July 11, 2011 • 22 mins
In the late 1600s, a financier tried to start a Scottish colony in Panama. Despite English roadblocks, the Scots successfully raised funding. But the expedition faced disease, death and poor trade, taking down the settlers -- and, ultimately, Scotland.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm to blame a chuck reboarding
and I was thinking about it. It's been a while
since we've done a real disastrous expedition podcast, hasn't it. Yeah.
(00:23):
I think it's been since the Dr Livingston episode, the
last time I had to do a fake voice, and
even then there's a little success in that mission. It
seems like you never expect, when you're packing your bags
with truffles and cases of champagne, that the trip is
going to end with your strange altering vehicle not being
so altering after all and stuck in the mud, or
(00:44):
that maybe sharks will eat your ponies, or that, in
Stanley's case, crocodiles will eat your donkey. Yeah, that's never
any fun. But listener Rich promised us highs and low
similar to that when he wrote in to suggest the
dairy En Expedition for our next podcast. And it involves
the seventeenth century Scottish attempt to settle Panama, and it's
(01:04):
always been somewhere in I think our mental topic list. Yeah,
I definitely I remember reading about it briefly in Matthew
Parker's book Panama Fever a couple of years back now,
while I was researching an article on the Panama Now. So, yeah,
it's it's always been sort of hanging out in our
in our mental list for sure. Yeah. But Rich told
us that while he couldn't guarantee an exhimation, the dairy
(01:26):
En expedition was certainly in the best tradition of expedition podcasts,
a shockingly unrealistic idea of what to expect, unpreparedness, severe deprivation,
and also strange items brought along for the trip which
will go over. So, yeah, Rich, I think you really
sold it there with that explanation. But the dairy En
story is also a little different from some of the
(01:48):
other expedition podcasts we've done in the past, which are
often just pure adventures, adventure for the sake of adventure.
This was more than just a personal folly, and it
was definitely more than a disaster for just the people
who were involved. It was a national fiasco and it
really played no small part in eighteenth century nation building,
(02:10):
so it had far reaching consequences for sure. So before
we get too involved into what happened in Panama. We're
going to start with the primary player involved, which was Scotland. Yeah,
the country was experiencing troubled times in the late sixteen hundreds.
There had been war, famine, and poor international trade due
(02:30):
to England's constant continental wars, and a lot of people
around this time we're getting out they were immigrating to
the English colonies, but the ones who stayed behind needed
some hope. And with some peace with the French and
English finally on hand and continental trade opening up again,
it seemed like global commerce was the way to go,
specifically bringing valuable Eastern commodities to the West. Yeah. So
(02:53):
enter William Patterson. He was a young Scotsman and he
had spent his youth traveling. Matthew Parker, the author I
just mentioned, described him as part missionary, part buccaneer. If
that gives you a good idea of what kind of
man he was in his youth at least. But he
had made his fortune in business in England, and in
sixteen ninety four he had even helped start the Bank
(03:14):
of England. But his main operation at this point was
promoting speculative money making schemes which sounds kind of promising
and ominous considering we've already told you this podcast doesn't
exactly work out for the people involved, right, So here's
how it starts. Well, Patterson's in London. He meets a
sailor named Lionel Wafer who tells him about a place
(03:35):
called Darien on the eastern side of the Panamanian Isthmus.
And it's supposedly this wonderful paradise naturally. Yeah. And the
true beauty of the place, so as we'll find out,
was not its supposed bounty, but in its geography. Yeah. So,
Europeans had been enchanted by the narrow strip of land
between North and South America for a really long time,
(03:58):
since they first saw it in the fift hundreds fifteen
o one, in fact. So dreams of some kind of
overland route or maybe even a canal eventually started in
fifteen thirteen when Vasco Nunez de Balboa made his march
to the Pacific and realized that he could see both
the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean from a peak
(04:19):
at Darienne. And Patterson was thinking along similar lines here.
He was thinking, if you established ports on both sides
of the Isthmus then hauled goods overland. You'd be in
control of this global trade artery. As Scotland controlled Darienne
and established a colony there, it would consequently soon become
(04:40):
fabulously wealthy from all of the trade levies going through
because ships loaded down with Pacific goods would no longer
have to go all the way around South America around
the Cape Horn, which was not only a long and
expensive trip, but a dangerous one to you might just
wreck your entire ship and lose everything. So instead, he figuard,
(05:00):
people would be willing to pay a little bit to
the Scottish territory and take the shortcut through Darien. Yeah,
but Patterson actually took plans a step further and envisioned
not just a highway like outpost with financial ties to Scotland,
but a melting pot of all nationalities, races, and religions.
