THE DARIEN DISASTER Read online

  Though the Scots were able, at a price, to fill their water- casks, the impoverished island had no great quantities of bread or meat to sell. The cargo of the Endeavour was exchanged for 27 pipes of wine, nearly three thousand gallons which, it was innocently hoped, could be traded in the Indies. Under threat of severe penalties, the Scots had been told not to discuss their venture with the islanders, or at most to pretend that they were bound for the Guinea Coast. The kindly English merchants were not deceived by this, they deluded themselves instead, and told London that in their opinion the squadron was certainly making for the East Indies.

  At noon on September 2, Pennecuik loosed his fore topsail and fired his bow-chaser. It was the signal to weigh anchor and sail, and as the ships moved out they filled the roadstead with the smoke of thirty-nine saluting guns. Pennecuik was disappointed when the Governor replied with thirty-seven only, but he smugly logged the fact that even these were more than the Portuguese would give to King William's warships.

  The Saint Andrew was already out of the bay when the Commodore looked back over his stem-rail and saw that the Caledonia had shortened sail and put about. When Drummond's pinnace was then seen rowing ashore, Pennecuik fired another gun, hoisted his mizzen topsail and brought the fleet to anchor again. The Council was summoned to his cabin, and Drummond was ordered to attend it with an explanation. He came aboard with his redcoat brother and said that his second mate had offended him, and had accordingly been discharged and put ashore. He out-blustered the infuriated Pennecuik, saying that his commission gave him the right to accept or refuse any of his crew, but the Council told him to behave himself, and to take the officer aboard again. He did so with ill grace, and once more the fleet put to sea.

  There was no longer any pretence about its destination. The second packet of sealed orders had been opened, and its contents made known to all.

  You are hereby ordered in pursuance of your voyage to make the Crab Island, and if you find it free to take possession thereof in name of the Company; and from thence you are to proceed to the Bay of Darien and make the isle called the Golden Island, in and about eight degrees of north latitude; and there make a settlement on the mainland as well as the said island, if proper (as we believe) and unpossessed by an European nation or state in amity with his Majesty.

  If the land were indeed found to be occupied by such a nation, the fleet was to make to leeward until it came to some other part of the mainland that was not claimed or possessed. Except by the Indians, of course.

  The fleet was four weeks at sea before it made a landfall in the West Indies. Six days out from Madeira it got in to the Trade Winds, and had fair sailing by day and by night. Four men were dead of the flux before the ships left Funchal, and thirty-six more were to die before Darien was reached. Yet death was a commonplace expected and accepted by all sea-captains on long sea voyages, and by washing their decks regularly with vinegar, by smoking the holds, they believed that they kept sickness to a minimum. The landsmen were less sanguine, and many were unnerved by the suddenness of death. They could take no comfort in their own good health when they saw others, seemingly as well as they, heaved overboard within hours of the first spasm of black vomit. Even so, spirits were generally high, tempers cooled and old quarrels were temporarily mended. There was still hunger, however. Though the Commodore, his captains, and the Councillors dined well, at tables set with English pewter and white linen, the lower the rank the hungrier the man, and at bottom there was harsh privation. When a Dutchman on the Saint Andrew broke open another's chest to steal bread he was forced to run the gauntlet, angry men pressing forward to strike a blow as he staggered along the ship's waist.

  There were less brutal entertainments. "This day," wrote Colin Campbell on September 10, "we supposed ourselves to have passed the Tropic of Cancer, and so designed to make merry according to the English custom." Pennecuik ran up his pennant to the mizzen peak, fired a gun, and as the ships scarcely moved under shortened sail "every officer and gentleman who had not passed over the Tropic were ordered to pay a bottle of brandy, or three of Madeira wine, otherwise to be thrice ducked, which some obeyed, others not." Captains and Councillors came aboard the Saint Andrew, dined at one o'clock, drank punch until five, and by six all but Palerson were drunk and asleep aboard their own ships.

