IN 1698 A SMALL fleet set sail from the Firth of Forth bound for a new life in Panama. The ships were heading for the Isthmus of Darien and this was Scotland's only attempt at colonialism. It ended in tragedy, another of the Scots' heroic failures.
Douglas Galbraith tells the disastrous story through the journals of the expedition's superintendent of cargoes, Roderick Mackenzie.
It begins three years earlier, as Roderick comes to the teeming streets of Edinburgh where he hopes he will make his fortune. Galbraith describes a vibrant, bawdy city, as Roderick mixes with the worthies and the whores, spending his nights in a Royal Mile brothel and his Sundays in church, like all good hypocritical Calvinists.
While working for a claret merchant, Roderick is swept up in the wave of euphoria that follows the establishment of the Company of Scotland Trading To Africa And The Indies, formed by the founder of the Bank of England, William Paterson. The aim is to counter the English Navigation Acts, which bans Scottish merchants from conducting business in the English colonies.
Paterson hopes to build a road across the Isthmus, effectively connecting the Pacific with the Caribbean. But within a short time of landing at Darien (Roderick is on board the flagship The Rising Sun) and establishing the colony of Caledonia, it becomes clear that it is a far cry from the paradise Paterson imagined and promised.
Monsoon rain quickly turns the settlement of New Edinburgh into a quagmire and malaria and yellow fever take a heavy toll.