THE DARIEN DISASTER Read online

"About two a clock this morning," wrote a diarist on Monday, October 17, "we saw with the lightning black, high stones like land. We lowered most of our sails till break of day, at which

  time we found it to be really land, so prodigiously high" A

  dark escarpment rose out of the spray, a menacing wall from sea to sky, and the water that broke over the sprit-sail heads was strangely yellow. Alliston recognised this inhospitable coast, naming it to Pennecuik who wrote the words down phonetically in his journal, Nostra Segniora della Popa. It was Spanish land, said the buccaneer with unhappy memories of the times he had walked through Spanish blood, and close by Carthagena. That afternoon, as the fleet turned westward seeking Darien by elimination rather than by good pilotage, the wind dropped and the sea was calm. Still golden yellow, the water rolled like rich cream in the wake of the ships, and Alliston said that it came from some great river to which he gave no name. But it was the colour of hope, of gold, of rich promise.

  Two more weeks passed. The winds that carried the ships westward during the day turned against them at night. There were long hours of dispiriting calm, minutes of wild squalls during one of which the Dolphin lost her main-topmast and almost foundered. Sometimes there was land to larboard, high cliffs, the startling green of distant forests, a white fort, the long roll of dangerous surf. And the dying continued. Three midshipmen of a fever, soldiers of the flux, a young Volunteer of "a decay". There died Adam Bennet, son to Sir William Bennet of Grubbet, and Adam Cunningham, brother to Sir William Cunningham of Caprington, both young men of eager ambition who had pressed their families to secure them service with the Company. There died Henry Charters, a cheerful young Volunteer, and there died an English seaman called Malbin. But the death which moved men to tears, particularly Paterson, was that of the Reverend Mr. Thomas James, who had refused to sail without his friend. Four guns were fired over his body as it slipped into the sea.

  Toward the end of the month the ships were able to make little way. A great current, which may have been a movement of the sea or the outflow of another river, dragged them eastward and they were forced to tack wearily against it. At last, on October 26, they dropped anchor in ten fathoms with a green ribbon of land to starboard. Alliston would not, or could not say what it was, but he plainly hoped it might be Darien. A boat was sent away from the Unicorn in search of fresh water. When it returned, its casks were still empty, the crew having found no stream, but they brought instead a great pelican, a hundred dead gannets and a live lizard with a licking tongue.

  The fleet moved westward again for two days. The smell of land was thick on the air, and there were distant sounds at night. By day dolphins escorted the ships, arching their iridescent backs, but no one had the strength to catch them. A strange malaise fell upon all. Sickness increased, seven more young men died, though the decks were frequently washed with vinegar and the holds purified with smoke. Alliston stubbornly insisted that they must soon come upon the Gulf of Darien and Golden Island, but few believed him. And then, at eight o'clock in the evening of Friday, October 28, he swore that they were there. Off the larboard bow of the Saint Andrew was a bar of dark trees, a line of surf or crystal sand. The Caledonia and the Endeavour stood out to sea as sentinels, but the other ships dropped anchor where they were.

  Before dark two canoes came out from the shore, and almost before the Scots were aware of them several painted Indians had came boldly up the flagship's side to her waist. They were friendly and unafraid, their bows unstrung in their hands and their lances lowered, but at first they said nothing, staring shyly at the Scots with gentle eyes. "We gave them victuals and drink," wrote Pennecuik, "which they used very freely, especially the last." More accurately the Scots deliberately made the Indians drunk, although this was unnecessary, for they were anxious to talk once their shyness passed. They had a few words of English and some indifferent Spanish which Benjamin Spense was called up to interpret. They had seen the Commodore's red pennant flying from the Saint Andrew's fore-peak and had taken it for the English flag, which they had seen many times above the ships of their buccaneer friends. It is doubtful whether they understood the difference between an Englishman and a Scot, if Spense attempted the explanation, for they said that they had been expecting the ships for two years and were happy to see them now that their people were at war with the Spaniards. By midnight they were in a drunken stupor, and were left lying in the scuppers until morning when they were sent away with some old felt hats, knives, and a few twopenny looking-glasses. "With which," wrote Pennecuik, "they seemed extremely pleased."

