THE DARIEN DISASTER Read online

  The old division between Seamen and Landsmen was thus further widened by anger and envy. Aboard their ships, away from the poison of noxious mists and rotting vegetation, better supplied with provisions and drawing their water from those southern rivers Pennecuik had said were dry, the sailors avoided the worst of the fevers and fluxes that harassed the men ashore. Sixteen more Landsmen died in November, including the remaining minister Adam Scott. His spiritual influence over his dismayed congregation had become increasingly tenuous as men turned from his arid exhorations to a more stimulating comfort. Drunkenness was common, the only escape from hunger, -from weariness, and from bewildered anger. Brandy was freely given to the sick, as much to cheer their departure as to help their recovery. In one evening the Planters drank all the beer issued to them for a week, and all they could win on a throw of dice or the turn of a card, passing happily into a stupor that shut out the cries of the sick, the whispering of the surf, and the unnerving night-sounds of the forests. Once a week they were also given a quart of wine to be shared among each mess of five men, and this too was gambled for and quickly drunk by the winner. The officers, with more liberal rations, were more frequently drunk. Captains received two quarts of wine a week, said Herries, and on the day of issue "went as merry to bed as if they had been in their winter quarters at Ghent or Brussels."

  Drink also brought more Indian captains to the peninsula and the ships, for the Scots were generous with their hospitality. They sometimes pressed brandy upon these simple people as men will indulge an appealing child with sweets, and sometimes made them drunk in the malicious hope that they would fall into the water as they stumbled overside to their canoes. Andreas came again and dined with the Councillors, his new hat on his head and his travelling wife at his side, her brown arms and neck heavy with rosy beads. On a fourth occasion he came with a fleet of canoes that were decked in leaves and feathers, bringing a chief called Ambrosio to whom he showed great respect and whom he obviously expected the Scots to honour likewise. This Ambrosio was a strong and vigorous man of sixty who controlled the Darien coastline from the River of Pines to the San Bias Islands. He had been fighting the Spaniards all his life, and he said that if Pennecuik gave him a hundred men, with arms for two thousand of his own, he would drive the Spanish "not only out of the mines, which are but three days journey, but even out of Panama itself." He had good reason for hoping that the Scots would join him in his absorbing life's work. A week or so before the fleet's arrival he had attacked a small settlement of priests on Golden Island, slaughtering them all. He did not tell Pennecuik this himself; the Commodore heard it from a wandering Frenchman whom Ambrosio brought with him. Pennecuik gave no promise of help, and he privately thanked God that the massacre had taken place before the Scots' arrival, otherwise Spain would undoubtedly have held them responsible.

  With Ambrosio was his son-in-law and sub-chief Pedro, a brisk young man who was as gay as Andreas was grave. French gaiety, Pennecuik called it disapprovingly, understanding the reason for it when he heard that Pedro frequently entertained French privateers in his village. He had once been a slave in Panama City, had not forgotten that harrowing experience or forgiven it, and was as hot for cutting Spanish throats with Scottish swords as his father-in-law. He spoke French well, and was thus able to talk to many of the Scots officers without the aid of Mr. Spense's Spanish. He quickly made a friend of Lieutenant Robert Turnbull, a bright-hearted, courageous young man who, alone among the Scots, took the trouble to learn something of the Indians' language. Pennecuik did not know what to make of Pedro. Polygamy was one thing, understandable if not commendable, but the man was not only married to Ambrosio's daughter but also to his own daughters by her, "which is allowed here, yet it seems it's believed a crime, since if they have any children during the life of their mother they are burnt alive, the children, I mean."