He said that whoever controlled the Cosmopolitan Center would possess
(05:24):
quote the gates to the Pacific and the keys to
the universe. Do but open these doors and trade will
increase and money will be get money. Right. But the
problem was, while Patterson had been to the Caribbean and
had traveled there, he had never actually been to Panama,
and the reports coming back on the terrain and the
(05:45):
climate especially weren't exactly accurate. He was hearing about these
nice low valleys, the kind of the kind of terrain
it's easy to imagine just cutting a road through and
hauling goods. The Darien region in reality, is really hot.
It's humid, there's dense rainforests, there are mangrove swamps, and
they're low mountains, so it's difficult and pretty much every
(06:08):
way you can think of. Yeah, and it is a paradise,
but it's a paradise of flora and fauna. You know, jaguars, awesole,
it's my favorite animal, your favorite animals showing up in Dareen.
And they're also giant ant eaters, harpie eagles, American crocs,
things like that. But it's not a paradise in the
way Linel Wafer described it. In fact, the Darien region
(06:28):
is such a tough place to live. It's actually believed
to have been always the sparsely populated and it still
is today. So it doesn't exactly sound like the best
spot to send a few shipfuls of Scottish immigrants. A
paired Scottish immigrants. No, it doesn't, although the Scottish Parliament
thinks that it sounds like a great idea even though
it seems too good to be true to set up
(06:48):
this colony. The Parliament backed the scheme and allow the
creation of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and
the Indies, which is quite a mouthful in June now,
though they had to raise the money to build the
ship's stock them and and just get the materials they
need to start trade and and start up a colony. Unsurprisingly, though,
(07:11):
the English and the English backed East India Company weren't
really thrilled by the idea of this new potential rival
in a global trade. They weren't thrilled at all. In fact,
English investors who had put money into the new Scottish
company early on were forced to withdraw it um and
the ambassador, the English ambassador in Holland even threatened to
(07:34):
embargo merchants that traded with this new company. So the
English were really throwing up any roadblocks they could to
try to put the lockdown on this thing before it
even got started. Yeah, and you think that would be
a bad omen, But it's funny those that English opposition
actually seemed to only make the Scots more gung ho
about this entire plan, So subscriptions soared and in six
(07:58):
months time, the rich and the poor alike raised four
hundred thousand pounds together half of the country's capital. Yeah.
But even then, even with all of this support and enthusiasm,
there was an early glitch. A company member named James
Smith ran off with seventeen thousand pounds Earmarch for boat construction,
(08:20):
and Patterson, of course, being in charge of this new company,
was sort of under suspicion, but nobody could prove that
he was involved. He even paid back nine thousand pounds
of his own money, but he was still kind of
tainted by the scandal, and he lost his position at
the head of the company and was forced to travel
just as a simple settler one of the masses, and
(08:42):
that kind of set up a leadership issue that was
going to prove to be a major problem down the road. Yeah,
so their troubles right off the bat, but still plans
marched on. There were five ships built in Hamburg and Amsterdam.
Their names were the Caledonia, the st Andrew, the Unicorn,
the Dolphin, and the Endeavor and they were stocked with
medical supplies for fift hundred people for two years. It
(09:05):
included food like biscuits, beef, pork, prunes um. They brought
along tobacco, pipes, cloth, and tons of brandy and rum.
But they also brought along some pretty unnecessary items to
it in nice Sarah, Yeah, wigs. I mean, you would
not think you'd need wigs for moving to Panama, but
(09:26):
they were expecting there was some stylish living in their futures.
And they also brought items to trade with the local Indians,
like heavy Scottish cloth and mirrors and combs because they
heard that the native people had really long hair and
and we're kind of vain about it. And they even
brought fifteen hundred English language bibles thinking they would be
(09:47):
able to sell those. So again, kind of a bad
sign here if this is your packing list. But on
July twelve, they left Scotland with all of those twelve
hundred colonists on board and p people were so desperate
to go to join this mission, which which was full
and there weren't any spaces left that stowaways had hidden
(10:08):
themselves on the ships and had to be expelled before
they sailed off. It was a real big to do.
The whole city turned out. It was the celebration for
the country. People thought this was gonna was gonna make Scotland,
which is so wild because they did not even know
where they were going. No, at the time, they didn't.
With the exception of men like Patterson, most of the
people on board didn't know the destination. Like they did
(10:31):
not know where they were sailing to. It was contained.
