Letters cast new light on Darien woes

IT WAS an ambitious attempt to build a Scottish colony and gain world stature that ended in 2,000 dead and Scotland's eventual union with England.

Now three letters written home from Darien, Panama, to Fife shed more light on life in New Scotland in 1699.

The National Archives of Scotland (NAS) found letters from George Douglas to his elder brother, Robert, while electronically cataloguing 72km of archives.

George Douglas, of Strathendry of Leslie Parish, Fife, describes how colonial Scots were forced to defend their trade routes from competing Spaniards while suffering severe shortages in food and material and being obstructed by the English.

Alison Lindsay, of NAS, said: "They were a minor landed family from Fife and one of the many drawn into the excitement of the Darien adventure. The younger sons were the perfect people to go to Darien.

"The value of the letters is that they were not written for publication, but were written to be read by his family. Some of the Darien letters are very self-conscious because they were to be read publicly by people with investments back home. This is the authentic voice of the Scot."

NAS is loaning the 300-year-old letters to the International Canal Museum in Panama, where they will be the centrepiece of an exhibition on the Darien colony.

The colony was the brainchild of William Paterson, a Dumfriesshire merchant and the founder of the Bank of England.

Scotland was in a state of famine after seven years of failed harvests and on 17 July, 1698, five ships carrying 1,300 colonists sailed from Leith to Panama. In all, 4,000 volunteers sailed to Panama's peninsula to exploit its riches. In June 1699, the colony was abandoned, but not before 2,000 people had perished from disease, famine and at the hands of Spaniards and Indians.

The catastrophe cost Scotland a quarter of its wealth and led to the Act of Union in 1707.

Dr Anthony Parker, an expert on the Darien colony at Dundee University, said: "The letters show the more prominent role of the Spanish in the downfall of the colony, when many have laid the blame for failure on the Company of Scotland directors and King William III's actions to thwart them."