THE DARIEN DISASTER

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

  One hundred and sixty people died on that voyage from Rothesay in Bute to Caledonia in Darien. Though the fleet made the crossing in half the time it had taken the first expedition, its losses were four times as great. Yet James Byres would write confidently to the Directors that "our dead and sick men are very far short of what may be thought agreeable to so long a voyage." Many of the children did not survive to see the faery wonder of the green West Indian Isles, and among them was Mary JafFray, the Fire-master's daughter. Alexander Dalgleish also died. One of God's jewels, said Borland, and much lamented. He left his pregnant and bewildered wife to the care of his colleagues. Aboard the Rising Sun there were thirty-five dead, most of them officers and Volunteers. The sickness had begun while the ships waited at Rothesay, and once burning could not be checked.

  Antigua was the first landfall, sighted soon after dawn on November 9, and before dusk the fleet came up with the rocky isle of Montserrat and dropped anchor. Byres went ashore by long-boat to the town of Plymouth, where he asked for water and provisions. "But the Governor," said Borland, "was so inhuman that he denied us the liberty of having any, pretending his orders from the Court of England for so doing." The Scots were told that their Colony had been abandoned six months before, but they would not believe it. They left the next morning and that night, in a squall of rain and rising seas, the Hope's look-out lost sight of the flagship's lantern. She sailed alone for two despairing weeks before she found the others. "At length, through the good Providence of God, we all arrived safely together on the coast of Darien." It was November 30, and all that they had been told at Montserrat was true.

  Gibson fired a signal gun as he had been ordered, and waited for a pilot to take his ships into the harbour. There the new colonists saw no fort, no flourishing town, no warehouses, no busy quays, no fine ships loading. There was a half-submerged wreck at the harbour-mouth, the burnt ribs of another on the southern shore, and two small sloops anchored off the peninsula.

  The Olive Branch and the Hopeful Binning, under their masters William Jameson and Alexander Stark, had arrived at Caledonia in August. They, were astonished to find nothing but ruins, discarded kettles and pots, moss-grown cannon balls and the mute agony of four hundred graves. The Indians brought them one of the men left behind by the first expedition, and from him they learned what had happened. Although Jameson and

  Stark did not think that they could hold the peninsula against attack, they bravely landed the survivors of the three hundred settlers they had taken aboard at Leith, raised the Company's standard, and told the Indians that they were but the vanguard of a great force now on its way from Scotland. As they probably hoped it would, this information reached Carthagena and Santa Maria before the end of the month. While no move was made against the Colony by land, the sight of Spanish cruisers idling some miles offshore made all the Scots uneasy. The problem of what they could or should do was soon resolved for them by a stupid accident. The cooper of the Olive Branch, carrying a candle below decks one night in search of brandy, set light to it, himself and the ship. She quickly burnt to the water's edge, with all her stores and provisions.

  Being men of prudence rather than rash courage, Jameson and Stark decided to leave Lieutenant Oliphant and a dozen of their fittest men ashore with the Indians, and to take the rest to Jamaica in the Hopeful Binning. The voyage to Port Royal was long and bitter, and those colonists who did not die aboard were dead soon after they reached the English island.

  On November 22 one of the twelve men left behind, and now watching anxiously from Point Look-out, sighted two sloops coming up from Golden Island. When he saw the Company's flag on an ensign-staff he ran down to the beach, crying with joy. The first ship was the Ann of Caledonia, and the second was the Society which Thomas Drummond had hired at Saint Thomas and loaded with provisions, paying for them with a bill drawn on Delancey and Wenham in New York.

  The Ann's rigging was cut, her canvas holed, and her decks splintered. A day or more away from the settlement, and separated from the Society, she had been attacked by a Spanish warship of 20 guns. Though he had only six light-pounders on the sloop, a crew of thirteen, and the handful of volunteers who had come with him from New England, Drummond would not surrender. For more than four hours the Ann carried on a running fight with the Spaniard, escaping at last into the night.

