Apart from being a natural braggart, the Commodore had also been reassured by a dispatch the Council had just received from Don Luis Carrizoli, the militia commander at Toubacanti. With elegant politeness it thanked the Scots for their letters which he would forward to the Governor and the President. Until he heard from them he would naturally suspend his activities against the Colony, and would not molest its emissaries. The Scots could dispose of Domingo de Bada as they thought fit, and thus "God preserve you, Illustrious Council, whose hands I kiss...."
Warmed by the courtesy of the letter, the Council did not see that it was a mere acknowledgement from a postmaster, a franking of their own letters. Nor could it be known that, far to the north in Mexico, Don Joseph Sarmiento de Valladares, Conde Moctezuma, Viceroy and Captain-General, the most powerful man in the hemisphere, had recently received news of the settlement and had made up his mind what to do about it for the glory of Spain and the salvation of the Church. "These orders, unless something new changes them," he would soon write to his commanders, "will be to exterminate the Scottish pirates for the reasons which have dictated my resolution, the greatest one being to destroy the heresies which the Scots may introduce amongst the ignorant people." Sarmiento was less confident than this breath of fire might indicate. The Isthmus was the unguarded heel of the empire, and the past of Drake and Morgan had shown how few men were needed to cut the tendon of its rivers and roads. He had been told that there were already four thousand Scots on Darien, and that six thousand more were at sea to reinforce them. In a wild moment of alarm he believed that even the Philippines might be in danger.
Still waiting for his ships to be careened at Portobello, Don Andres de Pez might have wondered what he was expected to do about that.
The Scots' hope of an amicable settlement with the Spanish was not only worthless, it was also short-lived. On February 26 Ephraim Pilkington came back with his sloop, the Maidstone. He had not sold a bolt of cloth, a wig, or a pair of darned hose along the coast, and this was not the worst of what he had to report. The Dolphin had been taken by the Spaniards, he had seen her in Carthagena Bay.
Paterson had been right in his warning. The snow was clumsy to windward and impossible to handle. Within twenty-four hours of leaving Caledonia a strong gale drove her eastward to Carthagena, and despite Malloch's efforts to turn her out to sea she would not respond. She struck a rock in the lee of Pointa de Canao, throwing Pincarton against the helm and breaking one of his ribs. Badly holed and leaking quickly, there was nothing that could be done with her but take her in to the shore and under the guns of the fort. As she went aground and heeled over, her crew knew what was now awaiting them. A shouting crowd gathered on the esplanade below the white city, and soon the Governor came down in a gold and varnished coach. He sent out a boat to the crippled ship, and Pincarton went ashore first, his ribs strapped and his mouth bitter with humiliation. He asked the Governor if his men might return to the Dolphin to save her cargo, and Don Diego de los Rios Quesada, who was probably still shocked by her sudden and unexpected arrival, gave him that permission.
"But before we could get to the boats," said Pincarton two years later, reporting to the Directors whom he had never expected to see again, "we was hindered from going on board, and sent up to the town with a strong guard, and separately put in a dungeon and in irons."
"If a man were sick, no victuals for him that day..." Caledonia, March and April 1699
The Councillors' reaction to the loss of the Dolphin was both splendid and ridiculous. As if they were the government of a powerful nation, with a fleet and ready battalions to enforce their will, they demanded the immediate release of the ship and crew under pain of their terrible displeasure.
Lieutenant Alexander Maghie, because he was a smart young fellow said Pennecuik, was sent to Carthagena with this demand. He left aboard the Maidstone on March 11 (his departure being delayed by the usual argument in Council) with a drummer, a guard of honour, and a flag of truce. In the letter he carried, the Spanish Governor was reminded of the treaties signed by Great Britain and Spain in March and July 1670, by which each was bound to respect the rights and subjects of the other. If the Dolphin and her crew were not released, if Mr. Maghie suffered any indignity whatsoever, then Caledonia would "by force of arms, both by sea and land, set upon, take and apprehend any of the men, ships goods, moneys and merchandise of His Catholic Majesty."
