of all aboard.

  Days behind Pincarton, the other three ships made slower sailing, and at night the Caledonia frequently lost sight of the Saint Andrew's light. The dawn hours were thus wasted in frustrating delays until Drummond's topsails came over the horizon. Pennecuik believed that Robert Drummond was deliberately dropping behind at night out of wilful spite, and the tempers of both men were not improved by the indignant signals that passed between their ships before they got under way again. Off the coast of Portugal there were frequent calms during which the squadron was idle enough for the land officers on one ship to visit their friends and kinsmen on another. They drank too much brandy, and indulged in too many intrigues. When the Drummond brothers came aboard the Saint Andrew, Robert in his blue coat and Thomas in scarlet, they boasted that the entertainment they gave aboard their ship was more generous than the niggardly hospitality a man might expect on the Saint Andrew. Pennecuik resented the arrogant contempt and secret smiles of the idling gentlemen who stood on his main-deck in red coats and campaign-wigs, talking of such exclusive matters as family, rank, battles and sieges. He readily believed the gossip brought him by Captain Lachlan Maclean, commander of a land company. This Highlander, who had his own dark reasons for disliking the Drummonds (one of which might well have been a clansman's memory of Glencoe), said that the brothers were forming a cabal and plotting against the Commodore. Pennecuik was hot for court-martialling them at once, but Mackay and Montgomerie persuaded him to wait until the fleet reached Madeira. There, they said, a full Council should debate the affair.

  On August 20, at three in the afternoon and sailing due west, the Unicorn and the Endeavour sighted Madeira ahead, but a brisk gale that blew up suddenly kept them beating about for two more days. When they finally came in to Funchal roadstead, below a white castle and green and lemon hills, a Genoese ship at anchor there ran out her guns with trumpets braying. Pin- carton went ashore, his boat's-crew smart in their silvered caps badged with unicorns. The Governor said that the Scots had been taken for Algerian pirates, and although he could now see that Pincarton was no rogue he had been told by the English that Scotland was too poor a country to possess such splendid ships. By patient courtesy, by producing a copy of the Company's Act, and by a 12-gun salute providentially fired from the Unicorn at the most awkward moment of this interview, Pincarton convinced the Governor that the Scots were what they claimed to be. Twelve guns were fired in reply from the castle, and the islanders came down from their vinyards and their houses with shouts of welcome.

  There had been good reason for caution. Aboard the Genoese ship were tempting prizes for a corsair: a bishop worthy of ransom, a br
ide who was to marry a gentleman of Madeira, and her dowry of £15,000 Sterling. "Yet the woman," wrote a Scot whose respect for this vast sum had led him curiously to her cabin, "was no beauty for all that." To his amusement, a second Genoese arrived a day or so later with another bride from Lisbon, "but cheaper and better favoured than the first."

  Pennecuik's laggard ships arrived on August 26. As soon as they were sighed John Malloch went out to them in the Unicorns pinnace, piloting them into the roadstead and telling the Commodore that despite some early suspicion the Scots were now welcome to water and victual their ships. There was another thunder of salutes from ships and shore, and then Pennecuik turned to matters uppermost in his mind. He called a full meeting of the Council aboard the Saint Andrew. The behaviour of the Drummonds since leaving the Forth, he said, had "smelled of mutiny", and he moved that they be stripped of their commands and set ashore. Young Mackay and Montgomerie, weak from seasickness, weary of Pennecuik's quarter-deck manner, and aware that they must endure more of both before the voyage ended, were inclined to humour him. But Robert Jolly and James Cunningham, the uneasy traveller of the middle road and the committed member of the Glencoe Gang, argued forbearance. They promised to secure the Drummonds' submission to Pennecuik's authority while at sea, and upon this assurance the Commodore's motion was defeated.

  The Scots swarmed ashore, seeking wine, food and entertainment. They ate unripe fruit and were ill. Some officers sold their scarlet coats and plumed hats, their swords or their shoe-buckles to buy meat. They marvelled at the number of lizards they saw, thought the Portuguese were no better than thieves, and observed that in the general poverty of the island a few English merchants seemed to be living remarkably well. Paterson, however, was pleasantly surprised by the kindness of these Englishmen, and he concluded from this that there must be more goodwill toward the Company than the Scots imagined.

  He was in a rare and warm state of euphoria, having been elected to the Council in place of the absent William Vetch. Which of the warring factions supported his election, hoping for an ally, is unknown, but they were undoubtedly disappointed for he refused to take part in their childish squabbles. "I must confess," he wrote later, "it troubled me exceedingly to see our affairs thus turmoiled and disordered by tempers and dispositions as boisterous and turbulent as the elements they are used to struggle with." He was thinking of Pennecuik's jealous feud with Robert Drummond, and of Pincarton's lack of sympathy for both. The mad proposal that the Council should elect a new President each week had been further complicated by the Commodore's noisy claim that until a landing was made he was the supreme and only authority. Paterson said that a weekly presidency was "a mere May-game of government", and he proposed that each Councillor should hold the office for a month, and that when the colony was reached the Land Councillors should take their turn before the Seamen. They would thus have four months in which to make proper rules and ordinanances, to secure a firm government that could not be upset by Pennecuik's irascibility or Pincarton's ignorance. But he got no support from the other Land Councillors. "They, like wise men, had begun to make their court, and had agreed beforehand with those of the sea that the presidency should last but a week."

  Though the Scots were able, at a price, to fill their water- casks, the impoverished island had no great quantities of bread or meat to sell. The cargo of the Endeavour was exchanged for 27 pipes of wine, nearly three thousand gallons which, it was innocently hoped, could be traded in the Indies. Under threat of severe penalties, the Scots had been told not to discuss their venture with the islanders, or at most to pretend that they were bound for the Guinea Coast. The kindly English merchants were not deceived by this, they deluded themselves instead, and told London that in their opinion the squadron was certainly making for the East Indies.

