THE DARIEN DISASTER
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The cadet sons of twenty-two leading families were given commissions as lieutenants or ensigns. Others, of no eminence but proud lineage, asked to go as Planters or Volunteers until their valour and industry won them a commission. One of these was Lauchlan Bain, whose father was a tacksman in the Mackay country, and his promotion would be as rapid as his following disgrace was irrevocable. Among the company commanders was another Colin Campbell from Argyll's, and two more of his clan were lieutenants. Another overseer was Lord Mungo Murray, a brave and selfless member of the house of Atholl. Captain Andrew Stewart was the landless brother of the Earl of Galloway, but carried with his commission the Company's promise that if he purchased "some considerable share of the stock this Court shall for his further encouragement assume him to the number of Directors." Among all the officers of the companies there was once more a scattering of splendid names, predominantly Highland—Carmichael and Campbell, Farquhar and Grant, Ramsay, Colquhoun, Mackay and Urquhart, Murray, Gordon, Menzies and Ross. At least one father was inflamed by the fire of his son's enthusiasm and went with him. Alexander Kinnard of Culbin had once been a Jacobite, an officer in the Highland army that had risen against William ten years before. Although he had been pardoned in 1693, his estate on the Moray Firth had since been engulfed by tidal sand. When his son was appointed an ensign in Captain John Telfer's company, he secured an overseer's commission for himself, and it may be that in addition to sharing the boy's life he hoped to restore a tarnished name and a broken fortune.
Another father concerned with family honour, if not his own obligations thereto, was Sir James Oswald. He plagued the Directors during these last days with petitions on behalf of his luckless heir. It had been understood that Roger Oswald would serve the Colony as a clerk, but the only letter Sir James had received—by Mr. Hamilton's hand and addressed to Thomas Aikman—suggested that he was not so employed. Would the Directors once more recommend the young man to the Council? Wearily, they resolved that they would.
Four new Councillors, described as "men of special trust", were being sent with the expedition. Firstly William Vetch of course, though his uneasy health had again been affected by the wreck of the Dispatch and his struggle to reach the Islay shore.
From his sick-bed, he promised the Directors that should he be able to stand on his feet he would most certainly go aboard the Rising Sun at the time appointed. As Commodore and captain of the flagship, and in acknowledgement of the assistance he and his brother had given to the Company, James Gibson was also elected. He was a rough man and little liked, and it is easy to see him as another Pennecuik, though he was the better seaman. The third was James Byres, the Edinburgh merchant who had been among the first to sign his name in Mrs. Purdie's coffee-house, subscribing £500 in the hope of a preferment now abundantly realised. If a contentious nature and an arrogant conceit were the principal qualifications for the Council—as they seem to have been—then Byres was an excellent choice. Upon his appointment he asked for a certificate declaring his right to the office, a passage for his brother-in-law and his apprentice, and a guarantee that he, his dependants and his baggage would be given fitting accommodation aboard the Rising Sun. The fourth man was Major John Lindsay, so self-effacing, unquarrelsome and obliging that little has survived of his existence but his signature, boldly penned below those of his colleagues.*
Lindsay was a late appointment, almost an afterthought. It had been intended that he and Dr. John Munro of Coul should go as "persons of special trust", without office or authority clearly defined. Remembering that he had lost his hoped-for place on the first Council when the Company followed the Kirk's advice and chose Pennecuik, Munro said that he could not accept unless he were made a Councillor and member of the Court of Directors. Refused these offices, he sulkily declined to go, and was thus saved the embarrassment of explaining to the other surgeons why the medical supplies he had ordered were so inadequate.
Drummers beat along the Renfrew shore on Wednesday, August 16, with a proclamation calling "all Overseers, Assistants, Sub-Assistants, Gentlemen Volunteers, Tradesmen, Planters and Others" to the boats. At once, lest they forfeit their passage. By
* He may have been one of the disbanded officers of the Earl of Argyll's Regiment. A disproportionate number of them served in the Colony, as a result, no doubt, of the Earl's efforts on their behalf. A John Lindsay took part in the Massacre of Glencoe as a lieutenant in Campbell of Glenlyon's battalion-company, but the Councillor could have been the John Lindsay who was Aide-Major to the Earl.
ten o'clock the next day nearly thirteen hundred men, women and children were aboard, crowding the decks and lower shrouds, cheering and waving as a dozen Directors were rowed by in a last review. In Gibson's yellow cabin later, the ships' captains and the four Councillors—William Vetch having come despite his febrile health—took wine and meat with the Court and were given their final instructions.
