Share this:

I’ve been reading Ghost Colonies (Lost and Found in History), by Ed Wright.

Ghost Colonies

It’s something of a strange read, because each one of the 25 chapters details an example of a failed settlement from colonial times, and whilst each example is well-researched and fascinating, it’s slightly heavy going to read the book from cover-to-cover.

Chapter one covers Viking settlements in Greenland, around Brattahlíð, from 985 up to c.1500.  Wikipedia has some more information about Erik the Red’s efforts in this unfriendly region.

Several other chapters cover various failed attempts to colonise the New World of the Americas.  We tend to think that the Pilgrim Fathers landed from the Mayflower, and that was the beginning of a great and constant expansion.  However before and after 1620 there were numerous aborted attempts to start settlements in North America.  The abandoned settlement at Sagadahoc is only one example of many.

I was particularly interested in the chapter about the Scottish attempt to create a colony in Darien, on the Isthmus of Panama.  Many years ago I read an atrocious book by John Prebble, entitled The Darien Disaster.  I say ‘atrocious’, even though it was entertaining, because it was bad history.  Prebble blaimed the English for the failure of the Darien colony.  He ignored the facts.

As detailed in The Darien Venture, by Dr Mike Ibeji, and The Darien Scheme – The Fall of Scotland, and Ghost Colonies (Lost and Found in History), an important reason why the settlement failed was that prior to landing there, no one involved in the venture had ever visited the area or knew what to expect.  They did not, therefore, realise that the indigenous Cuna people who lived in this extremely hot and humid part of the world would not want to trade their few goods for the fur hats, wigs and bibles that made up much of the colonisers’ cargo.  They didn’t realise that the prevailing winds would make it almost impossible to launch ships out of the settlement for months on end.  They didn’t realise that the land around Darien was unsuitable for agriculture.

They also made errors by trying to build their base on “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 addition, the settlers constantly fought amongst themselves, and were decimated by disease and illness.  After a few months, 200 were dead, and after a couple more, over one third were dead.  Food was left to rot on board the ships, whilst many of the settlers started to starve on the land.  A ship was eventually sent out to trade for supplies, but was captured by the Spanish.  Another ship which departed was never heard of again.  Finally, when the settlers, having heard that the Spanish were planning an attack on the colony, gave up and sailed away, one of their remaining ships sank.

Yet Prebble reckons the failure was caused by the English!  In fact, it was true that King William was completely against the venture, having recently signed a peace treaty with Spain.  Spain at this time was still the major force in the area, and also claimed the Isthmus for themselves.  William didn’t want to endanger the peace, and ordered his forces further north in the West Indies not to co-operate with the Darien adventurers.  But by the time that the remaining Scots sailed into Jamaica Harbour, only six dying men were left in Darien.

Ignoring rumours of the disaster, a second force of 1300 prospective Scottish colonists actually arrived in Darien in November 1699 and found a ‘howling wilderness’.  This second group fell out with the Cuna, squabbled constantly amongst themselves, started hanging their mates for treason, and eventually surrendered to an attacking Spanish fleet.

The Darien Venture, which had taken an enormous proportion of the country’s resources to fund, was a complete disaster for Scotland.  Economically, it lead to the Act of Union between Scotland and England.

Having Scottish Nationalist tendencies, it was that Act which caused Prebble so much gall, but he shouldn’t have let it cloud his writings about the earlier Darien episode.  He did the same sort of thing with The Highland Clearances (1963), in which he described another episode in Scotland’s history from a very biased perspective.  I was amused to read in the Wikipedia that the “Historiographer Royal in Scotland Gordon Donaldson was particularly cutting in his criticism and declared Prebble’s books to be “utter rubbish”…”  I find it difficult to disagree with that criticism.

With respect to Ghost Colonies (Lost and Found in History), I’ve still to read chapter 23, about the utopian colony of New Australia, in Paraguay, 1893-94 which was formed in the aftermath of the Queensland Shearer’s Strike of 1891. 220 Aussie sheep shearers and a handful of unmarried nurses set sail in 1893 to found a settlement in Paraguay – what could possibly go wrong?

Advertisement