The destination was contained in a sealed packet and it
wasn't opened until Madeira, and at that point it was
revealed to be a place called Golden Island on the
coast of Darienne. So even then they have a name,
but they're still not exactly sure what to expect there.
It's a three month voyage to yeah, and it's kind
(10:54):
of treacherous. I mean forty three die en route, which
was supposed to be fairly typical unfortunately for a a
journey at this time. That's true. And they landed November
three at a spot they named Caledonia Bay and it
was fortunately but deceivingly the beginning of a short dry
season when they got there, so things seemed okay at first.
Patterson wrote, quote our situation is in one of the
(11:16):
best and most defensible harbors perhaps in the world. The
country is healthful, exceedingly fertile, and the weather is temperate,
so positive attitude right at the get go, and the
locals were nice to the Kuna and the Choco were
friendly and helpful, and they liked to fly the Cross
of St. Andrew and their canoes too, so they seemed
on board with what was going on. So they were
(11:38):
getting along. But things started to go bad pretty quickly,
and their first choice of a building site wasn't at
all suitable. Paterson called it quote a mere morass, neither
fit to be fortified, nor planted, nor indeed for men
to lie upon. We were clearing and making huts upon
this improper place near two months, in which time experience,
(11:59):
this cool master of fools convinced our masters that the
place now called Fort St Andrew's was a more proper
place for us. So at the Fort site they started
to build New Edinburgh. And by that point though, there
was major trouble because rainy season had started, and of
course rain brought bugs and disease, and by March of
(12:22):
that year, two hundred colonists were dead and the death
rate eventually increased to about ten people per day. So
they're dropping like flies in this weather and heat and
bad climate. Yea. And to add to that situation, food
was scarce despite the large supplies they had bought with them.
It was rotting because of the damp, and there just
(12:43):
wasn't enough of it. There was no strong leadership, and
lots of infighting, and basically they just lost hope at
that point, they lost their spirit. Yeah. There's an account
from a young gentleman who was on the trip named
Roger Oswald, and he described his experience at Darien, living
off of less than a pound of moldy flower a week.
And here's here's what he had to say. It pretty
much sums up all of the points we just made.
(13:05):
When boiled with a little water without anything else, big
maggots and worms must be skimmed off the top. Yet,
for all this short allowance, every man let him never
be so weak. Daily turned out to work by daylight,
whether with the hatchet or wheelbarrow, pick ax, shovel, fore hammer,
or any other instrument the case required. And so continued
(13:26):
until twelve o'clock and at two again, and stayed till night.
Sometimes working all day up to the headbands of the
breeches in water at the trenches. My shoulders have been
so war with carrying burdens that the skin has come
off them and grew full of boils. If a man
were sick and obliged to stay within, no victuals for
him that day. Are counselors all the while, lying at
(13:48):
their ease, sometimes divided into factions, and being swayed by
particular interest ruined the public. Our bodies pined away and
grew so maserated with such allowance that we were like
so many skeletons. So it wasn't quite the gates to
the Pacific and possessing the keys to the universe that
Patterson thought it would be. And even basic non overland
(14:12):
trading was not going according to plan, so they weren't
able to make money either. For example, and surprisingly the
Indians did not want to buy lots of Scottish cloth
or combs, and the English colonies in the West Indies
and in North America were actually forbidden by London to
communicate with the Scots, let alone trade with them, so
they were frozen out. Yeah, and only a few traders
(14:32):
in Boston and New York were willing to trade food
for cash, and obviously, if you're trading for cash, that's
not a long term solution. So we have to ask
why did the English just come down so hard on
trade for this new company. The East India thing was
obviously still a sore point, but the main issue here
was maintaining diplomatic relations with Spain, because yes, in addition
(14:57):
to overlooking the climate of darry And and it's mosquitoes
and the difficult terrain, the expedition's promoters had just completely
ignored the fact that Spain already laid claim to Panama.
Powerful Spain with all of its armies and ships. Whoops,
big mistakes. So by June, survivors had sort of packed
(15:20):
it in. Patterson's wife and son had both died, and
the party sailed to Jamaica and then to New York,
leaving ships and dead behind along the way. Some of
the ships crashed, I think some were sold off, and
really the only one that made it back home to
Scotland was the Caledonia, and survivors in New York were
described as looking quote, rather like skelets than men being starved.