They were to go jointly and with all speed to their ships and make ready to sail. Once at sea, and westward of Ireland, they were to make for Golden Island by the shortest route and without landing a man, except for watering-parties, until Caledonia was reached. There they would stand off the harbour mouth, fire a gun, and wait for a pilot. During the voyage they would keep good order among their crews and passengers, insist that the surgeons took diligent care of the sick, and exercise the Landsmen regularly in the use of arms. A strict eye would also be kept on the ships' stewards, who might otherwise sell the Company's provisions to the colonists "under pretence of goods belonging to them". The daily allowance of brandy was that laid down in the Bill of Fare, but since some thought the ration too large it could be left to each captain's discretion. They were to fight if attacked at sea, fly the Company's standard and no other if sighted by an English man-of-war, and to send word of their progress by any homeward ship they believed to be a friend to the Company. "And so, wishing you a happy voyage and a safe return, we bid you a hearty farewell...."
The fleet left with the ebb-tide on Friday. By dusk it was sailing south, with Loch Long astern and the heather-red hills of Cowal turning black on the starboard beam.
"Repossess yourselves thereof by force of arms..." Glasgow and Edinburgh, August to October 1699
The four ships sailed no further than the Isle of Bute. As they came up to Rothesay Bay the wind changed against them. Liking none of the weather signs, Gibson hoisted a white flag to his ensign-staff and fired one gun. Upon this signal the others drew in to his flagship and dropped anchor in the bay. There they remained for a month, waiting for a fair wind, wasting their provisions, watching the days pass in wondrous colours across the mountains to the north. They were visited every forenoon by anxious message-boats from Greenock. From Glasgow the Directors impatiently urged Gibson to sail, but he stubbornly refused to move until he could be sure of a wind that would carry him down the firth and about the Mull of Kintyre.
Daniel Mackay arrived from Darien in the middle of September. The different tone of the letters he brought, the worrying reports of death, disease, hunger and despair, alarmed the Directors, and they sent an express to Gibson, ordering him to remain in Rothesay Bay until Mackay joined him with fresh dispatches for the Colony. He acknowledged the order, but his master at this moment was the weather and he was determined to obey that before all else.
Montgomerie and Jolly had come to Edinburgh at last. Jolly had presented his long, exculpatory memorial to the Duke of Hamilton, and both men were ready to answer any questions the Directors might wish to put, to refute all charges made against them. The Court had no time for them, and refused to see them. They waited miserably in their lodgings, or went abroad to defend themselves passionately before any man with the time or inclination to listen. And it can have been no comfort to see young Mr. Mackay going in and out of Milne Square daily.
Toward the end of the month an express from London brought news of a disturbing rumour. It was said there that the Colony had been entirely abandoned, that the Scots had surrend
ered their fort and town to the Spaniards. When Mackay was asked if it could be true, he laughed and said there was nothing in it. His confidence reassured the Directors, and when they sent news of the rumour to Rothesay Bay they urged the Councillors not to believe anything so inconsistent and fabulous. "We can believe no set of men in the world of any reasonable measures of discretion and resolution, and much less those in whose fidelity and courage we have placed such an entire confidence, could be guilty of so much groundless cowardice, folly and treachery."
As if the thought of cowardice had reminded them of Jolly and Montgomerie, the Directors called both men before the Court the next day. They were closely questioned, their memorials read, and their defence compared with the letters from the Council which Mackay had brought. From the moment they entered that panelled chamber in Milne Square, there can have been no hope for them. The charge of desertion was proven by their presence in Scotland, and after its distasteful encounter with Major Cunningham the Court was in no mood to be lenient. It was resolved, and written into the minutes by Rockerick Mackenzie, that their conduct in leaving the Colony had been "altogether groundless and unwarrantable". They were cast out, disgraced, and their share of the Company's stock withdrawn from them.
On Friday, September 22, Daniel Mackay left Edinburgh for the Clyde and his return to Darien. That day, the three Directors who were watching the Company's affairs at Greenock sent an express to the fleet, informing the Councillors that Mackay would join them on Saturday evening with late dispatches and two gabbards full of bread and rice. They too wrote of the rumour from London, and Mackay's derision. Why should Scots retreat before Spaniards, "of whom we never heard that our people were afraid"? The story was a malicious invention of the English, contrived by James Vernon to discourage the dispatch of provisions to the Colony.
The fleet sailed in the forenoon of Saturday, without warning, and without waiting for Mackay or the bread and rice. The Councillors had received the Greenock letter, and by the boat that brought it sent back what the Directors later complained was a "short and supercilious" note. It declared that a favourable wind at last could not now be ignored. When Mackay arrived at Rothesay the bay was empty, and the ships long since gone below the horizon. He pursued them unsuccessfully as far as Loch Ryan and then returned to Greenock in an angry temper. The Directors were outraged, writing furious letters in pursuit of the fleet, but the nation was delighted.
Our sable night is gone, the day is won,
The Scots are followed with the Rising Sun.
