THE DARIEN DISASTER

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

  In its burning pride and indignation the country also remembered the lost crew of the Dolphin, albeit somewhat late. It was perhaps a relief to recall that some of those first colonists were worthy of sympathy and respect. Since September, when Daniel Mackay brought news of the ship's capture, Mrs. Pincarton and other tearful relatives had been asking the Company for news, for help, for an appeal to the King. It was believed that the wretched seamen were still in the dungeons of Carthagena, but four of them were now in Spain—Pincarton, John Malloch, James Graham, and a boy David Wilson. They had been taken to Havana in September, and from thence to Cadiz with Benjamin Spense. Pincarton had been bitterly angered by the Spaniards' treatment of his men at Carthagena. "They were every day carried out with their slaves," he wrote later, "to work at their walls and clean their streets; and were likewise forced to cry and beg from everyone that passed by, for God's sake, for some charity to save their lives." When he heard that the first Colony was gone from Caledonia he asked Pimienta to release him and his crew. "He told me that the old Governor had wrote such things against me that he could not let me go, but of necessity I must be sent to Old Spain." When he left, seven of his men were already dead and the rest had been sent as slaves to the Barliavento Fleet.

  Despite her agonised persistence, the Council-General did not consider Mrs. Pincarton's appeal until December, when it decided to petition the King for his intercession on behalf of the prisoners. Wasting no opportunity of catching the royal sleeve, it also reminded him of an earlier request for three naval frigates now lying idle at Burntisland. The man who took this cheerfully optimistic petition to London was Lord Basil Hamilton, the proud and contentious brother of the Duke. He went reluctantly, declaring that he would rather attend to his private affairs in Scotland, that there were others more capable than he. Certainly there could have been few less acceptable to the King, and William childishly refused to see him. Through Seafield he announced that he was displeased with the Company for sending a man who had never had the courtesy to attend his Court, and whose lack of affection for the Throne and Government was notorious. Though insulted by this rebuff, and angered when he was treated like a messenger, Hamilton doggedly remained in London. He bit on his pride and sent an apology to Seafield, asking the King's pardon for any past offence in his conduct, but William hated the Hamilton clan and would not forgive or receive this stiff-necked member of it. He said he would read the petition if it were brought to him by Seafield, and when he replied to it, on January 10, he ignored Hamilton and wrote directly to the Privy Council of Scotland. He would certainly ask the King of Spain to release the Dolphin's crew, but as for those three frigates ... they were there to guard the coast of Scotland and he could not dispose of them without the advice of Parliament.

  A compassionate Englishman in Cadiz, Martin Westcombe the Consul, heard by chance that the prisoners were there and went to see them. He was horrified by their suffering, and persuaded the Governor to release them from irons. He appealed to the Court in Madrid, saying that the misery and innocence of these men surely justified their merciful release. When next he enquired about them he was told that they had been sent to Seville, there to be tried as pirates and undoubtedly executed.

  In Scotland at the beginning of February the Company chartered a sloop, the Margaret of Leith, and loaded her with provisions for the Colony. It occurred to the Directors that the second expedition, finding Caledonia deserted, might be in need of stronger encouragement than beef, codfish and flour. The young supercargo of the sloop, Patrick MacDowall, was given a letter addressed to all Land and Sea Officers. "We need not tell you," it said, "how far the honour and interest of the nation is engaged, there is no looking backward." The first colonists had behaved without religion or morality. Many of them had been impudent villains and treacherous knaves, and even those who had died at sea during the flight to New York had wantonly denied themselves the glory of perishing in Caledonia. Some of the young officers with the second expedition were related to the greatest families in the kingdom, and should therefore know that if they did not do their duty their dishonour would be all the more conspicuous. This should inspire them to exceed each other in virtue. The more illustrious a man's birth the more base his degeneration if he abandoned those qualities which distinguished his family from vulgar men. "It's a lasting disgrace to the memories of those officers who went on the first expedition that even the meanest planters were scandalised at the viciousness of their lives, many of them living very intemperately and viciously for many months at the public charge, whilst the sober and industrious among them were vigilant in doing their duty."

  MacDowall also carried letters which his friend Paterson wrote to Alexander Shields and Thomas Drummond. Paterson had not yet recovered his health and was suffering, he said, from a cold and feverish humour that clouded his mind and made writing difficult. He saw the hand of God in everything, in the recent terrible fire that had destroyed much of the High Street, Cowgate and Parliament Close, in the loss of the Company's ships, in the desertion of the first Colony. But at least the Almighty had favoured him, his report had been accepted by the Directors. "In all my troubles," he told Drummond, "it's no small satisfaction to have lived to give the Company and the world unquestionable proof that I have not had any sinister nor selfish designs." He praised Drummond's industry and integrity, and that grenadier captain—if he ever received the letter—may have been astonished by such warmth and generosity, for he had never disguised his belief that Paterson was a fool and a meddler. Paterson also advised Shields to have tolerance, to bear with the infirmities of others, provided they were not rawheads, mushroom politicians, intriguing cabals and Tarpaulin Councillors. In a letter of farewell to MacDowall he urged the young man to behave prudently, to honour his father, and "to take care that these boisterous mariners shall no more domineer over us."

