Journey to the brave new world

ON July 28, 1629, three ships flying limp saltires edged their way in thick fog into an inlet along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, on the north-western coast of Nova Scotia. For several years the land had borne that name, on the authority of King James VI, now of glorious memory. The ships carried the first Scots who would make good his claim, in other words, found their nation's first colony in the New World.

They no doubt crowded the decks, excited and nervous. If they could see it at all, they saw rising from quiet waters a verdant country, though covered in the scrubby woodland that somewhat drearily clothed the whole coastline they had observed since their landfall in North America almost a month before. More likely, till their ships found an anchorage, they just peered into the mists swirling up in the strange, humid heat, so unlike anything they knew from home.

We do not know how many there were - maybe 200 at the very outside, but probably fewer. We do know that they included both men and women, if doubtless more of the former than the latter, because a couple had got married a fortnight before while they halted in Cape Breton Island to the north. Only two of their names have come down to us. The leader was William Alexander, 25 years old, son of the laird of Menstrie in Stirlingshire. The second seems to have been one of at least two ministers he had with him, Richard Guthrie: perhaps a friend of Alexander's, for he wrote a report back to Menstrie; and surely also a young man, from what he had to say about his physical exertions and from his wondering delight in the sights he saw about him.

The ships had left the Firth of Clyde on May 24 and crossed the 2000 miles of ocean at a spanking pace to reach the haven of St John's, Newfoundland, just 26 days later. Waiting for them were three dozen Scotsmen and two Scotswomen - the numbers are this time reasonably exact - survivors of a party which had tried to colonise Nova Scotia the previous year, but arrived too late in the season. Many had died before they managed to get away and winter on Newfoundland.

There they may have found yet others of their countrymen ready to take them in, in the scattered settlements that the island housed under a nominal English sovereignty. Not even the party of 1628 had been the first transatlantic expedition from Scotland. A company chartered by James VI had organised some sort of migration to Newfoundland eight years before.

These Scots hoped to break into the carrying trade for the superabundant codfish of the Grand Banks. They failed, took to smuggling instead and with other colonists in their new home developed it into a global centre for illicit commerce, as it remained for two centuries. Unfortunately if understandably, they disappear at that point from the public record, into the misty, secluded coves of their rascally island.

But Alexander and his Scots were not too keen to tarry in the fleshpots of Newfoundland. They stayed only 12 days, to fit out an extra ship for last year's colonists. England was now at war with France, after the new king, Charles I, had rashly abandoned his father's pacific foreign policy. An English force had just captured Quebec, citadel of Canada, though the French held out in other forts. Not that this directly affected the Scots, as an independent nation, except that they were less likely to be intercepted by hostile patrols in the Gulf of St Lawrence. it did mean there were prizes in the harbour of St John's, including a Basque fishing vessel. They took it, and sailed on.

On July 1 they sighted Cape Breton Island, and the next day set foot there. Here one part of the expedition was to split off. It was a group of English Puritans, just like the Pilgrim Fathers who had settled in Massachusetts in 1620. Perhaps there were many parties trying to escape the religious persecution of Charles I, and getting away to America as the chance arose. These may have heard that the Scots were going, and asked if they could come along.

Now they landed. Guthrie was glad to see the back of them. On the voyage he had come to hate their aloofness and sanctimony. Still, the Scots stayed with them for two weeks, helping them to build a redoubt on or near the later site of great fortress of Louisburg, the remains of which are there today. The effort was wasted. Within a couple of months, one of the French patrols still disputing control of the island surprised the English and burned them out.

The Scots had meanwhile sailed on once again. Perhaps the Nova Scotian haar of high summer now descended, because it took them another fortnight to work their way cautiously round the rocky peninsula, first south to Cape Sable then up into the Bay of Fundy with its alarming tide-races. Luckily they knew more or less where they were going. Their goal was Port Royal (the modern Annapolis), a former French outpost which they knew had been wrecked by the English.

So, on that high summer's day they approached its site, negotiating the narrow entrance to a deep estuary 60 miles long. Guthrie waxed lyrical as he gazed at a ``fruitful valley adorned and enriched with trees of all sorts, as goodly oaks, high firs, tall beech and birch of incredible bigness.....great variety of fruit trees, chestnuts, pears, apples, cherries, plums and all other fruits.....and in the woods deer of infinite bigness, as may appear by their heads, besides other beasts apparelled with rich furs, with sweet and pleasant meadows yielding variety of flowers and herbs, roses of most fragrant smell, tulips of various kinds''.

