John Prebble

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

  When Pennecuik saw a white flag waving on the far shore he ordered the pinnace in toward it, and then shipped oars again as twenty Indians came out of the trees with bows and lances in their hands. Scots and Indians stared at each other, until the latter unstrung their bows and threw down their lances, beckoning to the pinnace. Pennecuik told one of his seamen to swim ashore, which the man did reluctantly no doubt, and when he came back he said that the Indians wished to be friends, that one of their great captains would visit the ships the next day.

  That night, before dawn, there died Thomas Fenner who had been Paterson's good and faithful clerk.

  "This harbour ... capable of containing a thousand sail" Caledonia, November 1698

  The great captain who came over the side of the Saint Andrew on the morning of Wednesday, November 2, was a sturdy little Indian with an unsmiling face. His name was Andreas, or so he was called by the Spaniards from whom he had also acquired his clothes and the hidalgo gravity of his expression. His painted chest was covered with a loose red jacket, his thighs by white drawers from which jutted the silver cone of his manhood, and his golden nose-disc gleamed in the shadow of an old, wide- brimmed hat. He was accompanied by a bodyguard of twelve men who stood boldly about him in the ship's waist, their brown eyes looking back into the curious stares of the Scots. They were all stark naked, wrote Hugh Rose in his journal that night, "only a thread tied round their middles, to make fast another that kept on a small piece of plate upon the end of their yards."

  Benjamin Spense greeted them with Castilian compliments. Andreas looked at the scarlet coats and blue, the white faces framed by monstrous curls of false hair, the dark sheen of muskets and the glitter of steel, bleached canvas, tarred ropes and decks reeking of vinegar. What did the strangers want? "We answered," said Pennecuik, "our design was to settle among them, if they pleased to receive us as friends: that our business was chiefly trade, and that we would supply them from time to time with such commodities as they wanted, at much more reasonable rates than either the Spaniards or others can do." Were they friends of the Spanish? Not friends, said the Commodore, nor yet at war with them, but ready to resist them by force of arms if any affront were given. Andreas was pleased by this. He decided that the Scots were privateers, and he chattered about his two good friends, the buccaneer captains Swan and Davies, at whose side he had fought long ago in the overland raid on Santa Maria. Mr. Spense's translation kept up with these nostalgic reminiscences as best it could until Pennecuik coldly cut them short. The Scots, he said, were not rogues but traders. Andreas took the rebuke with good humour, since it was soon followed by gifts. He went away with the Scots flag flying from the prow of his canoe, and upon his head a fine new beaver hat, richly embroidered with golden galloon.

  Relieved by the Indians' assurances of friendship, though he would never believe that they were not idle thieves, Pennecuik sent the Saint Andrew's boats away to explore and make soundings of the harbour. The next day he wrote a full account of their discoveries in his log and ordered Hugh Rose to copy it faithfully in his journal, since this was to be sent to the Directors as soon as possible.

  The green bay was almost two miles in length, shelving from six to three and a half fathoms, a mile or so across at the most, and with a narrow entrance no wider than a random cannon- shot. In the middle of this sea-gate was a black rock, three feet above water on a still day but hidden by breaking waves when the wind blew hard. "This looks terrible to those who know not the place well, but on both sides is a very good and wide channel." There was a second rock further in and for most of the time it was under water, a constant hazard to ships and boats. The narrow peninsula forming the northern side of the bay was covered with trees, tall cedars, manchineels and sapadilloes through which the wind sang with such gentle sweetness that a sentimental Landsman, dreaming in the sunlight, immediately called them The Shades of Love. For most of its length to seaward the peninsula was a high and unscalable escarpment, plunging into deep water. No European fortress had such a defence. On the bayside it rose less steeply, with level ground, and with a small promontory of sand where boats might be safely beached. "This harbour," said Pennecuik, with insane exaggeration that can only be explained by his desire to impress an ignorant Court of Directors, "is capable of containing a thousand sail of the best ships in the world. And without great trouble wharves may be run out, to which ships of the greatest burthen may lay their sides and unload."