  From these captains the Scots learned that there was no great King or Emperor of Darien, no Golden One such as Paterson had once believed, though there was a legend of a barbarous tyrant who beheaded men for pleasure and allowed no one but himself to have more than one wife. He was murdered one night by a group of his followers who resented the pleasure and envied the privilege, and since then the land had been divided unequally among a number of chiefs, great and small, whose power and influence seemed to depend on their success in the field against the Spaniards. Captain Diego, who held the coast eastward from Caledonia to Caret Bay, commanded three thousand warriors and was more esteemed than Ambrosio. He had been at war with Spain since he and some of his clan broke out of the mines where they had been working as slaves. Pousigo, the brother-in-law of Andreas, was a powerful shaman, a "clergyman" Pennecuik called him, and although he possessed little land his influence was great. Corbet, whom the settlers never met, was an ally of the French and had joined them in their recent attack on Carthagena, but the other captains thought little of him. Nicola might have been a valuable ally had the Scots taken the trouble to send him gifts and seek him out. He was Ambrosio's rival, a wise, brave, and good-natured man who could not only speak Spanish but read and write it as well. He also had a surprising knowledge of European affairs. He had once been a pet of the Spaniards, but had broken with them when the Governor of Portobello stole his prized musket. Since then he had wasted his talents in fruitless raids, in the killing of Spaniards whenever and wherever he found them.

  At the sea-gate end of the peninsula were three promontories. The largest, which the Scots called Forth Point, was a sandy thumb of land and a few feet only above sea-level. To the north of it, across a small bay, was another which was named Pelican Point. The third was the highest, the end of the northern escarpment of the peninsula, and this was called Point Look-out. Here a wooden tower was built, wherein a watchman was posted by day and night. Two week's after the fleet's arrival he reported a strange ship standing to westward, and the following day she dropped anchor off the Isle of Pines to the north-west of the harbour mouth. It was another twenty-four hours before her captain was rowed into Caledonia Bay. He came up on the Saint Andrew's quarter and boarded her, giving his ship's name as the Rupert, a French vessel taken as a prize during the war, and his own as Richard Long with the King's commission to search for sunken treasure in these waters. Mr. Secretary Vernon had found a use for the man, though exactly what that was neither of them was ever indiscreet enough to put to paper. The Scots greeted him cordially, although they were not pleased by the visit of an English ship so soon. She was not unexpected, however. Some days before, the Indians had reported her furtive presence off the coast.

  Long dined aboard the flagship and the Unicorn, and proved that he had a greater capacity for brandy and Madeira than Andreas, Pedro or Ambrosio. He sat late with Pennecuik and Pincarton, explaining that he had cruised along the coast but had made no landing, and had no wish to claim any part of it for England. He asked questions about the settlement, its strength and intentions, and he did not think it necessary to tell Pennecuik and Pincarton that he was obliged to inform James Vernon of all that he learned from them. Also understandably, he did not admit that while down the coast he had told the Indians that if they were attacked by these Scots privateers the King of England would protect them.

  Pennecuik decided that he did not like the man, and that night in his journal he wrote a judgment upon Long that other men might well have used about himself. "We could by no means find him the conjuror he gives himself for."

  On the evening of November 17, with Long drunk and asleep aboard the Unicorn, the Council decided to accept Ambrosio's invitation to visit his village, and the next day, after the Quaker had returned to his ship, there was a squabbling argument over who should go. Pennecuik of course, there was no debate on that. Jolly was elected, but was sick and proposed Cunningham, Vetch, and Thomas Drummond. Pennecuik objected strenuously, and won his point by the strength of his voice rather than the power of his argument. It was finally agreed that the mission should consist of the Commodore, Pincarton, Cunning
ham and Mackay. They left at eight o'clock in the morning of November 19, four ship's boats, a strong force of armed men, the Company's banner and the flag of Scotland. They got no further than the Isle of Pines that day, for the wind turned north to a stiff gale and they were glad to run in to the lee of the Rupert and board her.

  The English Quaker liberally returned Pennecuik's hospitality, but the Scots found him even iess attractive aboard his own ship than he had been aboard theirs. "Whatever the King or Government of England may have found in Captain Long," wrote Pennecuik, "we know not, but to us in all his conversations he appeared a most ridiculous, shallow-pated fellow, laughed at and despised to his very face by his own officers, and continually drunk." The questioning and the answering were now reversed, but the Scots were unable to discover the real purpose of Long's commission. Indeed, from his stumbling letters to London it is plain that he was not sure himself, whether he was truly to search for treasure, whether he was merely to report on the Scots settlement, or whether he was to claim the country for England and turn the Indians against the Caledonians. James Vernon got little in return for the ship and money that had at last been given to the importunate man.