Maghie was ordered to wait twenty-four hours for a reply, and then to leave with or without it. He returned to the Colony ten days later, his Highland blood inflamed by several affronts to his country's honour and his own pride. He had gone ashore at Carthagena in a canoe, his drummer beating at his side and his flag of truce in the prow. A file of soldiers marched him through the sun to the Governor's house, and there he was kept in an ante-room until the Governor and his council found the time and inclination to receive him. Don Diego broke open the letter, read it quickly, scowled at its threats of reprisal and bloodshed, and threw it to the floor. It was joined, unread, by a copy of the Act which Maghie next gave him, and by copies of the Letters Patent granted to the Company. The Scots, said Don Diego when he could find his voice, were rogues, pirates and cuckolds, and he called for a guard to throw this one into prison. The soldiers were at the door when Don Martino de Saballe, commander of the Spanish forces at Carthagena, gently interceded for Maghie, asking the Govenor's leave to lodge the boy that night at his own home. Don Diego grudgingly agreed.
De Saballe was a kindly man, or perhaps more subtle than the Governor. He was impressed by Maghie's spirited courage, and reasoned with him in Latin, their only common language. He suggested that if the Scots did not insist upon the return of the Dolphin's cargo (which he would not admit the Spanish had salvaged) he might persuade the Governor to release her crew. In the morning, however, Don Diego's humour was no better, and was worsened by Maghie's loyal but tactless demand to see Pincarton and his men. Not only could they not be seen, shouted the Governor, they would stay in prison for as long as the King's Majesty pleased. Moreover, had his soldiers been in a better condition—and this, no doubt, with a resentful eye on De Saballe —he would long ago have driven the Scots from Darien. But let them not take too much comfort from their present security. He was fully resolved, Maghie reported, "to gather such a force by sea and land as would quickly, at one blow, root us all out of this place."
At least the young Highlander was allowed to leave, and for that he probably had De Saballe to thank. In Carthagena harbour were the flagship and three others of Benbow's West Indian Fleet, and before the Maidstone sailed Maghie paid a courtesy call on the Admiral. John Benbow had as yet received no orders from London about the Scots, and saw no reason why he should ruffle the Spaniards' feathers, particularly since he was at this moment selling them a cargo of Negro slaves. Yet he was civil to his angry visitor, politely read the Company's Act which Maghie carried like a talisman, and generously wished the Company well. He said that he would press none of its servants into his ships, and would do what he could for the Dolphin's crew. "At my going over the side he said we had a great opportunity before us, and bid us remember that fortune always favours the bold." All of which could only have confused Maghie. He had been told by De Saballe that Benbow had assured the Governor that the King of England disapproved of the Scots settlement, and would not support or protect it.
The Councillors now had the choice of stomaching the Governor's insults or honouring the threats they had made. To his surprise, Ephraim Pilkington was invited to take the Maidstone out on a reprisal raid against Spanish shipping. The Letters of Mark, signed by Jolly as President, were attractive enough: twelve full shares of all booty for the hire of his sloop, and two and a half for himself, 600 pieces of eight or six slaves for any of his crew seriously disabled, and the choice of one in three of all the prizes taken. Though no man of war, there was little profit for Pilkington in Caledonia Bay, and he accepted. He left on the next favourable wind, captured nothing, sank nothi
ng, saw nothing, and was back in the harbour within a few days.
The only comfort in Maghie's return had been that the Maidstone brought with her a New England brigantine she had sighted off the coast, east of Caret Bay. This was The Three Sisters which Scots sympathisers in New York had fitted out and loaded with salt mackerel, butter and flour for their countrymen on Darien. This scanty cargo would not last more than a few days, but the realisation that they had not been forgotten raised the settlers' spirits for a short while. There were now several trading-sloops in the Bay or at anchor off Golden Island. Moon and Wilmot had returned in one called the Neptune, and with them another commanded by a Matthias Maltman. They still demanded money only for their provisions, but sober, reasonable men might have persuaded them to accept goods. There were no such men on the Council now: even Paterson was fretful, captious and disillusioned. Pennecuik was fighting a nagging illness with brandy, his temper ragged, his mind dark with suspicion. He quarrelled with Moon almost immediately, accusing him of carrying off one of the colonists on his last visit, a homesick boy called Skelton. He arrested one of Moon's boats, declaring that he would hold it and its crew until the boy was returned. There then followed a heated wrangle, boats going to and fro across the Bay with ultimatums like emissaries between warring camps. Ashore, the Planters watched this tragi-comedy with bewildered apathy, their skins yellow and scabrous for want of the good food in the ships' holds. Paterson called upon some inner reserve of strength, persuaded Moon to give up the boy and Pennecuik to be content with an apology. It all ended, he said, "in a little hector and Billingsgate".