(15:43):
But before word could get back to Scotland that the
settlers had abandoned the colony. The company had actually sent
more people out there, so several more ships were sent
out to Darien, and they met with numerous disasters along
the way. But when the new settlers finally arrived in
November six what they found there obviously was an abandoned colony,
(16:04):
and again they had a terrible time. There was no leadership, um,
no decent goods to trade, and they wondered, you know again,
they came to this question, should we stay or should
we go back home? Yeah, and there was a man
named James Buyers who took control and had folks vote
to keep five hundred men at Darien and send the
rest to Jamaica and on to home. And he ran
(16:27):
into some trouble. There was a mutiny, one man was executed,
and finally this in fighting was put to a stop
by the Spanish. The Spanish got fed up with the
situation and attacked, and Buyers abandoned the settlement. Others stayed
behind to fight, and obviously the poor starving colonists were
no match for the Spanish. The Spanish soon blockaded the
(16:50):
port and forced the colonists to surrender. March sevent hundred.
But fortunately for the Scots, the Spanish commander was pretty generous.
He gave them two weeks to pack up supplies and
and scavenge for food get what they could together before
they got out. But the settlers who returned home, and
there weren't many of them since many had obviously died,
(17:13):
were considered pariah's really by their own countrymen. The company
had lost the life savings of much of the country
and people held them responsible for that. Yeah. According to
Scottish Parliament, it was about the cost of one quarter
of Scotland's liquid assets that they lost, so pretty big deal.
And Scotland was so deeply in debt at that point
(17:34):
that they could no longer they no longer have the
resources to compete with England. Instead, the country dissolved its
parliament and in seventeen oh seven joined the Act of
Union with England, and as part of that Act, England
paid Scotland's debts. They paid three thousand pounds and that
was to be managed by the eventual Royal Bank of Scotland,
which somewhat surprisingly Patterson actually helped organize anyway. I guess
(17:57):
he was good at starting banks, but I'm surprised that
he was allowed to manage this amount of money again.
But still many Scots held the English responsible because of
all those early roadblocks and the freezing out and all
of that. According to BBC History, some historians consider this
strong dislike to have been a factor in the eighteenth
(18:18):
century jack Bite rebellions. But there's still a few traces
of the Scottish settlement that are left today. There's a
spot of land called Scott's Point and small traces of
the settlement can be found at Caledonia Bay. They were
actually first discovered in nineteen seventy nine. I guess they
had been sort of reclaimed by the by nature. But um,
(18:39):
a few little points left here and there. Yeah, and
it's still really remote. Only a few air strips are
there to reach settlements in Darien. And a true measure
of this difficult terrain, the Pan American Highway that runs
from Alaska to Argentina only has one gap at Darien. Yeah,
so it makes it impossible to would drive a car
(19:00):
between the two continents. Um. So pretty pretty wild story
with Scotland and and their investment scheme here, and it
reminded me a lot of what comes About two hundred
years later, when the French tried to build a canal
at Panama. Again, there was sort of a subscription, public subscription,
a lot of national pride, and total disaster. In that case,
(19:23):
tens of thousands of people died trying to build the
canal in the climate, dying of yellow fever in malaria.
And UM, just kind of an interesting cyclical story. Almost
a good adventure, but an ill fated one, and a
bad packing good story, I should say, maybe a bad
packing list. Maybe a successful trip starts with a successfully
(19:47):
packed suitcase. Mantra you could live by us suppose? So
I think that brings us to Listener mail. So this
email is from Hannah and she wrote about our Unforgettable
Fires episode. UM. She wanted to share some trivia with
us about the Great Fire in San Francisco, and here's
(20:09):
what she had to say. It turns out that although
we are firmly an earthquake country here in the Bay Area,
in nineteen o six, it was far more common for
people to have fire insurance than earthquake insurance. After the
disaster has led many to report earthquake damage as fire
damage so that they could get reimbursed. Today, we assume
that most of the damage was caused by the fire,
(20:29):
since the records seemed to say so, but it is
almost impossible to tell for sure since so many claims
were falsified by people trying to recover their lives in
the chaos following the quake. So I felt that was
a really interesting point and kind of a good reminder
of how even good records, which there are lots of
good records in the San Francisco fire, aren't reliable. Yeah,
(20:53):
thanks for sending that one in. And um, I guess
if you want to email us any more failed expedit
and podcasts ideas or just disastrous ones, it doesn't have
to be a total failure, and it doesn't have to
be an exhamation. I feel like everybody who writes and
apologizes for not having an idea that's an exhamation. I know.
We promise we're interested in other things besides buried bodies.