  When the gale dropped the next morning, Pedro arrived in a piragua, happy to guide the Scots to his father-in-law. They left in the forenoon, making frequent soundings along the coast westward until they came to a broad bay which Pennecuik, with his customary flair for exaggeration, thought might easily harbour ten thousand sail, with deep-water keys alongside which the greatest vessel in the English Navy might safely moor. It was an old meeting-place of the buccaneers, and there were marks ashore where they had once careened their ships. For a moment he thought of uprooting the settlement from Caledonia Bay and transferring it here, but he decided that it would be an ill place to defend, having no sea-gate and no high ground for batteries.

  A guard was left on the boats, and the rest of the party marched inland for a league to Ambrosio's village. It stood on the bank of a river, ten or twelve small huts dominated by the captain's house—a great building of cane and plantain leaves, ninety feet long, thirty-five broad, and thirty high. Ambrosio was waiting fifty paces from its door, smiling, and surrounded by a bodyguard of twenty men all wearing fringed cloaks of white linen and carrying feathered lances. In the background a band of musicians played sweetly on reed pipes, while others hummed, and still more danced about the Councillors in a manner that reminded them of the graceful movements of their own Highlanders. "Ambrosio saluted us kindly," said Pennecuik, "and gave us a calabash of liquor almost like lamb's-wool, which they call Mislow: it's made of Indian corn and potatoes." They were taken into the cool shade of the great house where Ambrosio and Pedro lived with their wives, their children and forty dependants. Pedro proudly introduced Ambrosio's grandmother and communal cook, a surprisingly young-looking woman for the 120 years she was said to have lived. The Scots politely doubted her age, whereupon Ambrosio called up representatives of the six generations from her body, himself among them, and added that her age was nothing, it was common enough for his people to live thirty or forty years longer. "Yet it is observed," said Pennecuik naively, "those who converse often with Europeans and drink our strong liquors are but short-lived."

  The Scots spent the night at the village, sleeping in the great house which, for some reason, reminded them of a church. In the morning they broke their fast with plantains, potatoes and wild hog, after which Ambrosio and Pedro went in to the forests and shot the largest partridges the Scots had ever seen, pressing them upon their guests with disarming promises of love and friendship.

  The Councillors returned to the settlement on November 23. The Rupert had weighed anchor three days before, which infuriated Pennecuik for he had hoped to send dispatches home with her. He soon had other matters to anger him. His report that there was no better place than Caledonia Bay for the settlement brought both Vetch and the Drummonds into open opposition. In as many words they said that he was a fool. The ground chosen for the town and the fort was dangerous and unsuitable, and the work already done, little though it was, had been wasted. Pennecuik refused to listen to them, and bullied all the Councillors but Paterson into agreeing that the building should continue as originally planned.

  And then there was the problem of Major James Cunningham of Eickett. Behind his stiff-necked arrogance and punctilious manner he was an ineffectual member of the Council, uncertain which faction his duty and his interest inclined him to, now a member of the Glencoe Gang and now cannily neutral, and usually declaring for that party which could cause him the least inconvenience. He had finally decided that the best interest was his own, and that lay as far away from Caledonia as he could place it. "He became so uneasy," wrote Paterson, "and so possessed (as we thought) by unaccountable conceits and notions that he gave us no small trouble, and at last would needs forsake not only his post but the Colony." He wanted to go home, and he was determined to go home with the first ship. Pincarton and others thought that he ought to be placed in irons, or at least disciplined until he came to a proper recognition of his duty, but even upon this the Council could not agree. He continued to nag and complain on the edge of all debates.