But it had not ended. Daniel Mackay, who had been ill with a fever for some days, now returned hot-faced to the Council for his week as President. Still delirious, he said that Maltman's sloop was sailing under a Spanish commission, and that there were three Spanish merchants aboard her at this moment. He demanded the Councillors' signatures to an order authorising Robert Drummond to arrest the ship, her master and her crew, as a reprisal for the imprisonment of Pincarton and the insufferable insults to young Maghie. When Paterson protested, Mackay turned on him in fury. "I'll warrant you'll not meddle," he shouted, "because your friend Wilmot is concerned!" Paterson surrendered and reluctantly signed the order. Away went Drummond's boats from the Caledonia, with a great show of swords, muskets and pistols. They found no Spanish commission, only papers that plainly indicated that the sloop was truly a Jamaican. Hiding in her hold, however, were two frightened Spanish passengers whom Maltman was carrying to Portobello. Drummond brought them off in triumph, together with £100 in pieces of eight which he found in Maltman's cabin. The Council appropriated the money, using it to pay the master of The Three Sisters for his mackerel and butter, but Paterson was miserably unhappy.
"I said that I would write home about this matter, and then left them. God knows, my concern was not upon my own account, or any humour of my own, but the true love of justice and the good of the Colony."
Recognising that an excuse might be needed for this little act of piracy, Pennecuik said that Maltman's crew were a "parcel of barbarous fellows". They had recently raided a Spanish island to the leeward of Carthagena, captured a rich friar in his cell, whipped him, and hung him up by the heels until the blood was black in his face. Which may have been true, but scarcely supported the claim that Maltman was sailing under a Spanish commission.
Ashore in the rotting huts of New Edinburgh there was increasing horror. "Our men did not only continue daily to grow more weakly and sickly," said Paterson, "but more, without hopes of recovery." By the beginning of March there were two hundred graves in the cemetery, and now ten or twelve new ones were sometimes dug in a day. In Samuel Vetch's company there had been twenty-three Gentlemen Volunteers of whom one only, Roger Oswald, was still alive. The survivors, yellow skeletons in torn scarlet, stared at each sunrise with surprise, unable to explain their hold on life or understand their comrades' loss of it. One surgeon, Herries, had left with Hamilton. Another, Andrew Livingstone, had been captured with the Dolphin, and a man could now fall sick and die before Hector Mackenzie or his overworked assistants could be told that he was ill. The best a man might hope for was that his friends would be strong enough to dig him a grave, that he would not be left unmourned, his body thrown into the bay when the water-boats went back to their ships. There is now no way of knowing which of many tropical fevers it was that daily weakened and reduced the demoralised settlement. Patrick MacDowall, who would bring a ship to the relief of the second expedition next year, wrote a clinical account of the illness he survived.
It was a very severe spotted fever, my whole body being entirely pale red. My extremes was worst and some places about my wrists and ankles altogether red. But all was without either itching or inflammation or any sort of exturbance above my skin. I had an hellish, vicious, bad, intolerable taste, so that everything I took was with the greatest reluctance imaginable. I had, in the beginning, an extraordinary desire of vomitting, and accordingly drunk warm water which did make me vomit up some base, yellowish, bitter, unpleasant choleric sort of stuff of which I found great ease. I continued very ill for four or five days. I took with it a great headache, soreness of my eyes, and weariness of all my joints and bones, which continued all the time with me. I was very inclined to fainting all the while of my sickness, and a considerable time afterwards it brought me so extraordinary weak that I am not yet able to walk alone now. I had blistering plasters applied to my neck at the time of my sickness, and other plasters to my temples, of both of which I found very much good, but our Doctor would neither bleed nor vomit me, though I was still very pressing to have both or either done.