(21:16):
So if you have any good suggestions, please email us
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter at Miston History, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about the area of the world we just talked about
We have an article called how the Panama Canal Works
on our website. You can look it up by searching
(21:37):
for Panama Canal on our homepage, which is at www
dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how stuf Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House to Works iPhone
app has a rise. Download it today on iTunes. It
(22:02):
be be
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Sarah Dowdy and I'm to blame a chuck reboarding
and I was thinking about it. It's been a while
since we've done a real disastrous expedition podcast, hasn't it. Yeah.
(00:23):
I think it's been since the Dr Livingston episode, the
last time I had to do a fake voice, and
even then there's a little success in that mission. It
seems like you never expect, when you're packing your bags
with truffles and cases of champagne, that the trip is
going to end with your strange altering vehicle not being
so altering after all and stuck in the mud, or
(00:44):
that maybe sharks will eat your ponies, or that, in
Stanley's case, crocodiles will eat your donkey. Yeah, that's never
any fun. But listener Rich promised us highs and low
similar to that when he wrote in to suggest the
dairy En Expedition for our next podcast. And it involves
the seventeenth century Scottish attempt to settle Panama, and it's
(01:04):
always been somewhere in I think our mental topic list. Yeah,
I definitely I remember reading about it briefly in Matthew
Parker's book Panama Fever a couple of years back now,
while I was researching an article on the Panama Now. So, yeah,
it's it's always been sort of hanging out in our
in our mental list for sure. Yeah. But Rich told
us that while he couldn't guarantee an exhimation, the dairy
(01:26):
En expedition was certainly in the best tradition of expedition podcasts,
a shockingly unrealistic idea of what to expect, unpreparedness, severe deprivation,
and also strange items brought along for the trip which
will go over. So, yeah, Rich, I think you really
sold it there with that explanation. But the dairy En
story is also a little different from some of the
(01:48):
other expedition podcasts we've done in the past, which are
often just pure adventures, adventure for the sake of adventure.
This was more than just a personal folly, and it
was definitely more than a disaster for just the people
who were involved. It was a national fiasco and it
really played no small part in eighteenth century nation building,
(02:10):
so it had far reaching consequences for sure. So before
we get too involved into what happened in Panama. We're
going to start with the primary player involved, which was Scotland. Yeah,
the country was experiencing troubled times in the late sixteen hundreds.
There had been war, famine, and poor international trade due
(02:30):
to England's constant continental wars, and a lot of people
around this time we're getting out they were immigrating to
the English colonies, but the ones who stayed behind needed
some hope. And with some peace with the French and
English finally on hand and continental trade opening up again,
it seemed like global commerce was the way to go,
specifically bringing valuable Eastern commodities to the West. Yeah. So
(02:53):
enter William Patterson. He was a young Scotsman and he
had spent his youth traveling. Matthew Parker, the author I
just mentioned, described him as part missionary, part buccaneer. If
that gives you a good idea of what kind of
man he was in his youth at least. But he
had made his fortune in business in England, and in
sixteen ninety four he had even helped start the Bank
(03:14):
of England. But his main operation at this point was
promoting speculative money making schemes which sounds kind of promising
and ominous considering we've already told you this podcast doesn't
exactly work out for the people involved, right, So here's
how it starts. Well, Patterson's in London. He meets a
sailor named Lionel Wafer who tells him about a place
(03:35):
called Darien on the eastern side of the Panamanian Isthmus.
And it's supposedly this wonderful paradise naturally. Yeah. And the
true beauty of the place, so as we'll find out,
was not its supposed bounty, but in its geography. Yeah. So,
Europeans had been enchanted by the narrow strip of land
between North and South America for a really long time,
(03:58):
since they first saw it in the fift hundreds fifteen
o one, in fact. So dreams of some kind of
overland route or maybe even a canal eventually started in
fifteen thirteen when Vasco Nunez de Balboa made his march
to the Pacific and realized that he could see both
the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean from a peak
(04:19):
at Darienne. And Patterson was thinking along similar lines here.
He was thinking, if you established ports on both sides
of the Isthmus then hauled goods overland. You'd be in
control of this global trade artery. As Scotland controlled Darienne
and established a colony there, it would consequently soon become
(04:40):
fabulously wealthy from all of the trade levies going through
because ships loaded down with Pacific goods would no longer
have to go all the way around South America around
the Cape Horn, which was not only a long and
expensive trip, but a dangerous one to you might just
wreck your entire ship and lose everything. So instead, he figuard,
(05:00):
people would be willing to pay a little bit to
the Scottish territory and take the shortcut through Darien. Yeah,
but Patterson actually took plans a step further and envisioned
not just a highway like outpost with financial ties to Scotland,
but a melting pot of all nationalities, races, and religions.
