The Darién Scheme Transcript (Scotland: A Scottish History Podcast)
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Scotland - A Scottish History Podcast
Episode 12 - The Darién Scheme
MICHAEL PARK: It is August 3rd 1914. The Cristobal has just made history by delivering some cement. In two weeks, her sister ship the Ancon will get all the glory when she completes the same forty mile journey with the eyes of the world watching. The Cristobal moors at the construction site having been the first ship to cross directly from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific along the Panama Canal.
The idea of connecting the two oceans had been around for hundreds of years and with its opening ships were able to cut a massive chunk out of trade journeys between ports in Europe and the United States and the Far East. It was a triumph for the Americans who had built it, and for companies whose ships could now open up the world to rapid commerce.
The idea of crossing the Isthmus of Panama wasn’t a new one - it’s only about 60 miles wide and crossing it cuts out weeks of travel around the tip of South America. Someone in the court of the King of Spain suggested it way back in 1534 but the local governor decided it would be too difficult to build and nipped the idea in the bud.
The notion stuck though. Maybe you didn’t need a canal. If you could take goods across land and load them onto waiting ships on the other side, that would still cut weeks out of trading voyages. If only someone had the foresight and the fortitude to actually do it…
From Be Quiet Media, this is Scotland, a podcast about history and where we made it. I’m Michael Park.
It is early November 1698. Five ships are disembarking in a natural harbour as the sun beats down on people who have never seen the sun blaze the way it did here - especially not in winter. November wasn’t like this where they came from - July was barely ever like this.
They’ve come all the way from Leith, twelve hundred of them packed onto five ships. They left Scotland three months ago having put their life savings into a scheme. It was a scheme that was going to secure them their fortune in a bountiful new land. Except they weren’t told where they were going.
Twelve hundred Scots sat huddled on five ships with everything they had tied up in these flimsy wooden boards and fluttering canvas taking them… somewhere. The holds were full of goods bought with the money that they, and thousands - and I mean thousands - of other ordinary Scots had poured into this exciting venture. It had captured the imagination of the nation. And when they passed the island of Madeira they learned the name of their new eden. Darién.
It meant nothing to them.
The man they had entrusted everything to was already ashore. The silver-tongued hype man of the Company of Scotland had lost his wife and child on the voyage from Scotland. If nothing else it made them feel a little bit closer to him.
So this was their new home, New Caledonia. They had come from all over Scotland, some looking for adventure, some looking for a new life, some were former soldiers looking for an escape. They were all together - all eleven hundred and thirty, seventy had died on the way and were weighed down at the bottom of the Atlantic.
They unloaded their precious cargo. Boxes upon boxes of mirrors and combs, items… trinkets really... that they would sell to the indigenous peoples of the region in exchange for food and land. There was a crate of wigs. They were important… for some reason.
Once the ships were unloaded, the next order of business was to build fortifications. After all, this part of Panama was technically already claimed by the Spanish and called New Granada. The new colony was going to be so close to the shipping lanes that the Spanish Empire used for silver that an attack was a very real threat. They dug a ditch and created fortifications which included fifty heavy cannons. It didn’t include access to a source of fresh water.
The next step in the colonisation of Darién was to have somewhere to live. It didn’t take them long before they decided that the area they had laid aside to create New Edinburgh, the first settlement of the new Scottish Empire was… rubbish. Deciding they’d be better off inside Fort St. Andrew, they began to put up makeshift huts.
Once they had shelter sorted out, they put out a proclamation of free trade and religion, even sending friendly communications to the Spanish governors in the area. It’s what we would call a ‘gallus’ move.
SETTLERS: "We do here settle and in the name of God establish ourselves; and in honour and for the memory of that most ancient and renowned name of our Mother Country, we do, and will from henceforward call this country by the name of Caledonia; and ourselves, successors, and associates, by the name of Caledonians"
- Declaration of the settlers of New Caledonia - November, 1698
The next step was to grow things to eat. But there was a problem. Or to put it another way, there was another problem in an ever-growing list of problems. The land wasn’t suited to agriculture - probably why no-one had done it before them. The local indigenous population were generous with gifts initially - after all, they hated the Spanish - but that generosity soon dried up and the shiny baubles that the settlers had brought with them to amaze the ‘barbaric indians’ - as they would have seen them - into giving up their food and land weren’t well received.
It was going to be a long winter… but William Paterson knew that life was full of little challenges.
Mid Roll
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MICHAEL PARK: William Paterson was famous in Scotland, if you moved in the right circles. The kind of circles that neither you or I move in. The kind of circles where you might excitedly receive one of the founders of the Bank of England in your extravagant parlour that was bigger than all of the houses of the people who worked on your estate… put together.
It is 1695, three years before he was to lose his family on a spit of land thousands of miles from home.
He was a successful merchant in foreign trade, which is a euphemistic way of saying he made a ton of money selling people to other people. Anyone who tells you that the British are historically opposed to slavery is feeding you a lie but that’s for another time.