  Now on November 30, his scarlet coat neatly patched, his sword at his side and his hat pulled low, Drummond was rowed across to the Rising Sun. He demanded his place as a Councillor of the Colony, presenting letters from Paterson and Samuel Vetch as his credentials, and said that the Colony could get all the provisions it wished from New York. The Councillors did not believe him. "The fund of credit he proposed," they sneered in their report to the Directors, "was his word of honour." Angered by their disbelief and by their frightened distress, he became vainglorious. "He told us that he now reckoned all things very right, the Colony resettled, and that we could take Portobello if we pleased." He left the yellow cabin with no clear promise that his rights as a Councillor would be honoured, but with the certain knowledge that he and James Byres would clash violently before long.

  From the sides of their ships the new colonists stared with horror at the land they had reached. "Expecting to meet with our friends and countrymen," said Borland, "we found nothing but a vast howling wilderness, the Colony deserted and gone, their huts all burnt, their fort most part ruined, the ground which they had cleared adjoining to the fort all overgrown with weeds; and we looked for Peace but no good came, and for a time of health and comfort, but beheld Trouble."

  A small party was sent ashore in the rain to clear the parade of the fort and rebuild some of the huts. There was an immediate outcry from others who said that they had not come to settle a Colony, but to reinforce one already established. The Councillors shared this opinion, with the dismal and additional responsibility of deciding what should be done about it. They were not cheered when Drummond told them that there could be no debate, the town should be rebuilt and the fort prepared for the attack which the Spaniards would certainly mount against them soon.

  Four days after the fleet's arrival a general meeting of Councillors, Land and Sea Captains, and all the Company's senior servants was held aboard the Rising Sun under the presidency of James Gibson and in his cabin. He began with a discouraging report. From the ships' invoices he had studied, including the Society's, he believed that their provisions would not last more than six months, and that on short allowances. At a ration of one gallon to every three men, the brandy would not last four. The hot and angry debate which followed this startling announcement passed, without conclusion, into a quarrel over a motion put by Byres. He suggested that they retire at once to Jamaica, leaving two or three companies of soldiers to hold the peninsula. Against whom and with what hope, he did not say. When it was realised that this might at least represent a settlement, and could not be called desertion, it was agreed that five hundred men should remain and that the rest should leave when the fort was in a proper state of defence. Byres then proposed another motion, that Thomas Drummond—who must surely have angrily abstained from the last—had no right to sit or vote at these meetings, and should be told to leave. He lost the vote, and was furious when William Vetch proposed that the full government of the Colony should rest in a triumvirate, himself, James Byres, and Thomas Drummond. There was only one valid commission, shouted Byres, and that was his. All others had been made null and void by the desertion of the first Colony. When Gibson and Lindsay meekly agreed to this astonishing claim, and the rest of the meeting grew uneasy with the late hour and the direction of the argument, Vetch withdrew his proposal.

  They met again the next day, at eight o'clock in the cool of the morning. Byres seemed to have forgotten his demand for absolute power, and accepted the formal acknowledgement of himself, Vetch, Lindsay and Gibson as the Council of the Colony. He said little, but raised his hand with the majority when it was agreed that the daily ration of meat and bi
scuit should be cut, and that the colonists who were to leave for Jamaica should be carried in the Hope of Bo'ness and the Duke of Hamilton with provisions for three weeks.

  Since he and his fellow-ministers were not invited to such meetings, except to offer a conventional prayer for wisdom and guidance, Francis Borland had little respect for the Council. He had none at all for most of the settlers. He thought they were mean, selfish and godless, and sure to suffer the Almighty's punishment for their heinous sins and abominations. On the voyage from Scotland, and now here on the edge of the world, few attended public worship, and none realised that the sickness and mortality already experienced compelled them to give thanks to God for His mercies even in the midst of His wrath.

