The Scottish colonists orders are to proceed…
1698 CE
The Scottish colonists orders are to proceed to the Bay of Darien, and make the Isle called the Golden Island … some few leagues to the leeward of the mouth of the great River of Darien … and there make a settlement on the mainland.
After calling at Madeira and the West Indies, the fleet made landfall off the coast of Darien on November 2.
The settlers christen their new home "Caledonia" (Prebble, John (1968), The Darien Disaster, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston) With Thomas Drummond in charge, they cut a ditch through the neck of land that divides one side of the harbor in Caledonia Bay from the ocean, and construct Fort St. Andrew, equipped with 50 cannon, on the peninsula behind the canal; the fort did not have a source of fresh water.
On a mountain, at the opposite side of the harbor, they built a watchhouse.
Close to the fort they begin to erect the huts of the main settlement, New Edinburgh, and to clear land for growing yams and maize.
Letters sent home by the expedition create the misleading impression that everything is going according to plan.
This seems to have been by agreement, as certain optimistic phrases keep recurring, but it means the Scottish public will be completely unprepared for the coming disaster.
Agriculture proves difficult and the local Indian tribes, although hostile to Spain, are unwilling to buy the combs and other trinkets offered by the colonists.
Most serious is the almost total failure to sell any goods to the few passing traders that put in to the bay.
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