The Bank of England was designed to bankroll the English government, allowing them to spend money that they might not have on things that they might not need. But Paterson was a dreamer more than he was a banker. He might have had the idea to become the government’s creditor but he left the hard work up to people with a head for the minutiae.
William Paterson was a big picture guy and there was one picture that was painted in his head on a canvas a thousand feet wide. The picture was of a company - it didn’t matter what company as long as he was at the head of it - controlling trade between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific. A free port that would allow traders to bring goods in, have them carted across the narrow strip of land and onto ships on the other side. It would make him and the savvy government who took the project on a fortune.
He had already tried to convince the English. They weren’t keen, so he took it to the Dutch and even to the Holy Roman Empire. No dice.
Once he had finished his work with the Bank, he relocated to Edinburgh with a song in his heart and a desperate Scottish government in his sights.
Scotland had been ravaged by its weak position in comparison to England for years and the end of the seventeenth century saw many of its industries in steep decline. Eventually the country became dependent on buying goods from England in their own currency. The crowns were shared - William the Second was on the throne following the so-called Glorious Revolution and the government in Scotland was afraid that they would be railroaded into a full union with England if things didn’t improve.
They needed something spectacular to drag them from the doldrums, and William Paterson had a picture to paint for them.
Shortly after he moved to Edinburgh, Paterson and his pals founded the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies and the group of Scottish and English businessmen immediately began to disagree over exactly where they should be trading. Some saw the English East India Company as the model to follow, after all they were huge and even a small slice of that cake would be worth a mint to the ailing Scots government.
Paterson and his group though, were intent on opening up a trade route through the Isthmus of Panama.
You can probably tell which one won out in the end.
They called it the Darién Scheme since it was a scheme to settle in Darién. They went about raising the money they would need through subscriptions in London, Hamburg, and Amsterdam. The money came in quickly despite the King not tripping over himself to offer support. England was fighting a war with France - they loved a war with France - and they didn’t want to risk offending Spain who controlled the area by encouraging their neighbours to nick a load of their land.
Then the hurdles started to be thrown up. Without getting too deep into it, the big economic theory of the time was called Mercantilism which, unlike capitalism, views the marketplace as an unmoving, unerring behemoth so if you were a small country looking to increase your share in the market, you would be taking it directly from another nation rather than expanding the market like in capitalism.
So then, as if by magic or a lack of forethought, the Company of Scotland is suddenly a threat to English and Spanish interests in the region. That caught the attention of the giant East India Company which effectively controlled all trade between England and the rest of the world. They put pressure on the investors from London and Amsterdam to pull their money, and pull it they did.
William Paterson would cope - there was money everywhere, you just had to know how to get it.
That was until they went after the rest of the money. Since the Company of Scotland didn’t have the specific permission of the King to seek funds for their venture outside the realm, the East India Company were able to threaten them with legal action and make them return the money to the investors from Hamburg.
Check mate. Game over. Another victory for the ripping good chaps from the East India Company.
Except this wasn’t just any old dreamer they were up against.
William Paterson went back to Edinburgh and raised a rammy in the streets, among the chattering classes of the aristocracy right down to the people who had barely five shillings to rub together. Scotland was going to become a great colonial power and it would do it with the investment of its people. It would be their company, and they would see the rewards.
The people of Scotland would line their own pockets with the profits of far east trade and they would flick the noses of the English while they did it.
In just a few weeks Paterson and the Company had raised almost £400,000 from ordinary - and not so ordinary Scots. It was about a fifth of all the money in the Scottish economy, and it was sailing to Darién in five ships.
Mid Roll
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It is March 1699. News has reached Edinburgh that the expedition has landed successfully and made a start on creating the new Scottish Empire in Darién. News travelled slowly back then.
The people of Scotland were delighted that their new venture was going so well. It wasn’t exactly dancing in the streets delighted but ordinary people began to dream about the newfound wealth that the promised land of Darién would bring them. After a decade of fighting to survive as crop after crop failed, it was an enticing prospect.
The Company sent two ships to resupply the colony and they took hundreds more settlers with them. When the ships floated into the Bay of Caledonia in August of 1699 they were looking forward to seeing familiar faces welcoming them to the jewel in the crown of the Scottish empire.
News travelled slowly.
No-one greeted them with a Scottish flag as they entered the bay. No-one greeted them with a smile and a good meal after months at sea. No-one greeted them with open arms and a wee nip of uisge beatha.
No-one was there to greet them.
No-one at all.
All that remained of the Darién colony was a few wretched, ruined huts and roughly cut graves with crosses which were already being overtaken by nature.
The colonists had endured months of uncertainty but the winter hadn’t been as harsh as Paterson and his group had expected. But no-one was buying what they were selling. No-one was putting in to trade with them. They hadn’t stowed the food that they’d brought from Scotland properly and it started to spoil. They couldn’t grow anything and the indigenous people weren’t that interested in buying mirrors.