  There was a feverish note of delirium in all the letters, from Paterson and the Directors.

  It was March 5 before the Margaret sailed, the day on which the King had promised the Scots that their Parliament would be called. It was not called, and no word came from London. Toward the end of the month the National Address—which was now the Ark of the Covenant to an angry people—was carried to England by four members of the Council-General led by the Marquis of Tweeddale. They could not be ignored as Hamilton had been insulted, but when Seafield took them to Kensington Palace on the afternoon of Sunday, March 25, they saw how unwelcome they were and how little time the King was prepared to give them. A troop of Guards and a travelling-coach were waiting at the steps to take him to Hampton Court. He received them in his bed-chamber, and was alone except for the servants who were dressing him. He was cold and brief in his welcome as the four men bent to kiss his white hand, and although he took the Address he did not open it. He stared at them silently, as if that were all. Tweeddale mumbled something which Sea- field, inclining his head, could not hear, but it was clearly a request for the Address to be read aloud, for the King gave it back to him. Tweeddale handed it to Sir John Home of Blackader who read it clearly in a challenging voice. Another silence, and then Tweeddale humbly asked what answer they might take back to Scotland.

  "My lord," said William icily, "I suppose you know that I have ordered the sitting of Parliament to be on the 15th of May, and that it cannot possibly meet sooner. Therefore, I think you might have spared this trouble."

  The audience was over and he moved toward the door. Blackader, who stood in his way, stubbornly refused to step aside. With controlled anger he asked the King to understand that the Address was not only a petition for a Parliament, it was also evidence of his countrymen's deep concern for the security of their Company and the safety of their kinsmen in Caledonia. The truth of that, said the King adroitly, would surely be known when Parliament met.

  They followed him out of the bed-chamber and down the great staircase to the golden mist of a spring evening. They stood among his grooms and his servants as his coach was driven away
to Hampton Court.

  The Scots Parliament did not meet on May 15. Having had no more than eight weeks' warning the King's Commissioner, the Duke of Queensberry, announced that his equipage—that magnificent train of carriages, footmen, outriders and guards which must carry him from Holyroodhouse to Parliament Hall—could not be ready before May 24. When the session did begin it was noisy and ineffectual, and the King's servants opened it with the cunning proposal that before all else Parliament should debate the grievous state of morality and religion in Scotland. Unable to deny theology its proper priority, the Company's party waited three days before moving

  "That our Colony of Caledonia in Darien is a legal and rightful settlement in the terms of the Act, and that Parliament will maintain and support the same."

  The motion was never put. On May 30 Queensberry complained of a sore throat, the result, no doubt, of that rank smell of charred wood in Parliament Close. He could scarcely speak, and he had no wish to risk his health by sitting too long in the Hall. Moreover, the motion raised issues upon which the King should be consulted. By his order Parliament was adjourned until June 20.

  It would not meet again until the end of October, and long before then all would be lost.

  "To the satisfaction of all sensible men, Scots or English" London, January and February 1700

  Of all the paper and ink expended in the little pamphlet war over Caledonia, Walter Herries' book is the only one that excites the imagination—not because it is trustworthy but because it acknowledges that men are human and that much of their behaviour is motivated by interest and not by the nobility of the ideals they profess to serve. He called his ribald, entertaining mixture of truth and fiction A Defence of the Scots Abdicating Darien, and he could not have been surprised when the Lord Justice Clerk ordered it to be burned as a seditious libel by the hangman of Edinburgh. In the New Year it was answered, on the Company's behalf, by an anonymous Inquiry into the Causes of the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony. This naturally outraged the English, and the House of Lords sat late in debate upon it. They listened as Lord Peterborough read several scandalous paragraphs aloud, and because it reflected upon the honour of King and Parliament they ordered it to be burned in the Palace Yard. They agreed to address the King, reminding him of the Address of both Houses in 1695, and declaring that the mischievous Colony on Darien was prejudicial to the trade of the English plantations in America.

  Herries had been living in England since his return from Caledonia, his pregnant wife snugly housed in Rochester while he scribbled in a Fleet Street tavern. If not already James Vernon's paid hack he was certainly the Secretary's spy, hoping his loyal service would eventually win him a pardon for that impulsive sword-thrust into the body of Captain Graydon. His book had also been answered by Fletcher of Saltoun in an essay of noble and inexact logic, but this offered no serious challenge in the gutter where the surgeon preferred to brawl, and where most people formed their opinions. Herries was incensed by the Inquiry, however, because it contained a lively attack upon him, written in a venomous style he might well have envied. He believed, with some truth, that the Company had authorised its publication to encourage support for the National Address, and on January 7 he wrote to Vernon from Kent: "I design to answer the last scurrilous and rebellious pamphlet, I hope to the satisfaction of all sensible men, whether Scots or English. It contains nothing ad rem to confute what I have offered already; which I shall make appear, as likewise the malicious lies wherewith he basely asperses me."

