THE DARIEN DISASTER

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

  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.

  When Vetch married his plain-featured, sharp-nosed cousin, her father gave them a house and a lot on Pearl Street, a fine residence with a high roof and two stacks of chimneys said to be worth £1,000. Vetch set himself up as a merchant, and since the Company never discovered what happened to the goods left in his charge it was assumed that he had converted them to his own use with the assistance of Wenham and Delancey. The detestation and contempt of his countrymen at home, the hatred of those who had sailed with him from Caledonia, the shocked pain of his family, did not trouble him, at least openly. He prospered, became rich and influential, a Colonel of Militia and the Governor of Nova Scotia, until his ambition over-reached his talents and he was ruined by political enemies who had once been his friends. He fled to England. Thirty-three years after he had deserted the Company and his comrades he died a lonely debtor in the King's Bench Prison.

  The Caledonia sailed on October 12. Of the five ships that had left the Forth fifteen months before, only she returned to Scotland. She carried no more than three hundred men, and some of those would die before she reached the Clyde.

  4 The Key of the Universe

  "It will be wonderful to see the Sun rise in the West" Edinburgh and London, January to August 1699

  In London the Attorney-General was considering his answer to a question put to him on behalf of certain interested subjects of East New Jersey, where a Scot had recently been appointed Governor. Could a Scotchman hold such office in the Plantations, or was he disqualified therefrom by the Act regulating frauds and abuses? It was three weeks before Sir Thomas Trevor gave his opinion: "That a Scotchman born is by Law capable of being appointed Governor of any of the Plantations, he being a natural-born subject of England in judgement and construction of Law, as much as if he had been born in England."

  In Edinburgh that last week of January, the Directors of the Company (who would have been as angry as the rest of their countrymen to hear that they were subjects of England) were giving their final instructions to Captain Andrew Gibson of the brigantine Dispatch. Three months after receiving the Council's letters from Madeira, urgently appealing for provisions, they were at last sending a small cargo of biscuits, flour, pork, stockfish, oil and brandy. Gibson's orders were to sail his little ship by the most expeditious route to Darien, to take no insults from the men-of-war of any nation, and to defend himself by force of arms if necessary. With him sailed William Vetch, now recovered from his sickness, anxious to join his brother, and eager to take his seat on the Council of Caledonia. The brigantine weathered the northern passage, but was hit by gales as she came down the Hebrides and was finally wrecked on the isle of Texa, two miles off the coast of Islay. All she carried was lost, and her crew swam ashore with nothing but what they wore.

  For the next month the Company was leisurely engaged in the purchase of another small ship, the Marion of Leith. She was renamed the Olive Branch when her owner was at last persuaded to part with her—or with fifteen-sixteenths of her, though his prudent foresight in retaining the last fraction for himself was to be a misjudgement. She was soon joined in Leith Road by a chartered ship, the Hopeful Binning. As the weather improved, deep-laden lighters began to fill their holds with casks of biscuit, barrels of ale, meal, tobacco, raisins and sugar, bolts of cloth and cases of hardware.

  Though much of the delay in reinforcing the Colony was due to the astonishing complacency of the committees for this and for that, there were less controllable causes and the Directors had referred to them in the letters carried by the Dispatch. "We have had a scarcity of corn and provisions here since your departure, even to a dearth, and poverty of course occasioned thereby." Scotland had moved closer still to famine, to privation and epidemic disease. It had little enough for itself, and was reluctant to spare some of it for those distant adventurers who must now be enjoying the fruitful pleasures described in Mr. Wafer's book, lately off the press. The stockholders were loyal to the Company, if not disinterested, and with few exceptions they had answered the Company's third call on the subscriptions at Candlemas. In their turn, to reward such faith, the Directors declared a small dividend on the first call.

  A stronger encouragement to any doubters was that physical manifestation of the Company's glory, the Rising Sun. Still moored off the mouth of the Gair Loch, her splendid lines and gilded hull were noble in the sun of an early spring
. The sight of her, and the thought of others soon to sail with her, moved a modestly anonymous Lady of Honour to compose some romping stanzas which she called The Golden Island or the Darien Song, in Commendation of All Concerned in that Noble Enterprise of the Valiant Scots.

  We have another Fleet to sail,

  the Lord will reik* them fast;

  It will be wonderful to see the Sun rise in the West

  * blow.

  Some are noble, all are great, Lord bless your company, And let your fame, in Scotland's name, o'er spread both land and sea.

  The friends and relations of the great and noble already gone, however, were wondering what had happened to them, and their growing anxiety burst into extravagant joy on March 25 when Alexander Hamilton arrived by express from England. He carried a large sealed packet of letters and dispatches from the Colony, and a crying, shouting mob of men and women waited at the entrance to Milne Square for a glimpse of his fever- yellow face. He had travelled in haste from Bristol, where a West Indian ship had brought him, as eager to outstrip Major Cunningham of Eickett as he was to bring the good news. He was greeted warmly by the relieved Directors, who questioned him closely and then made public as much of the dispatches as they thought politic.