Darien
In my rush to get something written I missed one of the greatest possibilities for story telling, the Darien Venture of 1698 by which the Scots would become empire builders. The idea was a forerunner of the Panama Canal and would set up a land bridge between the Pacific and the atlantic. The scheme was the idea of one, Paterson, the founder of the Bank of England. Now it may seem strange that the founder of the English bank would promote the idea of a rival empire for the Scots but he was born in Dumfries and there seems to have been no Westminster underhand tricks involved as there was in the 1820 uprising, of which more another time. The committee called for investment and initially several countries participated but then lost heart (especially the English, who had the East India Company – full of Scots, of course) The Scots, having suffered seven years – the Biblical seven – of poor harvest rose to the bait. Not the courtiers, Walter Raleighs or Francis Drakes, or the landlords spending their rents in the London season but the ordinary people, carpenters, cobblers, smallholders and the like, invested heavily; their investment draining the country of somewhere around half the liquid cash and putting Scotland’s economy in a parlous state. The first five ships carrying 1200 adventurers landed in November 1698 and by summer 300 had died. The rest quarreled and gave up but by then two more groups were on the way. What drew me to the event was an autobiographical note in a Scotland. The autobiography edited by Rosemary Goring and there I found a note of the Rev. Archibald Stobo which relates that one ship burned on the shoreline when a whore of the captain’s complained about a mate, the mate was locked up and the job of drawing oil and brandy was given to the cooper, who seems to have been ungainly as he upset the candle and set the brandy on fire. There was no loss of life but one can imagine the panic – some man trying to save his wife and two children throwing someone’s trunk out of the rowing boat. On New Year’s Day there was a beach party and when two of the men got back on board they fell in ‘… one of whom perished cursing & swearing most hardly.’
I’ve made light of it at the end but there were hangings, jealous arguments and fire fights with the Spanish and when the venture was abandoned, some of the survivors were ‘sold’ as indentured labour in the Caribbean. All of this can be researched through personal letters and diaries and not through the records of court proceedings or the hearsay writings of churchmen. This has so much drama about ordinary people it must go at the head of the list for a historical novel.