Twelve days later that sable night returned, and the day seemed clearly lost. Rumours of disaster could no longer be dismissed as English lies. Past sunset on Monday, October 9, a rider reached Milne Square from Leith where the London pacquet had arrived. He brought papers from James Foulis, Paterson's old friend and associate, and enclosed with them were copies of two letters sent from New York in August. They had been written by George Moffat, supercargo of the Caledonia, and addressed to his master Joseph Ormiston in London. They were brief and unemotional, but from what they said there could be no doubt that the Colony had been abandoned.
The Directors published a summary of the facts in the Gazette, and by the end of the week the news was known all over the Lowlands. Saturday was the birthday of the exiled Stuart king, and the Jacobites of Edinburgh, who waited in the wings throughout the whole tragi-comedy of the Company's history, now made a short and melodramatic appearance on stage. For here was a disaster that could be blamed on the asthmatic usurper, and if rightly exploited would embarrass his servants. But the demonstration was without purpose or organisation. Toasts were drunk in public to King James's health, some notable men stood about bonfires upon which unrecognisable effigies were burnt, a few pistols and fireworks were exploded in the dark and that was all. The country was too numb for a political weapon to be made of its bitterness and shock. When the numbness faded there was the pain of wounded pride and a fierce anger against the Caledonians, not the Councillors alone but all who had sailed with the first expedition. Fathers believed that they had been betrayed by their sons, brothers by brothers. No one would have disputed the tone of the letter which the Directors wrote to the survivors in New York, accusing them of a "shameful and dishonourable abandonment". There were many men, Sir James Oswald among them, who declared that if their sons did not return to Darien and their duty they need not come back to their homes.
Moffat's letters were still unread by most of the Directors when those meeting in a quorum at Milne Square on October 10 took immediate steps to save the Colony. They agreed that bills of account should be sent to New York and Jamaica upon which the Colony might draw, and had that sensible procedure been adopted from the beginning the first Caledonians would never have had any difficulty in buying provisions. It was also agreed that the first available ship should be chartered to carry Daniel Mackay to the Colony with fresh instructions for the second expedition and the captains of the Olive Branch and the Hopeful Binning. In the meantime a letter to the Councillors aboard the Rising Sun was hastily drafted and signed. It informed them of what they surely would know before they received it, that the settlement had been abandoned, and it warned them against any thought they might consequently have of returning to Scotland.
If this find you not possessed of our shamefully deserted Colony, you are forthwith to make the best of your way thither, and endeavour (if you find it possessed by any other) to repossess yourself thereof by force of arms; but if that should prove altogether impracticable or impossible for you at this time, you are to set down in the nearest and most convenient place which you can fall upon, to wait a fit opportunity to do the same, which at no time, neither now nor hereafter, must be neglected.
More important than this letter was the man who carried it, and who was introduced by it as one of the new Council of Caledonia, "having frankly and generously offered himself to go wherever the Company's service might require him." Indeed he had, and had been waiting for more than a month to know whether the Directors would accept his offer. That acceptance, so long delayed, was made this day in anxious haste, and with the sudden realisation, perhaps, that here was a man who should have been employed twelve months before.
He was Alexander Campbell of Fonab, a tall West Highland laird with steady eyes and a gentle smile. Not yet forty, he had until recently been the lieutenant-colonel of Lord Portmore's Regiment of Foot, and before that a company commander in Argyll's. Thomas Drummond was his friend, and another had been Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, the bankrupt murderer of Glencoe whose body he had sadly buried at Bruges. With them he had led his company against the bloody redoubts of Dottignies, and with them he had broken his sword in anger when their regiment was surrendered at Dixemude. Honour, duty and loyalty were the simple milestones he followed, and he appears to have had neither malice nor jealousy. With their letter, the Directors gave him his commission and a draft for £1,000 Sterling on a Jamaican merchant, with which he was to hire or buy a sloop for Caledonia. He said good-bye to his wife and daughter, and left at once for Bristol. There he hoped to find a ship that would take him to the West Indies.
The Court of Directors and the Council-General met regularly every day for the rest of the month. The loss of so many ships and supplies—so much expenditure without return—forced them to make another call on the stockholders and to take resolute action against all their debtors. The Moderator of the Kirk was asked to appoint a National Day of Fast and Humiliation, and having thus appealed for God's mercy they resolved that none be shown to the guilty men of Caledonia. If any Councillor of the first Colony could prove his loyalty he was to be re-admitted to the Company's favour, But such as shall be found to have deserted either for cowardice, temerity, or simplicity, to be suspended till advice thereof be sent hither and an answer returned; and if any of them be found guilty of treachery or evil practices against the honour and interest of the Company or Colony to be condignly punished with the outmost severity as in cases of Treason.
Though he might not have agreed, his miserable death had been a providential mercy.
"And we looked for Peace, but no good came..
Caledonia, November 1699 to January 1700