  Disappointed by the failure of their ministrations at sea, and dejected by the indifference of the Council now that they had reached land, the three men met to consider the course their work should take, and to have their conclusions properly recorded by Mr. Stobo. They met in a borrowed cabin aboard the Hope of Bo'ness because it had been made plain to them that if they wished to have a hut ashore they must build it themselves. They agreed that Wednesday, January 3, should be set aside—with the consent of the Council—as a solemn day of Prayer, Humiliation and Thanksgiving, whereby all men could "confess with shame and sorrow their own and the sins of others concerned in this undertaking." These sins were atheistical cursing and swearing, brutish drunkenness, detestable lying and prevaricating, obscene and filthy talk, blasphemous mockery, "yea and among too many of the meaner sort, base thieving and pilfering, besides Sabbath breaking and contempt of all Gospel ordinances." Even those who had called out for Divine forgiveness during the delirium of a fever at sea had now returned to their errors like a dog to its vomit.

  They carried their demand for a Day of Prayer to the Council, and were told that it was unnecessary but they might do as they wished. "Even a Heathen could give better advice," said Borland bitterly. But they persevered in the Lord. They went from ship to ship, or trudged through the mud ashore, distributing the printed sermons, the prayers, tracts and catechisms they had brought with them. Most were thrown away unread, or used as spills to light a pipe, and Borland noticed that the men who did this were usually Highlanders "of the meaner sort". He did not relate their apparent profanity to the fact that they spoke little or no English and could not read, though he seemed to think that such ignorance was also a heinous sin and abomination.

  The friendship which the Indians had generously offered to the leaders of the first Colony was now destroyed by the Council of the second. Byres despised them, and was openly contemptuous of their simple gifts. They were a parcel of rogues, he said when Jaffray complained that one had shaken a lance at him, and should all be hanged. Robert Turnbull boldly protested, warning Byres that the Colony could not resist the Spaniards or meet them in the field without the Indians' help. He had never known them to be treacherous, but if they were ill-treated and their women molested the Scots would be wise to keep within the fort.

  Byres stared at the young man with astonishment. Who was going beyond the fort? They had not come here to take towns. From thenceforward, any one who opposed Byres was accused by him of being "for the taking of towns".

  The morale of all was lowered by the open quarrels and idle inaction of the leaders. John Wallace had died on the voyage, and the remaining engineer, Thomas Kerr, could get little work from men who asked why they should rebuild the fort for others who did nothing but watch them from the ships. George Winram's liquor-still rusted in the hold of the Hope. There was no gold for Robert Keil's crucibles or John Hunter's coining-mill. No Indians came to learn good Lallan from Robert Johnson, although, to Borland's dismay, they became fluent in the obscenities they were mischievously taught by the soldiers. The useless trade goods in the ships—"so much thin grey paper, so many little blue bonnets" —were a mockery when there were no provisions to buy with them. There were daily complaints against the rations, but at half a pound of beef and half of bread, however odorous and rotten, they were a luxury compared with what was yet to come. By the middle of December work on the huts and fort had almost stopped. A miasma of idleness and despair had quickly fallen on the Colony. Many were sick, and for want of the strength or will to dig the morning graves the living threw the dead into the bay. The wet green forests, the mountain-heads in a mist of rain, the clean sea rolling beyond the harbour-mouth, were deceptively innocent and beguiling, tempting the desperate to desert. There was a rumour that the men sent to Jamaica would be sold as slaves to the English plantations, and among the Highlanders, who had long memories of kinsmen thus betrayed and transported, the story was easily believed. Ten Planters stole an eight- oared boat from the Rising Sun and rowed away to Portobello.

  From the Indians, who remembered him with respect, Thomas Drummond learned that the Spaniards were preparing for a great attack on the settlement, by land and by sea. He thought it insane to wait for this, when a bold stroke might not only prevent it but also raise the spirits of the Scots and check their mutinous discontent. Aboard the Ann on December 15, he wrote a brief and soldierly proposal, sending it to the Council by Robert Turnbull's hand. Let him be given 150 men "that would be willing to take their fate with me" and he would lead them to live and fight in the forests with their Indian allies. Except for arms, ammunition and some provisions they would be no further burden to the Colony, and would not return to it until it was safe from danger. This each man would solemnly swear, and sign his name to the oath in witness.