They found that the English had been a bit too thorough in their wrecking. The site of Port Royal proved uninhabitable. But they soon found another as they explored up the estuary. By a small river flowing into it, the French had built a watermill, also damaged, but capable of repair. There, on August 1, the Scots decided to establish their own settlement. They laid out the plan of a five-sided fort, and got to work.

Guthrie remained enraptured. He seized a shovel and turned the soil to plant onions, cabbages, turnips, carrots, sorrel, parsnips, radishes, peas and

barley. He felt thrilled to see them sprout in a few days. If he was a minister, he was a merry one: ``We ate lobsters as big as little children.''

Best of all, Indians came. No doubt the Scots had all along been watched from the depths of the woods. After nine days there appeared a canoe full of Micmac braves, ``in rowing infinitely swift''. They were ``naked people with mantles, either of beaver, blanket or deer leather curiously wrought, tied over their left shoulder with a point, without shirts, with clouts covering their secret parts''.

The first encounter proved a little awkward. When the Indians received the baubles usual on such occasions, they started shouting ``Garramercy! Garramercy!'' The Scots started and stared, unsure what this boded. Then one realised that the exclamation was ``Grand merci''. The Micmac were trying to talk French to them!

With that the ice was broken. The braves returned four days later with their own presents, furs of moose and beaver: a huge encouragement to the Scots, who knew now that they had access to goods valued at home, and so could start to trade.

In describing these encounters, Guthrie went into such detail on the Indians' lives that the reader gets the impression he must have visited their villages and come to know them. For possessions they had only ``a few kettles, dishes of rinds of trees, plenty of dogs which they hunt with, and in want feed upon them''. But they were ``of a long life, very healthful, neither black nor tanny but swarthish, caused of greasy ointments, wherewith daily they anoint themselves''.

And there is no mistaking that Guthrie liked and admired the braves ``infinitely loving to their wives and children, and one to another, feasting when they meet, that all their store be gone so every day serves itself''.

Meanwhile work on the fort rapidly proceeded. By August 20 its walls were complete. The Scots held a ceremony, fired their eight cannon and solemnly named it King Charles's Fort. Inside, they started to build a ``general's house'', presumably for Alexander. The rest seem to have contented themselves with living communally in some sort of crude barracks.

For the time being, and for some years hence, the colony at Port Royal flourished. The success was ultimately owed to young Alexander's father, also named William, who had put all his own money and energy into the project, though he stayed behind at home when it sailed away. Now 62 years old, he remained an insatiably busy fellow, friendly with everybody from literary luminaries to transatlantic traders.

One special friend was Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, who said Alexander was ``born to be a poet, and aimed to be a king''. He had indeed ingratiated himself in royal circles in London, where he commended himself to James VI by his willingness to take on tedious official business, such as answering requests for money from Scotland and repatriating undesirable Scots. He aided the British Solomon

in his literary pretensions, too, puzzling over his translation of the psalms.

King James was always interested in plantation, in Ulster, in the Outer Hebrides and in Virginia. So Alexander put it to him that ``as there was a new France, a new Spain, and a new England, that they might likewise have a new Scotland''. With good grace his monarch had then granted him in 1621 the entire territories between New

England and Newfoundland, including what has been known ever since as Nova Scotia, none of it really James's

to give away. But the tract was so

large that, if successfully settled, it would raise Scotland into the topmost rank of colonial power.

Alexander had lost little time in

sending out, the next year, his earliest expedition. He waited eagerly for news of its founding a colony, and planned a free port at Largs for reception of the treasures to be sent back. When the news came it was brought by the

aspirant settlers themselves, returning to say they had failed. They tried again in 1623, and failed again. That was already #6000 sunk without trace. The king promised to reimburse his favourite, but never did.

Alexander decided that the wanting enthusiasm in their countrymen

could be supplied by deployment of his literary skills. He penned An Encouragement to Colonies showing that such ventures had been on the agenda of all the best nations since the ancient Hebrews: they were the Lord's work which the Scots should not shirk to

follow. For any still unconvinced he added a glowing description of Nova Scotia, with its ``very delicate meadows having roses red and white growing thereon with a wild lily having a

very dainty smell''.