  The southern shore of the bay was bordered with red-legged mangroves, thick and impenetrable, and beyond them, almost immediately it seemed in that hazy heat, rose the blue and green mountains of the continental divide. There appears to have been no argument, no dispute about the proper site of the Colony. The land about the bay, as far as their feet might take the Scots and for as long as their swords could hold it, was to be Caledonia, but here on the peninsula would be built the town of New Edinburgh, here above its sandy promontory would be Fort Saint Andrew. The choice of this crooked finger of land, for strategic reasons at least, was a wise one. A single ship might hold the sea-gate against a fleet, helped by land-batteries on both points. The peninsula was well-watered by streams that sprang in bubbling joy from the feet of the cedars, whereas across the bay, according to Pennecuik, there were dry riverbeds only. At its eastern end the peninsula narrowed to a strip of land little more than 130 paces wide. If this slender neck were cut by a rampart and a sea-filled ditch a single company of resolute men might stand off an army.

  "And here you he land-locked every way," wrote the Commodore optimistically, "that no wind can possibly hurt you." No one at this time realised that the prevailing winds blew from the north, that they might close the sea-gate for weeks and prevent the clumsy ships from leaving the harbour. The bay was a trap, created by and quixotically sprung by Nature.

  Within a day of his first visit Captain Andreas returned, this time with his wife and sister. The women wore linen mantles of white, with strings of beads on their arms and necks and golden crescents in their nostrils. They said nothing, were submissive to Andreas, but stared at the Scots with bold eyes. Pennecuik reported that the first woman was the Captain's "travelling wife", adding that the little man had four in all, and that the Indians were allowed as many as they wished. "He was still on the pump as to our designs, but when he found our accounts all of a piece he told us that the English, after they had been friendly with them, had several times carried away their people." Which would suggest that the Indian had more cause to be suspicious than the Commodore. Andreas said that he would have brought another captain with him, a man called Pedro, but he was uneasy and would not approach the Scots "till he was better assured of our integrity."

  That morning the fleet weighed anchor and sailed into the bay. Pincarton's helmsman made a poor job of it and ran the Unicorn on to the sunken rock, tearing off some of her sheathing. She was got off with difficulty, but she leaked abominably thereafter and was never thoroughly seaworthy again. The Council met aboard her in Pincarton's cabin under the uneasy presidency of James Montgomerie, the first of the Land Councillors to occupy the chair, and although Pennecuik still maintained that his authority should over-ride all he grudgingly acknowledged that the soldiers now had a right to be heard. For once he made no demand for the court-martial of the Drummonds and Samuel Vetch, understandably since the rest of the Councillors decided that Thomas Drummond should be given the responsibility for organising and erecting defensive works ashore (though they would not allow the man to select his own sites). Pennecuik could not bring himself to write Drummond's name in his log however. "All the Land Captains being consulted," he said, "it was resolved to build a battery on the west side of the entrance to the harbour."

  Forty men from each ship were put ashore on the peninsula, to clear the ground for New Edinburgh, to cut down trees from the Shades of Love, and to build huts for the sick. Another party was set to digging graves, above the high water mark and out of the sun. Death had not abandoned the expedition. Lie
utenant Inglis died of a fever as he lay on deck listening to the strange sounds of a new world. The gunner's boy of the Caledonia was drowned unseen as he swam in the blue water below her stern. The bloody flux killed an Englishman named Jenner, Henrique Ghaup a musician, and James Clerk a Volunteer. And William Simpson, the printer, lost his devoted boy to a fever that was at least mercifully quick in dispatch.