  The celebration had not been a success. "The heat of the weather and the punch," remembered Robert Jolly, "began to alter the humour of some commanders." As was usual, drink distorted Pennecuik's judgement and reason, and after the second or third bowl he took some fancied objection to both Mackay and Montgomerie. Having treated them most unkindly, said Jolly in cautious reproach, he proceeded to abuse his first, second and third mate, and then all the redcoat officers aboard his ship. Walter Herries, who had earlier attached himself to Pennecuik and was now thinking he might have made a mistake thereby, took the man aside by the sleeve and told him to remember that he was no longer aboard a Ring's ship, that these soldiers were gentlemen with influence at home. The word influence always had a sobering effect on Pennecuik, and he at last held his tongue.

  The Drummonds and Samuel Vetch watched this childish performance with sour satisfaction. Hating Pennecuik, and pleased to see him making enemies, they also had no respect for the Council or its authority. Jolly said that they began their intrigues again, asking him and Cunningham to insist that the Council be enlarged to include one or more Land Officers, meaning, no doubt, Thomas Drummond and Vetch. If this were done, they said, and "if any mutiny or disorder should occur (for want of provisions) it might easily be crushed by the command they had over their companies." It was sound advice perhaps, but Robert Jolly was shocked. He and Cunningham fell back on their authority as Councillors, loftily ordering that no more be said of the matter. The Drummonds and Vetch marked down both men as weaklings, as indeed they were.

  And westward again, the wind veering east-south-east to east- north-east, until there came a week of sickly calm during which the air was hot and motionless, thick to breathe and foul to taste. Pitch bubbled between the ships' timbers, and there were sometimes two or three deaths a day. Officers and Volunteers, Planters and Seamen, a surgeon's mate and a midshipman, a cooper and a carpenter's boy, quickly ill, quickly dead, and quickly turned overboard with a short prayer. The Councillors were alarmed and ordered an issue of wine as a prophylactic, but it was of little use. The diarists briefly recorded each sad departure. About 2 a clock in the afternoon one of our seamen called Alexander Alder died of a consumption, and thrown over... this day Robert Hardy, a gentleman in Captain Dalyell's company... John Stewart, gentleman ... Smith, a seaman ... a Sergeant of CaptainColin Campbells... died of a fever... of a flux... heaved overboard...

  In the forenoon of September 28 one of the leading tenders hoisted a jack and an ensign, the long-desired signal, and soon the look-outs on all the ships were crying land, land ahead. There had been hope of it for days, started by the flying-fish that hung above a bow-wave, by a man-of-war bird lazily circling. "We saw in head of us," wrote an anonymous diarist aboard the Saint Andrew, "the island of Dezada, in English the Land of Desire, so called by Columbus being the first land that he did see when he came to these seas." It was passed to larboard in the late afternoon, and beyond it the island of Guadaloupe was a purple shadow dissolving into the night. To its waters was committed the body of Andrew Baird, seaman, dead of the bloody flux that day.

  The fleet made little way during the night but at dawn, sailing west by north before a freshening wind, it passed between Antigua and Montserrat. At noon it was abreast of the tiny isle of Redonda which reminded Pennecuik, in a moment of uncharacteristic sentiment, of the Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth. Homesickness was endemic. Surrounded by the Leeward Isles, green jewels bright in the sun, the Scots searched for a rock, the prow of a hill, a curving bay or a cluster of trees that could warm them with the memory of home. At three in the afternoon they passed Nevis, hoisting their ensigns in an answering salute to an unknown vessel an
chored offshore, and with more imagination than truth they told each other that the wedge-shaped island was like Castle Rock in Edinburgh when seen from the Roads of Leith. That night the body of Walter Johnson, surgeon's mate, was slipped overboard. Sick of a fever, he tried his own skill upon himself, "got his hands on laudanum liquidum, took too large a dose thereof, and so he slept till death."