  By morning, too, Alliston had changed his mind. The ships were not in the Gulf but two leagues eastward of Caret Bay, which was itself some miles from Golden Island. The Commodore sent three of his boats to the Bay where their crews found the same Indians they had entertained the night before, offering gifts of cocks, hens and a wild turkey. More valuable even than these was the Indians' assurance that Golden Island was three or four leagues to the west. After turning over two gentlemen who had died of the flux, the ships weighed anchor, joined the Caledonia and Endeavour out to sea and sailed westward in fair weather.

  At four o'clock in the afternoon of Monday, October 31, as the bodies of David Hay and John Lucason were turned over from the Unicorn and the Saint Andrew, the blue cap of Golden Island was cried ahead. By dusk the ships had come within a league of it, dropping anchor in 25 fathoms. That night another young Volunteer died, and although there was a rank smell of death aboard the ships there was also a great feeling of relief, a lightening of the heart, as if all believed that the sickness and the dying were now ended.

  The fleet moved in to the island at dawn, anchoring again within half a mile of it. The sea-fowl in the sky were as thick as windblown leaves. The great rock, rising above the five small ships, was topped with glistening trees, and the only break in its black cliffs, the only landing-place was a narrow inlet of sand. Alliston remembered it well. Here had been the rendezvous of the buccaneers before their overland raid on Santa Maria in 1680. Here gathered sun-browned men from many ships, his own among them. Captain Sharpe had tied green and white ribbons to his rallying flag, Cook had drawn a hand and sword on his, and Sawkins had painted his scarlet banner with yellow bars. There had been great fires, the sound of sword on stone, dreams of blood and gold long since ended by old age or a hangman's rope. If Alliston remembered all this with regret, he kept the thought to himself. His work, for what it had been worth, was now done. By luck rather than skill he had brought the Scots where they had wished to come.

  That afternoon Pennecuik called the Councillors to his cabin. Whether there was, or was not, a great Gulf of Darien as they had been told, Golden Island was certainly a reality. The lifting of the morning haze had shown the mainland some miles off, and this was undoubtedly theirs to settle. To the south-east could be seen what might be the entrance to a natural harbour, and since there was no safe anchorage off the island it was agreed that it should be immediately explored.

  Pennecuik went away to it in his pinnace. He discovered that it was a wide bay formed by a narrow peninsula of high ground that cut it off from the sea, and on either side of its entrance were tall hills which even his limited knowledge could recognise as excellent sites for defensive batteries. The blue water of the bay was still, scarcely moving on its shore of sand, and beyond the mangroves that bordered it was an unbroken forest, rising and falling, rolling toward the emerald ridge of distant mountains. The pinnace went in past a sentinel rock at the entrance and shipped oars. The Scots looked at the green trees, the grey- legged mangroves, listened to the strange calls of unseen birds, and marvelled at the wonder of the land.

  When Pennecuik saw a white flag waving on the far shore he ordered the pinnace in toward it, and then shipped oars again as twenty Indians came out of the trees with bows and lances in their hands. Scots and Indians stared at each other, until the latter unstrung their bows and threw down their lances, beckoning to the pinnace. Pennecuik told one o
f his seamen to swim ashore, which the man did reluctantly no doubt, and when he came back he said that the Indians wished to be friends, that one of their great captains would visit the ships the next day.

  That night, before dawn, there died Thomas Fenner who had been Paterson's good and faithful clerk.

  "This harbour ... capable of containing a thousand sail" Caledonia, November 1698

  The great captain who came over the side of the Saint Andrew on the morning of Wednesday, November 2, was a sturdy little Indian with an unsmiling face. His name was Andreas, or so he was called by the Spaniards from whom he had also acquired his clothes and the hidalgo gravity of his expression. His painted chest was covered with a loose red jacket, his thighs by white drawers from which jutted the silver cone of his manhood, and his golden nose-disc gleamed in the shadow of an old, wide- brimmed hat. He was accompanied by a bodyguard of twelve men who stood boldly about him in the ship's waist, their brown eyes looking back into the curious stares of the Scots. They were all stark naked, wrote Hugh Rose in his journal that night, "only a thread tied round their middles, to make fast another that kept on a small piece of plate upon the end of their yards."