  Until he left for Rochester to attend his wife's lying-in, Herries had been convoying—as he put it—four Scots officers who had arrived in London at the beginning of January. They had left the Colony on the Saint Andrew and bought a passage from Jamaica to Bristol. One was Lachlan Maclean, the Highlander who had laid information against the Drummonds on the voyage to Madeira, and the others were Captains Forbes, Stewart and Stret- ton. Having heard how returned Caledonians were being received in Scotland, none of them was eager to return home. The King's Scottish Secretaries, Seafield and Lord Carmichael, were anxious to question them, and so was Lord Basil Hamilton, but they could not be found. With an impudent skill that a twentieth- century newspaperman would envy, Herries had hidden them in a tavern. He interrogated them closely, he told Vernon, and "took care that the material part of what they had said should be inserted in the public prints", that material part being damaging to the Company and favourable to the English. When he saw that Stewart and Stretton were loyal to the Company he released them to Hamilton, telling Vernon that they could do little harm since one was a madman and the other a fool. But Maclean and Forbes he brazenly took to Seafield and Carmichael, confident that the work he had begun for Vernon would now be continued by the Secretaries. He did not entirely abandon them, but left them in the care and under the watch of one of his own spies, a man with the remarkably apt name of Crouch.* Writing to Vernon from Rochester, he enclosed a fair copy of a report he had just received from this energetic subordinate.

  Captain Forbes had been with me to-night. He says they did their message to the Secretaries to expectation, and are still at heart as yourself. Seafield asked whether the Proclamations hindered the settlement? They answered negatively. Whether they had vessels with victuals or not? Answer affirmatively, but no goods to buy withal, nor no credit. The Secretary was glad, for he had been reflected on by his country. He told them Herries had written a book some called scurrilous, he would have them read it and give their opinion. Captain Maclean replied that he had met with it at an inn, and had read it, and swore that there was never a lie in it. Fie! saith the Secretary, you must not say so, for you’ll be thought as ill of as I am. By....! says Maclean, I won't deny the truth to please any man.

  Referring so lightly to his own unpopularity, Seafield was clearly delighted to have such explosive ammunition to use against the Company, but Carmichael was uneasy, and he may have suspected that both men had been bought by Herries with money supplied by Vernon. During the next two or three days Crouch dined with the officers, and questioned them thoroughly. They told him that James Campbell, the Company's agent, had taken them to the Three Lions tavern in Bedford Court, the lodgings of Paul Domonique, Paterson's Huguenot friend. There they

  *Possibly Nathaniel Crouch, a stationer and hack journalist.

  also met Lord Basil Hamilton who reminded them of the honour of their country and told them to do or say nothing that would bring discredit upon it. Maclean's Highland temper was aroused by the suggestion that a Lowlander could teach him anything about honour. "Never a lord in Christendom," he swore, "shall make me conceal the truth!" He refused to meet Hamilton again, but Forbes went once more to the Three Lions where he was told that James Vernon would probably send for them both and question them on the Colony. They should not go. On a point of good manners, said Forbes in guile or simplicity, must they not accept such an invitation? Hamilton gave them up as lost, and returned to Scotland with Stewart and Stretton.

  The authorship of the Inquiry into the Miscarriage of the Scots Colony has never been clearly established. It is sometimes attributed to Saltoun, but it has none of his architectural style, and he could not have committed some of its solecisms even in an attempt to hide his identity. Conversely bizarre is a suggestion that the author of the Inquiry also wrote a defence of the Darien settlement for which Fletcher was responsible. To the Government of England in 1700 the question of authorship was political not academic, and in January the King signed a proclamation offering rewards of £500 and £200 for the apprehension of the author and printer of "a false, scandalous and traitorous libel, intituled An Inquiry etc., the design of which was to create a misunderstanding between our subjects of England and Scotland, and to stir up sedition." Before the month was out Andrew Bell had been arrested for printing it in England, and Patrick Campbell for publishing it in Ireland. Three more men were taken up for circulating it in London. Perhaps they kept their mouths shut under questioning, but more probably they did not. On Feb
ruary 3 Simon Chapman, Messenger to the Press, was given a warrant for the arrest of James Hodges. That afternoon, professing great astonishment and outraged innocence, Hodges was taken from his lodgings at the Pheasant and Crown in Drury Lane and thrown into the Gate House Prison.

  He was a pleasantly enigmatic figure, and the records of this affair do little to show him in the round. He was possibly Scots, an able pamphleteer with an active pen that would dance through a lexicon to the music of a purse of guineas. Though he had been arrested by the Government, his first act upon reaching the Gate House suggests that he was until recently its paid scribbler. He wrote to William Lowndes, Secretary to the Treasury, declaring that he had been wrongly accused. Sparing no cliché, he said that he was as innocent as the day he was born. "I, who am so great a lover of the King and a friend to the Government, cannot be guilty of owning opinions contrary to the interest of both." He asked Lowndes to vindicate him, expressed gratitude for past kindnesses, and promised that when they next met he would show the Secretary something "that I have been preparing for your view, of another nature than the book whereof I am unjustly challenged to be the author."