A few men remained loyal to the hope and enthusiasm they had brought with them from Scotland. Lieutenant Robert Turnbull had fallen in love with this land, with a devotion that neither hunger nor despair could destroy. As late as April he wrote to his friend, Erskine of Carnock, in language of extravagant hyperbole. Darien was a green paradise where fruit fell from the trees without the pain of plucking them, where magnificent forests ran with gentle deer, where the songs of bright- feathered birds sweetened the evening air above rivers of silver- scaled fish. He believed in this Colony. He longed for "honest Councillors" who would make it a success, men such as his friends Thomas Drummond and Samuel Vetch. He was not just a dreamer. He urged Carnock to tell the Company to send nets for fishing, sensible working-tools, more kettles, coarse harn for tropical clothing, and good shoes, many shoes "for this country burns them". And if women must come, let them be those who knew how to cook, to launder, to nurse the sick.
But most of the settlers had long ago lost any interest they might have had in the land or the Colony. Like Roger Oswald, they wished only to survive, to be gone, to return home. Afraid of his stern father in Lanarkshire, Oswald could not tell him of this misery and despair. He wrote instead to his cousin Thomas Aikman, a Writer in Edinburgh, hoping that he would explain to an unrelenting parent. He was penniless, he said, and like most of the others was thus without the means or influence to buy more food. The salt mackerel brought by The Three Sisters, the turtles caught by Edward Sands and sold at five pieces of eight for every hundred pounds, may have come in a "happy hour" for Pennecuik, but it would seem that few of the ordinary Planters and Volunteers shared in this happiness. They lived on two pounds of flour a week. Two pounds by the Company's weighing, said Oswald, which meant one pound only, and "if it had been well- sifted you would have got a quarter of a pound of mouldy maggots, worms and other such beasts out of the same." Beef, on the rare occasions it was issued, was "as black as the sole of my foot and as rotten as the stump of a rotten boot." Sometimes a handful of dried peas was shared amongst five men for their daily allowance. "When boiled with a little water, without anything else, big maggots and worms must be skimmed off the top of the broth as ever scum is taken off a pot."
In short, Sir, a man might easily have destroyed his whole week's allowance in one day and have but one ordinary stomach
neither.... Yet for all this short allowance we were every man (let him never be so weak) daily turned out to work by daylight, whether with the hatchet, wheelbarrow, pick-axe, shovel, fore-hammer, or any other instrument the case required, and so continued until 12 a clock, and out at 2 again and stayed till night, sometimes working all day up to the headbands of the breeches in water at the trenches. My shoulders have been so wore with carrying burdens that the skin has come off them and grew full of boils. If a man were sick and so was obliged to stay within, no victuals for him that day. Our Councillors all the time lying at their ease, sometimes divided into factions and, being swayed by particular interest, ruined the public.
At least Thomas Drummond, driving half-starved and sickly men to work in this fashion, could claim that their labour was not wasted. By the beginning of April, the palisades of the fort were finished and thirty guns were mounted in its embrasures. Twenty more had been dragged up to the land batteries on the points. Across the neck of the peninsula had been dug a great ditch, twenty feet deep and twenty-five wide. Yet this was all that had been done in five months. There was no land broken, no plantations sown, no trade established, no goods sold, no town of consequence built, no parliament elected, no government but the meddlesome rule of five quarrelling men. The Councillors no longer had the respect and confidence of the settlement. Oswald called them "superlative Doges", and was probably repeating the general gibe. When he left Edinburgh he had been placed under the protection of Robert Jolly, but "I was never a straw obliged to him, though he promised great things to my father." Worse than this neglect, Jolly had taken from him a sow and four sucklings, the loss of which he remembered bitterly in his hunger.
THE DARIEN DISASTER Page 22