  Benjamin Spense greeted them with Castilian compliments. Andreas looked at the scarlet coats and blue, the white faces framed by monstrous curls of false hair, the dark sheen of muskets and the glitter of steel, bleached canvas, tarred ropes and decks reeking of vinegar. What did the strangers want? "We answered," said Pennecuik, "our design was to settle among them, if they pleased to receive us as friends: that our business was chiefly trade, and that we would supply them from time to time with such commodities as they wanted, at much more reasonable rates than either the Spaniards or others can do." Were they friends of the Spanish? Not friends, said the Commodore, nor yet at war with them, but ready to resist them by force of arms if any affront were given. Andreas was pleased by this. He decided that the Scots were privateers, and he chattered about his two good friends, the buccaneer captains Swan and Davies, at whose side he had fought long ago in the overland raid on Santa Maria. Mr. Spense's translation kept up with these nostalgic reminiscences as best it could until Pennecuik coldly cut them short. The Scots, he said, were not rogues but traders. Andreas took the rebuke with good humour, since it was soon followed by gifts. He went away with the Scots flag flying from the prow of his canoe, and upon his head a fine new beaver hat, richly embroidered with golden galloon.

  Relieved by the Indians' assurances of friendship, though he would never believe that they were not idle thieves, Pennecuik sent the Saint Andrew's boats away to explore and make soundings of the harbour. The next day he wrote a full account of their discoveries in his log and ordered Hugh Rose to copy it faithfully in his journal, since this was to be sent to the Directors as soon as possible.

  The green bay was almost two miles in length, shelving from six to three and a half fathoms, a mile or so across at the most, and with a narrow entrance no wider than a random cannon- shot. In the middle of this sea-gate was a black rock, three feet above water on a still day but hidden by breaking waves when the wind blew hard. "This looks terrible to those who know not the place well, but on both sides is a very good and wide channel." There was a second rock further in and for most of the time it was under water, a constant hazard to ships and boats. The narrow peninsula forming the northern side of the bay was covered with trees, tall cedars, manchineels and sapadilloes through which the wind sang with such gentle sweetness that a sentimental Landsman, dreaming in the sunlight, immediately called them The Shades of Love. For most of its length to seaward the peninsula was a high and unscalable escarpment, plunging into deep water. No European fortress had such a defence. On the bayside it rose less steeply, with level ground, and with a small promontory of sand where boats might be safely beached. "This harbour," said Pennecuik, with insane exaggeration that can only be explained by his desire to impress an ignorant Court of Directors, "is capable of containing a thousand sail of the best ships in the world. And without great trouble wharves may be run out, to which ships of the greatest burthen may lay their sides and unload."

  The southern shore of the bay was bordered with red-legged mangroves, thick and impenetrable, and beyond them, almost immediately it seemed in that hazy heat, rose the blue and green mountains of the continental divide. There appears to have been no argument, no dispute about the proper site of the Colony. The land about the bay, as far as their feet might take the Scots and for as long as their swords could hold it, was to be Caledonia, but here on the peninsula would be built the town of New Edinburgh, here above its sandy promontory would be Fort Saint Andrew. The choice of this crooked finger of land, for strategic reasons at least, was a wise one. A single ship might hold the sea-gate against a fleet, helped by land-batteries on both points. The peninsula was well-watered by streams that sprang in bubbling joy from the feet of the cedars, whereas across the bay, according to Pennecuik, there were dry riverbeds only. At its eastern end the peninsula narrowed to a strip of land little more than 130 paces wide. If this slender neck were cut by a rampart and a sea-filled ditch a single company of resolute men might stand off an army.

  "And here you he land-locked every way," wrote the Commodore optimistically, "that no wind can possibly hurt you." No one at this time realised that the prevailing winds blew from the north, that they might close the sea-gate for weeks and prevent the clumsy ships from leaving the harbour. The bay was a trap, created by and quixotically sprung by Nature.