  William Paterson's loss was sudden and heartbreaking, though he never referred to it in the report he wrote for the Directors. Within a few days of the death of his clerk, his wife died of the flux and was buried on the peninsula to a dropping salute from the Unicorn's guns. Thus, with no record of what she might have thought or felt, passed this loyal woman whom Walter Herries described as "a red-faced coffee-woman". His report of her death was even crueller. Paterson had carried her to Darien, he said, and "at her first landing thrust her about seven feet underground to make the possession, de facto, of New Caledonia more authentic."

  Paterson hid his grief, turning to the business of the Colony. He had lost his fight to extend the presidency to a month, and now he tried to get the settlement and the fort moved to a more sensible place. "The sea Councillors," he said, "were for a mere morass, neither fit to be fortified nor planted, nor indeed for men to he upon. I know no reason they had for it, unless it might be to save one of their boats the trouble, once in two or three days, to bestow three or four hours to supply the Landmen with water." It was two months before experience, the schoolmaster of fools he said, taught the Councillors that they had made a mistake, and the fort was re-sited on other ground.

  From the first day the boats went ashore with the working- parties it was clear that the men were almost too weak for the prodigious task of building a town and a fort. The want of enough food was bitter, and the privations of a long and sickly voyage had affected all. Their rations, that "scrimp allowance" as Paterson called them, had been meagre enough aboard ship, but then, at least, there had been no obligation to work long hours in damp and exhausting heat. There was no fresh meat, the barrelled beef and pork were green and malodorous. Some men caught fish in the bay, shot wild-fowl and monkeys, bought plantains and fruit from the Indians, but most of them had no more than what they were sparingly given. "And this," said Walter Herries, "was not fit for dogs to eat, but it was a mercy we had a good many Highlanders in our legion who were not used to feed on much of God's creatures that's hallowed." Upon Pennecuik's orders the provisions were kept aboard the ships and landed when necessary, or when he thought necessary. "Our marine masters," complained Paterson, "continually pretended other urgent business, and so could hardly spare their boats to bring the provisions ashore, and many of the most needful things that I know were only designed for the shore were detained on board under pretence they belonged to the ships."

  The old division between Seamen and Landsmen was thus further widened by anger and envy. Aboard their ships, away from the poison of noxious mists and rotting vegetation, better supplied with provisions and drawing their water from those southern rivers Pennecuik had said were dry, the sailors avoided the worst of the fevers and fluxes that harassed the men ashore. Sixteen more Landsmen died in November, including the remaining minister Adam Scott. His spiritual influence over his dismayed congregation had become increasingly tenuous as men turned from his arid exhorations to a more stimulating comfort. Drunkenness was common, the only escape from hunger, -from weariness, and from bewildered anger. Brandy was freely given to the sick, as much to cheer their departure as to help their recovery. In one evening the Planters drank all the beer issued to them for a week, and all they could win on a throw of dice or the turn of a card, passing happily into a stupor that shut out the cries of the sick, the whispering of the surf, and the unnerving night-sounds of the forests. Once a week they were also given a quart of wine to be shared among each mess of five men, and this too was gambled for and quickly drunk by the winner. The officers, with more liberal rations, were more frequently drunk. Captains received two quarts of wine a week, said Herries, and on the day of issue "went as merry to bed as if they had been in their winter quarters at Ghent or Brussels."

  Drink also brought more Indian captains to the peninsula and the ships, for the Scots were generous with their hospitality. They sometimes pressed brandy upon these simple people as men will indulge an appealing child with sweets, and sometimes made them drunk in the malicious hope that they would fall into the water as they stumbled overside to their canoes. Andreas came again and dined with the Councillors, his new hat on his head and his travelling wife at his side, her brown arms and neck heavy with rosy beads. On a fourth occasion he came with a fleet of canoes that were decked in leaves and feathers, bringing a chief called Ambrosio to whom he showed great respect and whom he obviously expected the Scots to honour likewise. This Ambrosio was a strong and vigorous man of sixty who controlled the Darien coastline from the River of Pines to the San Bias Islands. He had been fighting the Spaniards all his life, and he said that if Pennecuik gave him a hundred men, with arms for two thousand of his own, he would drive the Spanish "not only out of the mines, which are but three days journey, but even out of Panama itself." He had good reason for hoping that the Scots would join him in his absorbing life's work. A week or so before the fleet's arrival he had attacked a small settlement of priests on Golden Island, slaughtering them all. He did not tell Pennecuik this himself; the Commodore heard it from a wandering Frenchman whom Ambrosio brought with him. Pennecuik gave no promise of help, and he privately thanked God that the massacre had taken place before the Scots' arrival, otherwise Spain would undoubtedly have held them responsible.