He said that whoever controlled the Cosmopolitan Center would possess
(05:24):
quote the gates to the Pacific and the keys to
the universe. Do but open these doors and trade will
increase and money will be get money. Right. But the
problem was, while Patterson had been to the Caribbean and
had traveled there, he had never actually been to Panama,
and the reports coming back on the terrain and the
(05:45):
climate especially weren't exactly accurate. He was hearing about these
nice low valleys, the kind of the kind of terrain
it's easy to imagine just cutting a road through and
hauling goods. The Darien region in reality, is really hot.
It's humid, there's dense rainforests, there are mangrove swamps, and
they're low mountains, so it's difficult and pretty much every
(06:08):
way you can think of. Yeah, and it is a paradise,
but it's a paradise of flora and fauna. You know, jaguars, awesole,
it's my favorite animal, your favorite animals showing up in Dareen.
And they're also giant ant eaters, harpie eagles, American crocs,
things like that. But it's not a paradise in the
way Linel Wafer described it. In fact, the Darien region
(06:28):
is such a tough place to live. It's actually believed
to have been always the sparsely populated and it still
is today. So it doesn't exactly sound like the best
spot to send a few shipfuls of Scottish immigrants. A
paired Scottish immigrants. No, it doesn't, although the Scottish Parliament
thinks that it sounds like a great idea even though
it seems too good to be true to set up
(06:48):
this colony. The Parliament backed the scheme and allow the
creation of the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and
the Indies, which is quite a mouthful in June now,
though they had to raise the money to build the
ship's stock them and and just get the materials they
need to start trade and and start up a colony. Unsurprisingly, though,
(07:11):
the English and the English backed East India Company weren't
really thrilled by the idea of this new potential rival
in a global trade. They weren't thrilled at all. In fact,
English investors who had put money into the new Scottish
company early on were forced to withdraw it um and
the ambassador, the English ambassador in Holland even threatened to
(07:34):
embargo merchants that traded with this new company. So the
English were really throwing up any roadblocks they could to
try to put the lockdown on this thing before it
even got started. Yeah, and you think that would be
a bad omen, But it's funny those that English opposition
actually seemed to only make the Scots more gung ho
about this entire plan, So subscriptions soared and in six
(07:58):
months time, the rich and the poor alike raised four
hundred thousand pounds together half of the country's capital. Yeah.
But even then, even with all of this support and enthusiasm,
there was an early glitch. A company member named James
Smith ran off with seventeen thousand pounds Earmarch for boat construction,
(08:20):
and Patterson, of course, being in charge of this new company,
was sort of under suspicion, but nobody could prove that
he was involved. He even paid back nine thousand pounds
of his own money, but he was still kind of
tainted by the scandal, and he lost his position at
the head of the company and was forced to travel
just as a simple settler one of the masses, and
(08:42):
that kind of set up a leadership issue that was
going to prove to be a major problem down the road. Yeah,
so their troubles right off the bat, but still plans
marched on. There were five ships built in Hamburg and Amsterdam.
Their names were the Caledonia, the st Andrew, the Unicorn,
the Dolphin, and the Endeavor and they were stocked with
medical supplies for fift hundred people for two years. It
(09:05):
included food like biscuits, beef, pork, prunes um. They brought
along tobacco, pipes, cloth, and tons of brandy and rum.
But they also brought along some pretty unnecessary items to
it in nice Sarah, Yeah, wigs. I mean, you would
not think you'd need wigs for moving to Panama, but
(09:26):
they were expecting there was some stylish living in their futures.
And they also brought items to trade with the local Indians,
like heavy Scottish cloth and mirrors and combs because they
heard that the native people had really long hair and
and we're kind of vain about it. And they even
brought fifteen hundred English language bibles thinking they would be
(09:47):
able to sell those. So again, kind of a bad
sign here if this is your packing list. But on
July twelve, they left Scotland with all of those twelve
hundred colonists on board and p people were so desperate
to go to join this mission, which which was full
and there weren't any spaces left that stowaways had hidden
(10:08):
themselves on the ships and had to be expelled before
they sailed off. It was a real big to do.
The whole city turned out. It was the celebration for
the country. People thought this was gonna was gonna make Scotland,
which is so wild because they did not even know
where they were going. No, at the time, they didn't.
With the exception of men like Patterson, most of the
people on board didn't know the destination. Like they did
(10:31):
not know where they were sailing to. It was contained.
The destination was contained in a sealed packet and it
wasn't opened until Madeira, and at that point it was
revealed to be a place called Golden Island on the
coast of Darienne. So even then they have a name,
but they're still not exactly sure what to expect there.