  Within a day of his first visit Captain Andreas returned, this time with his wife and sister. The women wore linen mantles of white, with strings of beads on their arms and necks and golden crescents in their nostrils. They said nothing, were submissive to Andreas, but stared at the Scots with bold eyes. Pennecuik reported that the first woman was the Captain's "travelling wife", adding that the little man had four in all, and that the Indians were allowed as many as they wished. "He was still on the pump as to our designs, but when he found our accounts all of a piece he told us that the English, after they had been friendly with them, had several times carried away their people." Which would suggest that the Indian had more cause to be suspicious than the Commodore. Andreas said that he would have brought another captain with him, a man called Pedro, but he was uneasy and would not approach the Scots "till he was better assured of our integrity."

  That morning the fleet weighed anchor and sailed into the bay. Pincarton's helmsman made a poor job of it and ran the Unicorn on to the sunken rock, tearing off some of her sheathing. She was got off with difficulty, but she leaked abominably thereafter and was never thoroughly seaworthy again. The Council met aboard her in Pincarton's cabin under the uneasy presidency of James Montgomerie, the first of the Land Councillors to occupy the chair, and although Pennecuik still maintained that his authority should over-ride all he grudgingly acknowledged that the soldiers now had a right to be heard. For once he made no demand for the court-martial of the Drummonds and Samuel Vetch, understandably since the rest of the Councillors decided that Thomas Drummond should be given the responsibility for organising and erecting defensive works ashore (though they would not allow the man to select his own sites). Pennecuik could not bring himself to write Drummond's name in his log however. "All the Land Captains being consulted," he said, "it was resolved to build a battery on the west side of the entrance to the harbour."

  Forty men from each ship were put ashore on the peninsula, to clear the ground for New Edinburgh, to cut down trees from the Shades of Love, and to build huts for the sick. Another party was set to digging graves, above the high water mark and out of the sun. Death had not abandoned the expedition. Lieutenant Inglis died of a fever as he lay on deck listening to the strange sounds of a new world. The gunner's boy of the Caledonia was drowned unseen as he swam in the blue water below her stern. The bloody flux killed an Englishman named Jenner, Henrique Ghaup a musician, and James Clerk a Volunteer. And William Simpson, the printer, lost his devoted boy to a fever t
hat was at least mercifully quick in dispatch.

  William Paterson's loss was sudden and heartbreaking, though he never referred to it in the report he wrote for the Directors. Within a few days of the death of his clerk, his wife died of the flux and was buried on the peninsula to a dropping salute from the Unicorn's guns. Thus, with no record of what she might have thought or felt, passed this loyal woman whom Walter Herries described as "a red-faced coffee-woman". His report of her death was even crueller. Paterson had carried her to Darien, he said, and "at her first landing thrust her about seven feet underground to make the possession, de facto, of New Caledonia more authentic."

  Paterson hid his grief, turning to the business of the Colony. He had lost his fight to extend the presidency to a month, and now he tried to get the settlement and the fort moved to a more sensible place. "The sea Councillors," he said, "were for a mere morass, neither fit to be fortified nor planted, nor indeed for men to he upon. I know no reason they had for it, unless it might be to save one of their boats the trouble, once in two or three days, to bestow three or four hours to supply the Landmen with water." It was two months before experience, the schoolmaster of fools he said, taught the Councillors that they had made a mistake, and the fort was re-sited on other ground.

  From the first day the boats went ashore with the working- parties it was clear that the men were almost too weak for the prodigious task of building a town and a fort. The want of enough food was bitter, and the privations of a long and sickly voyage had affected all. Their rations, that "scrimp allowance" as Paterson called them, had been meagre enough aboard ship, but then, at least, there had been no obligation to work long hours in damp and exhausting heat. There was no fresh meat, the barrelled beef and pork were green and malodorous. Some men caught fish in the bay, shot wild-fowl and monkeys, bought plantains and fruit from the Indians, but most of them had no more than what they were sparingly given. "And this," said Walter Herries, "was not fit for dogs to eat, but it was a mercy we had a good many Highlanders in our legion who were not used to feed on much of God's creatures that's hallowed." Upon Pennecuik's orders the provisions were kept aboard the ships and landed when necessary, or when he thought necessary. "Our marine masters," complained Paterson, "continually pretended other urgent business, and so could hardly spare their boats to bring the provisions ashore, and many of the most needful things that I know were only designed for the shore were detained on board under pretence they belonged to the ships."