The canny king dangled his own blandishment, without cost to himself. He applied the idea, already tried in Ulster, of selling baronetcies, the proceeds of which would be put towards the expense of colonisation. Normally Scots gentlemen were eager to advance in rank, but this offer they showed themselves strangely slow to take up. None fulfilled the condition attached of actually going to Nova Scotia.

Even so, in 1628 Alexander felt ready to try again. He had to put up with one more fruitless expedition in that year. Now, in the autumn of 1629, his settlers had at last got where they wanted to go at the right time. This season on the eastern seaboard of America is long and balmy, with mild clear days right into December. But then, sometimes overnight, Arctic cold sweeps down. Young Alexander could not have had the least inkling what to expect, and probably his party carried nothing

to prepare them for the ordeal. Half

of them died in their first, ferocious Canadian winter.

It was their friendship with the Indians that saved them. The Micmac had to struggle every year for existence, so they could pass on the lore of survival in these climes. One of their chiefs,

Sagamore Segipt, was especially generous in seeing the Scots through. Owing their lives to him, they tried to think of a suitably splendid reward.

When the first ship arrived at Port Royal in the spring of 1630, they sent him back with it, carrying their recommendations and good wishes to his

fellow monarch, Charles I, in London.

A courtier reported spotting Segipt with his wife and child in the streets of the English capital. But it is unknown if they ever returned to Nova Scotia,

or perhaps like the more famous

Pocahontas died of disease to which they had no immunity.

It was clear, however, that despite all difficulties a traffic could be set up between Scotland and Nova Scotia. The colonists sent home cargoes of furs; beaver, snug and waterproof, was to become hugely profitable as one of the seventeenth century's most stylish fashions. With a high rate of mortality among the colonists they needed more manpower, and in Edinburgh officials discussed shipping them transports

of troublesome Highlanders - a policy that had to wait another century to

be carried out.

French patrols did continue to hover menacingly. But Scotland remained at peace with France, and in European waters the two countries were trading in the normal way. So the colonists could insist that ``We are not English'', and the French held off. In the end the Scots were to be the ones guilty of the only real aggression. In 1632, a force landed by the patrols encamped not far away and lingered a little too long. Just to be on the safe side, the Scots sailed up and forced the Frenchmen to shift.

Though a primitive settlement, Port Royal was after three years almost beginning to acquire an air of permanence. It had at any rate not succumbed to the dangers all around. The decisive move would have been for the settlers to leave the fort, to abandon the

communal life of an armed outpost and start working the fertile land on individual farms. Then they could have relieved themselves of dependence on shipments from home for most of their needs and supplies, as was now happening in the English colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts.

But the Scots never got the chance. England's war went badly, and soon Charles I sought peace. Part of France's price was elimination of the Scottish colony, in itself some proof how seriously it had to be taken. The Scots at Port Royal, conscious that they were doing quite well, felt furious. All the same, at the command of their king, they had to demolish everything they had spent three years building.

They said goodbye to their Indian friends and were taken off by French ships. They landed at Le Havre in the spring of 1633, and disconsolately made their way home.

So the first permanent Scottish settlement in the New World came to an end. Yet it would be too facile to call it a failure just a foretaste of Darien. Port Royal did make a start in overcoming its problems. At a time when only four other tiny colonies existed in North America - the Spaniards in Florida, the English in Virginia and Massachusetts, the French in Canada - it briefly came to represent a major element of the European presence. The continent was inhospitable compared to regions

further south, so that no imperial nation had as yet more than a toehold there. Each one had to overcome huge obstacles of communication and supply, while none could yet find the riches America was supposed to offer.

The Scots did suffer one special handicap, though not in being too poor or weak or incompetent for ventures overseas. The crucial problem lay in the fact that, under the Union of the Crowns, they could not conduct independent diplomacy or any kind of foreign policy, neither form alliances nor defend by their own arms their external interests. That was how it had been possible for the Scots' own Crown to betray them in effect. They would soon see the same in other spheres.

William Alexander the elder did not quite give up after his disappointment. He planned a second Scottish colony on Long Island, though nothing ever came of it. Charles I compensated him with the titles of Earl of Stirling and Viscount Canada. His son did not live to bear them. He returned safely from Nova Scotia but died in 1639, a year before his father. As for Richard Guthrie, no man of that name has ever occupied a parish in the Church of Scotland, so we may perhaps presume that he never came back, that he left his bones at Port Royal, among the first Scottish dust to enrich the soil of the New World.

n The next instalment of Michael Fry's 44-part history of Scotland will appear on december 28.