  With Ambrosio was his son-in-law and sub-chief Pedro, a brisk young man who was as gay as Andreas was grave. French gaiety, Pennecuik called it disapprovingly, understanding the reason for it when he heard that Pedro frequently entertained French privateers in his village. He had once been a slave in Panama City, had not forgotten that harrowing experience or forgiven it, and was as hot for cutting Spanish throats with Scottish swords as his father-in-law. He spoke French well, and was thus able to talk to many of the Scots officers without the aid of Mr. Spense's Spanish. He quickly made a friend of Lieutenant Robert Turnbull, a bright-hearted, courageous young man who, alone among the Scots, took the trouble to learn something of the Indians' language. Pennecuik did not know what to make of Pedro. Polygamy was one thing, understandable if not commendable, but the man was not only married to Ambrosio's daughter but also to his own daughters by her, "which is allowed here, yet it seems it's believed a crime, since if they have any children during the life of their mother they are burnt alive, the children, I mean."

  From these captains the Scots learned that there was no great King or Emperor of Darien, no Golden One such as Paterson had once believed, though there was a legend of a barbarous tyrant who beheaded men for pleasure and allowed no one but himself to have more than one wife. He was murdered one night by a group of his followers who resented the pleasure and envied the privilege, and since then the land had been divided unequally among a number of chiefs, great and small, whose power and influence seemed to depend on their success in the field against the Spaniards. Captain Diego, who held the coast eastward from Caledonia to Caret Bay, commanded three thousand warriors and was more esteemed than Ambrosio. He had been at war with Spain since he and some of his clan broke out of the mines where they had been working as slaves. Pousigo, the brother-in-law of Andreas, was a powerful shaman, a "clergyman" Pennecuik called him, and although he possessed little land his influence was great. Corbet, whom the settlers never met, was an ally of the French and had joined them in their recent attack on Carthagena, but the other captains thought little of him. Nicola might have been a valuable ally had the Scots taken the trouble to send him gifts and seek him out. He was Ambrosio's rival, a wise, brave, and good-natured man who could not only speak Spanish but read and write it as well. He also had a surprising knowledge of European affairs. He had once been a pet of the Spania
rds, but had broken with them when the Governor of Portobello stole his prized musket. Since then he had wasted his talents in fruitless raids, in the killing of Spaniards whenever and wherever he found them.

  At the sea-gate end of the peninsula were three promontories. The largest, which the Scots called Forth Point, was a sandy thumb of land and a few feet only above sea-level. To the north of it, across a small bay, was another which was named Pelican Point. The third was the highest, the end of the northern escarpment of the peninsula, and this was called Point Look-out. Here a wooden tower was built, wherein a watchman was posted by day and night. Two week's after the fleet's arrival he reported a strange ship standing to westward, and the following day she dropped anchor off the Isle of Pines to the north-west of the harbour mouth. It was another twenty-four hours before her captain was rowed into Caledonia Bay. He came up on the Saint Andrew's quarter and boarded her, giving his ship's name as the Rupert, a French vessel taken as a prize during the war, and his own as Richard Long with the King's commission to search for sunken treasure in these waters. Mr. Secretary Vernon had found a use for the man, though exactly what that was neither of them was ever indiscreet enough to put to paper. The Scots greeted him cordially, although they were not pleased by the visit of an English ship so soon. She was not unexpected, however. Some days before, the Indians had reported her furtive presence off the coast.