  When he appeared before the Council to argue this proposal he explained that he would raid Portobello, perhaps even Carthagena and release the Dolphins prisoners there. He reminded the Council that there were men of courage and loyalty in the Colony, that many of the officers had recently offered to resign their commissions and remain as ordinary Planters when the others left for Jamaica. Byres was infuriated and frightened. He told the other Councillors that they should not "pin their faith upon another man's sleeve". He said that there were not six weeks' provisions left and none expected from Scotland. How could they think of taking towns? William Vetch was ill again, his spirit too weak to call up the courage he had once shown in the streets of Dunkeld. He let the decision go as the majority wished, and the others were too cowed by the noisy vehemence of Byres' voice to ask how six months' provisions had suddenly become six weeks'. Drummond's offer was refused.

  The next day a file of musketeers under an ensign marched into the fort and arrested Alexander Campbell, a carpenter working there. He was manacled and taken aboard the Duke of Hamilton, charged with "mutinous association and villainous design of murder". He appears to have been a simple man with more pride and self-respect than malice. Since the fleet arrived he had frequently declared that in such a noble undertaking as this there should be no difference between the food enjoyed by an officer and that given to a common man. When he heard that the Council had rejected Drummond's proposal he became bolder and more foolish. "A great many officers, volunteers, planters and seamen," he said, or was later charged with saying, "had a design for seizing the Councillors and hanging them if they would not divest themselves of the government in favour of the conspirators." Within the hour he was arrested and his court-martial ordered by the Council.

  The Court met in Gibson's cabin on December 18 under the presidency of Major John Ramsay, six captains, three lieutenants and three ensigns. Campbell was now frightened, by the naked swords of his escort, by the witnesses whom he had thought were his comrades, and by the hard faces of these officers whose privileges he had resented. He admitted that he had complained about the food, and had said that the Company's money aboard the flagship should be used to buy more provisions. He had heard, and repeated, the rumour that some of the colonists were to be sold as slaves, but he had been party to no conspiracy and had not wished to hang the Councillors or overthrow their authority.

  His unsupported confession of innocence was outweighed by the depositions made against him. He h
ad been "a great seducer of the Colony", deponed William Macleod, and had said that since the Councillors were enriching themselves by denying food to honest men, they should hang. Those of a like mind with him would have no difficulty in seizing the Rising Sun, "for once the old fox, meaning Captain Gibson, were hanged, they'd meet with no resistance." Sergeant Andrew Logan swore that Campbell had asked him to seize the Hope with the men of his company, and sail it to Ireland. Peter McFerran said that the signal for rebellion in the Colony was to have been the waving of a flag. And Sergeant William Robertson declared that Campbell had assured him that if Captain Drummond's proposal were rejected by the Council then those officers who supported it would join the conspiracy. This, to James Byres, would be the most important evidence of all.

  Alexander Campbell was found guilty of all the charges laid against him. He was sentenced to death by hanging and was taken from the flagship to the Duke of Hamilton, there to await execution. He was undoubtedly a scapegoat, the expendable victim of cunning men and a complaisant Court. In all the evidence it is clear that he was the servant rather than the instigator of the grand conspiracy. There was, for example, an Ensign Spark who had been the intermediary, so witnesses implied, between ambitious officers and discontented men like Campbell. No action was taken against Spark, however, nor any others for the moment. It may be that the Court was reluctant to worsen a strained situation by advising further investigation.

  Though it would discourage further plots, the execution of a mean carpenter could embarrass no one but himself. The Councillors were less tolerant. "We have lame and partial proof against several others," they wrote to Edinburgh, "but not so legal as they should be, so we must have patience." James Byres would not endure that patience for long.