It's a three month voyage to yeah, and it's kind
(10:54):
of treacherous. I mean forty three die en route, which
was supposed to be fairly typical unfortunately for a a
journey at this time. That's true. And they landed November
three at a spot they named Caledonia Bay and it
was fortunately but deceivingly the beginning of a short dry
season when they got there, so things seemed okay at first.
Patterson wrote, quote our situation is in one of the
(11:16):
best and most defensible harbors perhaps in the world. The
country is healthful, exceedingly fertile, and the weather is temperate,
so positive attitude right at the get go, and the
locals were nice to the Kuna and the Choco were
friendly and helpful, and they liked to fly the Cross
of St. Andrew and their canoes too, so they seemed
on board with what was going on. So they were
(11:38):
getting along. But things started to go bad pretty quickly,
and their first choice of a building site wasn't at
all suitable. Paterson called it quote a mere morass, neither
fit to be fortified, nor planted, nor indeed for men
to lie upon. We were clearing and making huts upon
this improper place near two months, in which time experience,
(11:59):
this cool master of fools convinced our masters that the
place now called Fort St Andrew's was a more proper
place for us. So at the Fort site they started
to build New Edinburgh. And by that point though, there
was major trouble because rainy season had started, and of
course rain brought bugs and disease, and by March of
(12:22):
that year, two hundred colonists were dead and the death
rate eventually increased to about ten people per day. So
they're dropping like flies in this weather and heat and
bad climate. Yea. And to add to that situation, food
was scarce despite the large supplies they had bought with them.
It was rotting because of the damp, and there just
(12:43):
wasn't enough of it. There was no strong leadership, and
lots of infighting, and basically they just lost hope at
that point, they lost their spirit. Yeah. There's an account
from a young gentleman who was on the trip named
Roger Oswald, and he described his experience at Darien, living
off of less than a pound of moldy flower a week.
And here's here's what he had to say. It pretty
much sums up all of the points we just made.
(13:05):
When boiled with a little water without anything else, big
maggots and worms must be skimmed off the top. Yet,
for all this short allowance, every man let him never
be so weak. Daily turned out to work by daylight,
whether with the hatchet or wheelbarrow, pick ax, shovel, fore hammer,
or any other instrument the case required. And so continued
(13:26):
until twelve o'clock and at two again, and stayed till night.
Sometimes working all day up to the headbands of the
breeches in water at the trenches. My shoulders have been
so war with carrying burdens that the skin has come
off them and grew full of boils. If a man
were sick and obliged to stay within, no victuals for
him that day. Are counselors all the while, lying at
(13:48):
their ease, sometimes divided into factions, and being swayed by
particular interest ruined the public. Our bodies pined away and
grew so maserated with such allowance that we were like
so many skeletons. So it wasn't quite the gates to
the Pacific and possessing the keys to the universe that
Patterson thought it would be. And even basic non overland
(14:12):
trading was not going according to plan, so they weren't
able to make money either. For example, and surprisingly the
Indians did not want to buy lots of Scottish cloth
or combs, and the English colonies in the West Indies
and in North America were actually forbidden by London to
communicate with the Scots, let alone trade with them, so
they were frozen out. Yeah, and only a few traders
(14:32):
in Boston and New York were willing to trade food
for cash, and obviously, if you're trading for cash, that's
not a long term solution. So we have to ask
why did the English just come down so hard on
trade for this new company. The East India thing was
obviously still a sore point, but the main issue here
was maintaining diplomatic relations with Spain, because yes, in addition
(14:57):
to overlooking the climate of darry And and it's mosquitoes
and the difficult terrain, the expedition's promoters had just completely
ignored the fact that Spain already laid claim to Panama.
Powerful Spain with all of its armies and ships. Whoops,
big mistakes. So by June, survivors had sort of packed
(15:20):
it in. Patterson's wife and son had both died, and
the party sailed to Jamaica and then to New York,
leaving ships and dead behind along the way. Some of
the ships crashed, I think some were sold off, and
really the only one that made it back home to
Scotland was the Caledonia, and survivors in New York were
described as looking quote, rather like skelets than men being starved.