  At noon on September 2, Pennecuik loosed his fore topsail and fired his bow-chaser. It was the signal to weigh anchor and sail, and as the ships moved out they filled the roadstead with the smoke of thirty-nine saluting guns. Pennecuik was disappointed when the Governor replied with thirty-seven only, but he smugly logged the fact that even these were more than the Portuguese would give to King William's warships.

  The Saint Andrew was already out of the bay when the Commodore looked back over his stem-rail and saw that the Caledonia had shortened sail and put about. When Drummond's pinnace was then seen rowing ashore, Pennecuik fired another gun, hoisted his mizzen topsail and brought the fleet to anchor again. The Council was summoned to his cabin, and Drummond was ordered to attend it with an explanation. He came aboard with his redcoat brother and said that his second mate had offended him, and had accordingly been discharged and put ashore. He out-blustered the infuriated Pennecuik, saying that his commission gave him the right to accept or refuse any of his crew, but the Council told him to behave himself, and to take the officer aboard again. He did so with ill grace, and once more the fleet put to sea.

  There was no longer any pretence about its destination. The second packet of sealed orders had been opened, and its contents made known to all.

  You are hereby ordered in pursuance of your voyage to make the Crab Island, and if you find it free to take possession thereof in name of the Company; and from thence you are to proceed to the Bay of Darien and make the isle called the Golden Island, in and about eight degrees of north latitude; and there make a settlement on the mainland as well as the said island, if proper (as we believe) and unpossessed by an European nation or state in amity with his Majesty.

  If the land were indeed found to be occupied by such a nation, the fleet was to make to leeward until it came to some other part of the mainland that was not claimed or possessed. Except by the Indians, of course.

  The fleet was four weeks at sea before it made a landfall in the West Indies. Six days out from Madeira it got in to the Trade Winds, and had fair sailing by day and by night. Four men were dead of the flux before the ships left Funchal, and thirty-six more were to die before Darien was reached. Yet death was a commonplace expected and accepted by all sea-captains on long sea voyages, and by washing their decks regularly with vinegar, by smoking the holds, they believed that they kept sickness to a minimum. The landsmen were less sanguine, and many were unnerved by the suddenness of death. They could take no comfort in their own good health when they saw others, seemingly as well as they, heaved overboard within hours of the first spasm of black vomit. Even so, spirits were generally high, tempers cooled and old quarrels were temporarily mended. There was still hunger, however. Though the Commodore, his captains, and the Councillors dined well, at tables set with English pewter and white linen, the lower the rank the hungrier the man, and at bottom there was harsh privation. When a Dutchman on the Saint Andrew broke open another's chest to steal bread he was forced to run the gauntlet, angry men pressing forward to strike a blow as he staggered along the ship's waist.

  There were less brutal entertainments. "This day," wrote Colin Campbell on September 10, "we supposed ourselves to have passed the Tropic of Cancer, and so designed to make merry according to the English custom." Pennecuik ran up his pennant to the mizzen peak, fired a gun, and as the ships scarcely moved under shortened sail "every officer and gentleman who had not passed over the Tropic were ordered to pay a bottle of brandy, or three of Madeira wine, otherwise to be thrice ducked, which some obeyed, others not." Captains and Councillors came aboard the Saint Andrew, dined at one o'clock, drank punch until five, and by six all but Palerson were drunk and asleep aboard their own ships.

  The celebration had not been a success. "The heat of the weather and the punch," remembered Robert Jolly, "began to alter the humour of some commanders." As was usual, drink distorted Pennecuik's judgement and reason, and after the second or third bowl he took some fancied objection to both Mackay and Montgomerie. Having treated them most unkindly, said Jolly in cautious reproach, he proceeded to abuse his first, second and third mate, and then all the redcoat officers aboard his ship. Walter Herries, who had earlier attached hims
elf to Pennecuik and was now thinking he might have made a mistake thereby, took the man aside by the sleeve and told him to remember that he was no longer aboard a Ring's ship, that these soldiers were gentlemen with influence at home. The word influence always had a sobering effect on Pennecuik, and he at last held his tongue.

  The Drummonds and Samuel Vetch watched this childish performance with sour satisfaction. Hating Pennecuik, and pleased to see him making enemies, they also had no respect for the Council or its authority. Jolly said that they began their intrigues again, asking him and Cunningham to insist that the Council be enlarged to include one or more Land Officers, meaning, no doubt, Thomas Drummond and Vetch. If this were done, they said, and "if any mutiny or disorder should occur (for want of provisions) it might easily be crushed by the command they had over their companies." It was sound advice perhaps, but Robert Jolly was shocked. He and Cunningham fell back on their authority as Councillors, loftily ordering that no more be said of the matter. The Drummonds and Vetch marked down both men as weaklings, as indeed they were.

  And westward again, the wind veering east-south-east to east- north-east, until there came a week of sickly calm during which the air was hot and motionless, thick to breathe and foul to taste. Pitch bubbled between the ships' timbers, and there were sometimes two or three deaths a day. Officers and Volunteers, Planters and Seamen, a surgeon's mate and a midshipman, a cooper and a carpenter's boy, quickly ill, quickly dead, and quickly turned overboard with a short prayer. The Councillors were alarmed and ordered an issue of wine as a prophylactic, but it was of little use. The diarists briefly recorded each sad departure. About 2 a clock in the afternoon one of our seamen called Alexander Alder died of a consumption, and thrown over... this day Robert Hardy, a gentleman in Captain Dalyell's company... John Stewart, gentleman ... Smith, a seaman ... a Sergeant of CaptainColin Campbells... died of a fever... of a flux... heaved overboard...