  By noon the next day the fleet was seven leagues to the southeast of Santa Cruz, a windless day and the sails bleached white against a deep blue sky. As the Landsmen leant idly on the ships' rails, watching the gannets that flew suicidally into the rigging, the Councillors and the Captains came aboard the Saint Andrew. They met in Pennecuik's stifling cabin, its stern windows opened wide to catch the faintest movement of the listless air outside, the reflected sunlight rippling across their tired faces. The Commodore grumbled again about the Drummonds and would have forced a vote in favour of setting them ashore as soon as possible, but once more Jolly and Cunningham persuaded the rest of the Council to leave this unhappy matter until the colony was reached. There was a more important decision to make. By their second sailing orders they should now steer for Crab Island, but they had also to find a pilot who could take them to Darien. Since Paterson was the only man there who had been in these waters, and since it was hoped that he would know and find such a man, his advice may have influenced the proposal finally accepted. It was agreed that the fleet should separate, the Dolphin and the Unicorn (with Paterson aboard) sailing north and east about Santa Cruz for the Danish island of Saint Thomas, and the others making north and west about for Crab Island*. The ships parted after sunset, each firing a farewell gun, the smoke of it white and luminous in the indigo dusk.

  On October 1 the Unicorn and the tender anchored in seven fathoms off Saint Thomas, and were still being saluted by the guns of the fort when Pincarton and Paterson were rowed ashore. The lonely Danes made the Scots welcome, giving them sugarcane, pineapples and rum, but Pincarton was uneasy. Four English sloops from Jamaica were lying off the island, and one of them came up to take a closer look at the Unicorn, making no signal and sending no boat until the second day when her captain himself came aboard. He said that he was Richard Moon, bound from New York to Curacao with a cargo of provisions, and Paterson immediately recognised him as a man he had known many years before. They embraced each other warmly, and Moon agreed that since Crab Island was nearer than Curacao it would be plain good sense for him to go there and exchange his provisions for any goods the Scots had.

  Ashore in a tavern Paterson also found a pilot, the buccaneer Robert Alliston, now sadly old, white-haired and garrulous. He still had a good conceit of himself, however, confident that he could set the Scots down on any part of the Main they wished. He drank a lot in Pincarton's cabin, talked with maudlin regret of the old days, of the bitter changes that had taken place. Did

  * Ile de Vieques, between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

  Paterson know that Captain Sharpe—Batt Sharpe who sacked Portobello and who crossed the Isthmus with Dampier and Wafer—did Paterson know that after escaping a hanging in England Captain Sharpe had now been taken by the Danes and thrown in prison for 99 years? And where was it they wished to settle, Darien? He remembered it well.

  Still uneasy about those other Jamaican sloops, Pincarton weighed anchor after four days, sailing out to a roar of seventy guns from his own ships and the walls of the fort.

  Pennecuik's squadron had sighted Crab Island on October 1, tacking about it for twenty-four hours before dropping anchor. It was almost entirely covered with rich green trees, and uninhabited except for the monstrous crabs that gave it its name, but when Robert Drummond took the Caledonia on a cruise about it he found a Danish sloop hidden in a narrow bay. Despite his liberal hospitality to Pincarton, the Governor of Saint Thomas had quietly sent this ship to enforce Denmark's claim to Crab Island, her captain further emphasising the point by setting up a tent ashore and unfurling his country's flag. Pennecuik answered this by pitching his own tent beneath the trees on the opposite side of the island and by flying his pennant, the Company's standard, and the saltire of Scotland. According to his journal the Danish protest was more of a formality than a threat, "they were obliged so to do to please their Court, but wished with all their hearts we would settle there, for then they would have a bulwark betwixt them and the Spaniards of Porto Rico who are very troublesome neighbours." Whether he believed this or not, to impress the Danes and to flatter his own vanity he also landed a redcoat guard of sixty men, their arrogant drums beating against the hills at dawn and dusk.