(15:43):
But before word could get back to Scotland that the
settlers had abandoned the colony. The company had actually sent
more people out there, so several more ships were sent
out to Darien, and they met with numerous disasters along
the way. But when the new settlers finally arrived in
November six what they found there obviously was an abandoned colony,
(16:04):
and again they had a terrible time. There was no leadership, um,
no decent goods to trade, and they wondered, you know again,
they came to this question, should we stay or should
we go back home? Yeah, and there was a man
named James Buyers who took control and had folks vote
to keep five hundred men at Darien and send the
rest to Jamaica and on to home. And he ran
(16:27):
into some trouble. There was a mutiny, one man was executed,
and finally this in fighting was put to a stop
by the Spanish. The Spanish got fed up with the
situation and attacked, and Buyers abandoned the settlement. Others stayed
behind to fight, and obviously the poor starving colonists were
no match for the Spanish. The Spanish soon blockaded the
(16:50):
port and forced the colonists to surrender. March sevent hundred.
But fortunately for the Scots, the Spanish commander was pretty generous.
He gave them two weeks to pack up supplies and
and scavenge for food get what they could together before
they got out. But the settlers who returned home, and
there weren't many of them since many had obviously died,
(17:13):
were considered pariah's really by their own countrymen. The company
had lost the life savings of much of the country
and people held them responsible for that. Yeah. According to
Scottish Parliament, it was about the cost of one quarter
of Scotland's liquid assets that they lost, so pretty big deal.
And Scotland was so deeply in debt at that point
(17:34):
that they could no longer they no longer have the
resources to compete with England. Instead, the country dissolved its
parliament and in seventeen oh seven joined the Act of
Union with England, and as part of that Act, England
paid Scotland's debts. They paid three thousand pounds and that
was to be managed by the eventual Royal Bank of Scotland,
which somewhat surprisingly Patterson actually helped organize anyway. I guess
(17:57):
he was good at starting banks, but I'm surprised that
he was allowed to manage this amount of money again.
But still many Scots held the English responsible because of
all those early roadblocks and the freezing out and all
of that. According to BBC History, some historians consider this
strong dislike to have been a factor in the eighteenth
(18:18):
century jack Bite rebellions. But there's still a few traces
of the Scottish settlement that are left today. There's a
spot of land called Scott's Point and small traces of
the settlement can be found at Caledonia Bay. They were
actually first discovered in nineteen seventy nine. I guess they
had been sort of reclaimed by the by nature. But um,
(18:39):
a few little points left here and there. Yeah, and
it's still really remote. Only a few air strips are
there to reach settlements in Darien. And a true measure
of this difficult terrain, the Pan American Highway that runs
from Alaska to Argentina only has one gap at Darien. Yeah,
so it makes it impossible to would drive a car
(19:00):
between the two continents. Um. So pretty pretty wild story
with Scotland and and their investment scheme here, and it
reminded me a lot of what comes About two hundred
years later, when the French tried to build a canal
at Panama. Again, there was sort of a subscription, public subscription,
a lot of national pride, and total disaster. In that case,
(19:23):
tens of thousands of people died trying to build the
canal in the climate, dying of yellow fever in malaria.
And UM, just kind of an interesting cyclical story. Almost
a good adventure, but an ill fated one, and a
bad packing good story, I should say, maybe a bad
packing list. Maybe a successful trip starts with a successfully
(19:47):
packed suitcase. Mantra you could live by us suppose? So
I think that brings us to Listener mail. So this
email is from Hannah and she wrote about our Unforgettable
Fires episode. UM. She wanted to share some trivia with
us about the Great Fire in San Francisco, and here's
(20:09):
what she had to say. It turns out that although
we are firmly an earthquake country here in the Bay Area,
in nineteen o six, it was far more common for
people to have fire insurance than earthquake insurance. After the
disaster has led many to report earthquake damage as fire
damage so that they could get reimbursed. Today, we assume
that most of the damage was caused by the fire,
(20:29):
since the records seemed to say so, but it is
almost impossible to tell for sure since so many claims
were falsified by people trying to recover their lives in
the chaos following the quake. So I felt that was
a really interesting point and kind of a good reminder
of how even good records, which there are lots of
good records in the San Francisco fire, aren't reliable. Yeah,
(20:53):
thanks for sending that one in. And um, I guess
if you want to email us any more failed expedit
and podcasts ideas or just disastrous ones, it doesn't have
to be a total failure, and it doesn't have to
be an exhamation. I feel like everybody who writes and
apologizes for not having an idea that's an exhamation. I know.
We promise we're interested in other things besides buried bodies.
(21:16):
So if you have any good suggestions, please email us
at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter at Miston History, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about the area of the world we just talked about
We have an article called how the Panama Canal Works
on our website. You can look it up by searching
(21:37):
for Panama Canal on our homepage, which is at www
dot how stuff works dot com. Be sure to check
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how stuf Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House to Works iPhone
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(22:02):
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