And then it was summer. And then it was mosquito season.
They feasted on the pallid Scots - anyone who’s been on holiday probably knows the feeling. They spread malaria and there wasn’t a thing that the underequipped colonists could do to stop it.
Between the rampant malaria and the dysentry, the maggot infested flour that was meant to provide sustenance, and the few gifts of food that the natives were bringing being siphoned off by the high heid-yins who were still living aboard the ships in the harbour, there was no hope.
There was no chance.
There was no colony. Not really.
They abandoned it in July, long after the resupply mission had set sail. One ship made for Jamaica where they were refused assistance by the English governor. He was under orders from King William not to antagonise the Spanish and the East India Company.
One headed home, eventually making it back to become the lightning rod for national outrage, and two vessels - with Paterson aboard - fled to New York.
The ships which came to resupply them didn’t know any of this. The two captains fought and argued over what they should do - after all, you can’t resupply a colony if there’s no colony to resupply. And then what about the survivors? If there were no ships in the harbour then there must be survivors.
The debate raged on for days until one of the ships caught fire.
It was an accident, or so they say, and the others fled for Port Royal on the remaining ship.
There they found the same reception from the Governor with his royal orders. They weren’t allowed to set foot on Jamaican soil and in the overcrowded confines of the Hopeful Beginning, where they could see their futures unravelling in front of their eyes, disease started to set in.
The original colonists who had arrived in New York had tried to send ships to help, but by the time they arrived back at the colony, all they found was a burnt ship’s rotting hull on the sands.
But it didn’t end there. News travelled slowly.
Word of the collapse of the colony didn’t get back to Scotland in time to stop another expedition leaving for Darién. More than 1,000 people were again bound for Panama with big dreams of a bright future. They had staked their livelihoods, and their lives on this venture and were beside themselves with excitement to see their bustling new home.
This time word got to New York that they were on their way and the remnants of the first expedition set sail to intercept the second and warn them before they could fall to the same fate.
When the new colonists arrived in November 1699 their leaders expected them to try and rebuild the shattered colony. It was too important to not try. People were sent ashore to start the work but it wasn’t moving at any great pace. They hadn’t come to build a colony, they’d come to live in one.
They were demoralised, they were broken.
FRANCIS BORLAND: “Darién is pernicious, unwholesome and contagious. Thou devourest men and eatest up thy inhabitants…. What with bad water, salt spoiled provisions, and absence of medicines, the fort was indeed like an hospital of sick and dying men”
- Reverend Francis Borland, Memoirs of Darién, 1715.
MICHAEL PARK: As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Spanish had had it up to their pointy beards with the upstart Scots and dispatched ships from nearby colonies to get rid of them.
They landed on the shore and quickly overran Fort St Andrew which was just a husk of the husk it had been when the colony was first settled just a year before. The Scots fought back with the help of some of the local tribe, but there was nothing they could do in the long run. The Spanish would keep coming until they were wiped out and they were given terms to surrender or face an all out assault with no quarter being given. There was no Scottish navy to back them up.
Bows and arrows against the lightning.
The Scots abandoned Darién for the last time in January 1700. The ships which left the colony tried to return home. One sank off Jamaica, one sprang a leak and was sold for parts in Cartageña and The Rising Sun, the new flagship of the Company of Scotland which had expected to sail into Darién to usher in a new period of Scottish prosperity was lost somewhere off Charlestown in Cornwall.
It’s thought that less than one hundred survivors of the great expedition made it back home. William Paterson made it back and immediately started working to save face.
To save his own face.
Paterson and his ilk, the schemers and dreamers, had gambled everything on the success of the colony in Darién. They had bet the house and lost.
Those who returned home were pariahs, unable to shake the shame of their failure. No-one could understand what they’d been through, the things they’d seen. No-one tried. The people of Scotland were too busy reeling from the financial loss. Nobles were bankrupted, people who had invested their life savings in the scheme were left in dire financial straits.
Much worse than anything they had experienced before the Company of Scotland came along. Much worse than before the name William Paterson had escaped the parlours and offices of polite society and permeated the streets.
Much worse than before any of them had ever heard the word Darién.
Paterson immediately began campaigning for an Act of Union between Scotland and England that would save Scotland from its crippling debts and allow rich and powerful Scots - or what was left of them - a cut of the profit and power of their mega-rich neighbour.
The land where they built New Edinburgh, where they dreamed their dreams and where those dreams were dashed is almost completely uninhabited today. There’s a village on an island a few miles offshore where the local Kuna people know nothing about Scotland or the people who their ancestors helped all that time ago. They call the village Coedub - in English it’s known as Caledonia.
The Act of Union was passed in 1707 and remains in place to this day. The Darién Scheme was the Kingdom of Scotland’s Hail Mary play to save the ailing nation.
Now there was no nation left to save.
CREDITS
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