  On October 5, a day of thunder, lightning and great rain, Pincarton's ships arrived with the Jamaican sloop. Richard Moon took a hard look at the loading-lists and the displayed samples of wigs and stockings, shoes and slippers, plaiding and hodden grey, needles, nails and horn-spoons, Bibles and Catechisms, and decided that he wanted none of them, certainly not at the ridiculous prices the Scots were asking. Nor would he part with any of his provisions for drafts on the Company's agents in New England. He would sail on to Curacao, he said, and there exchange his cargo for slaves. Paterson saw the danger, and he told the Council that if Moon spread a report that the Scots were over-pricing their goods it would not encourage other traders to visit the Colony. It would be better to sell at a loss and avoid the risk. "To all this I was answered that they were not obliged to take notice of any particular man's assertion as to the overvaluing or ill-buying the goods, but rather to believe the prime cost was as in the Company's invoice; and that they would not be so imposed on by Captain Moon."

  Moon shrugged his shoulders and made ready to sail. It was of small consequence to him what these madmen thought or did, but before he left, and upon Paterson's earnest appeal, he promised to bring or send provisions to the Colony when once it was settled. If the Scots had not found a friend, Paterson had at least saved them from making an enemy.

  Pennecuik's high-handed contempt for Richard Moon had turned the Council against the trader. Sitting in his tent, a glass in his hand, his wig on the back of his chair, and a scarlet sentry at his door, the Commodore was the same loud-mouthed bully he had been afloat, convinced that he and those sea-captains of his party knew what was best for all. Paterson realised that his earlier hope that things would mend ashore had been mistaken. "Though our Masters at sea had sufficiently taught us that we fresh-water men knew nothing of their salt-water business, yet when at land they were so far from letting us turn the chase that they took upon them to know everything better than we." Pennecuik had now been abandoned by Herries who was exercising his talent for intrigue and malicious gossip on the Drummonds and Vetch. Again the Commodore demanded a court-martial, insisting that the brothers and their friend be set ashore on Saint Thomas, and again Cunningham and Jolly turned the vote against him. Paterson's respect for the Drummonds (though these hard men had only contempt for him) also persuaded the Council that it could ill-afford to lose them, insufferable though their conceit might sometimes be.

  The water-casks were full and it was time to leave. Though their sailing-orders had given the Scots leave to settle the island if it were found to be unoccupied, no one thought the point worth disputing with the bold Dane, his tiny sloop and his fourteen armed men. The fleet sailed in the forenoon of Friday, October 7, after heaving overboard the bodies of James Paterson, gentleman, and Thomas Dalrymple, planter, both dead of the flux. Above the noise of water, wind, and singing ropes, the Scots heard the sad crying of sea-fowl, the excited chattering of monkeys in the retreating trees. One man was left behind. Michael Pearson had stood guard ashore with Captain Maclean's company, and had thought of what had so far happened and what yet might come when the fleet sailed. He was seduced by the gentle beauty of the island and he ran away to the woods with his musket.

  For three weeks the fleet sailed south-west across the Caribbean toward the Isthmus. It was a bitter time of foetid calms and violent gales. None of the seamen had known such storms, winds that blew up
suddenly out of the heat, seas that heaved above the topsail yards, and lightning so bright and sustained at night that it all but blinded the boatswain of the Saint Andrew when he looked up to it in wonder. Twenty-five lives were lost to fever, flux and despair, and among them was the young wife of John Hay, a lieutenant in Captain Charles Forbes's company. She was turned overboard from the Unicorn in the early morning as another gale was rising, and her valediction was a rending report as the main-topgallant sail parted from its yard. On all the ships the sick lay below in their own filth, tormented by the pitching of the deck and the endless noise of the wind. There was little water to ease their burning thirst, for that taken aboard at Crab Island had soon turned foul, and whether they lived or died seemed of little importance when all aboard expected to be drowned at any moment. They had come to the edge of the world and there was no land, though old Alliston, standing by the helmsman of the Saint Andrew, swore that it was near, very near. And then suddenly, dramatically, it was there.