  He was not alone in his desperate wish to be quit of this wretched land. At the end of November, on the eve of Saint Andrew's Day to make the crime more disgraceful, ten Planters broke open the magazine aboard the Unicorn and deserted with all the weapons they could carry. A captain and four subalterns were sent after them in one of the flagship's boats to Caret Bay, where it was assumed they had gone. The incident spoiled the flavour of the Saint Andrew's Day supper which Pennecuik held for the Council, although Captain Andreas enjoyed it. He had been invited with intent, the Scots now suspecting him of correspondence with the Spanish at Portobello. "We taxed him home with it," said Pennecuik, by which he meant that the Indian was given all the brandy he wished and then questioned. He agreed that he had been friendly with the Spaniards and that they had made him a captain of their native levies, but he had accepted the friendship and the office because he was afraid of them. They had recently told him that the Scots were privateers "who had no design to settle but to plunder both Spaniards and Indians, and be gone in two or three months." Pennecuik assured him that they were there to stay, that they would protect him and his people and give him a commission in their service, and that all they wanted from him in return was "all his right to this part of the country." He gave it to them with drunken generosity, and went happily home in his canoe.

  On December 1 the deserters were brought back. They were put in irons and given nothing but bread and water.

  "From henceforward ... we do call ourselves Caledonians" Caledonia, December 1698

  Where was the fine weather which Lionel Wafer had said should now be favouring this promised land? There were days when Hugh Rose had no spirit to record anything more in his journal than the miserable fact that it was still raining. Much thunder, lightning and rain.... Great showers of rain with much wind.... The weather very bad which hinders the work.... These twenty- four hours there has fallen a prodigious quantity of rain.... Much wind and rain.... Wind and rain as above....

  Weak from fever and flux, depressed by a heavy melancholy, exhausted by daytime heat and shivering at night beneath the dripping palmetto roofs of their huts, the Landsmen looked bitterly through this slanting rain to the ships. The sea-captains were jealous of the health of their crews, and wisely allowed no man ashore except under close watch. Even so, the sailors were frequently ill, although their chances of recovery were higher. Aboard the Unicorn young Colin Campbell survived a severe fever, blessed be God, but it had left his hands weak, as his brother could no doubt see from the unsteadiness of his writing. Shipboard life was dull, and there were times when he envied his namesake and clansman "Captain Colin", an officer of Argyll's who commanded one of the companies ashore. Yet he had no real wish to leave his friend Henry Erskine and land on the peninsula.

  "There is nothing to be had
there, and besides, if I did then Captain Pincarton would never own me nor speak to me any more, as he did to another gentleman who was recommended to his care."

  Many men were writing such letters, and keeping journals against the day—pray God let it be soon—when a ship left for Scotland.

  The Council at last agreed that the site chosen for the fort was unsatisfactory, and ordered another to be built on the sandy promontory of Forth Point. Although he was no engineer, Thomas Drummond was again the only fit man to organise the work, and he, said Paterson, "according to the tools he had, did beyond what could be reasonably expected from him, for our men, though for the most part in health, were generally weak for want of sufficient allowance of provisions and liquors and the irregular serving of their scrimp allowances." Drummond was remorseless in the iron discipline he imposed upon his men, and spared his own body less than he did theirs. He was a hard man to like, having no compassion, but there were few who did not respect his ability and strength, and what talk there was about his dark service in Glencoe was kept to a guarded whisper. Indeed, what had been deplored in his behaviour at home might here have been regarded as evidence of resolute leadership. The fort he started to build was to be as simple and as effective as he could make it with the tools, labour and materials available, and large enough to hold a garrison of a thousand men—a star-shaped, palisaded wall made from a double row of wooden stakes packed with earth, cut with embrasures for the forty guns that would be brought ashore from the ships. The earth for the palisades would come from a wide moat, open to the bay and flooded by the tide. On the landward side, and beyond the moat, would be a chevaux de frise of sloping planks spiked with iron. All this, it was hoped—with the ditch that was being dug across the neck, with the land-batteries on the sea-gate and with the ships in the bay—should be strong enough to protect the Colony against anything but a formal siege-train, and it was not likely that the Spanish would have such ordnance.