Among the ghosts of Scotchman Town

Behind each place name there is usually a story that is sometimes one of bravery, romance, and heroism, but more often one of greed, foolhardiness, or deceit. It was a journey in search of the latter that brought me to Scotchman Town on the ``adventure coast'' of Belize in Central America.

Among Scots, that part of the world is associated with the story of the Darien Scheme, a disastrous attempt to establish a colony on the Isthmus of Panama 300 years ago. It is perhaps one of the less glorious episodes of Scottish history which some may prefer to forget. We would naturally rather remember the heroes of the golden age of exploration: men such as David Livingstone, Mungo Park, and Alexander Mackenzie, each of whom made geographical discoveries that gave us back a sense of national pride.

But for every hero there were a hundred fools and unfortunates who left these shores, just as the Darien settlers did; men and women ready to throw themselves headlong into some crazy avenue, doomed to failure right from the start. It was these people who ended up in Scotchman Town in the autumn of 1823, the victims of another ambitious but equally futile attempt to create a Scottish colony in Central America. The dream that had died in the 1690s was to be rekindled in 1821 by an extraordinary man, Sir Gregor Macgregor, the self-proclaimed Prince of Poyais.

From Rob Roy to Jimmie Macgregor the ``wicked and unhappie race of the clan Gregour'' has produced its fair share of characters and personalities, despite attempts by kings and governments to ``root out and extirpate'' all of that name. Every family has its oddballs and there is no doubt that Gregor Macgregor, Prince of Poyais, was one of them.

Destined to have a life full of incident, he was born in Queen Street, Edinburgh, on Christmas Eve, 1786. Within 10 months he had survived a shipwreck in the English Channel and narrowly escaped cremation when his intoxicated nanny fell asleep with him in her arms in front of an open fire.

Like his Jacobite ancestors before him, Macgregor was a military man. With a commission in the 57th Regiment of Foot he experienced his first active service during the Peninsular War and was knighted by the king of Spain for his alleged gallantry.

Promptly changing sides he crossed the Atlantic and signed up with the patriots fighting to sever the links between Latin America and Spain. Macgregor quickly rose through the ranks to become Commandant General of the Cavalry in the Army of the Republic of Venezuela, and was one of a number of Scotsmen who became close confidants of the South American ``liberator'' Simon Bolivar whose cousin Josefa, he married.

A man of supreme confidence and sure of his destiny as a leader of men, Macgregor was an opportunist with an eye for fame and fortune; not only that, he was a showman with an immense ego, bedazzled by medals, uniforms and titles, and full of his own importance. This manner of person is usually a danger to the public at large, a fact that more than 300 Scots men, women, and children were soon to discover to their cost.

With the independence of South America more or less assured, Macgregor left Bolivar's service. Inspired by his clan motto - ``Royal is my race'' - he decided to make the most dramatic career move of his life - it was time to be king.

In search of a land over which to reign, the eye of the man who would be king fell on the territory of Poyais on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Between 1730 and 1786 a handful of Scottish logwood cutters had worked timber there, but under the terms of a treaty between Spain and Britain they were forced to quit their tiny settlement at the mouth of the Black River. Now that Spanish rule had been overthrown in Central America, this seemed an ideal candidate for recolonisation. Over a bottle of whisky, Macgregor made a deal with George Frederick Augustus, king of the Miskito Indians, and then set sail for Europe to initiate one of the biggest colonial scams of the 1820s.

By the time he returned to his native Edinburgh, a self-made prince, Macgregor had worked out every last detail of his plan to create a wealthy colony. A Poyais Loan was immediately floated on the London Stock Exchange and land offices were set up in London and Edinburgh for the purpose of selling off ``baronial estates'' to prospective settlers, none of whom had the faintest idea what conditions were like on the Mosquito Coast.

The prince formerly known as Gregor Macgregor opened legations in London, Paris, and Madrid and surrounded himself with sycophantic agents who were mesmerised not only with the possibility of becoming exceedingly rich, but also with the medals and titles that he handed out. Throughout the summer of 1822 the Poyais scheme was hyped up to fever pitch by these men, even to the extent of handing out on the streets, copies of a promotional song penned by a Glasgow clerk who had beem promised ``a cornetcy of lancers''. But most effective of all were notices that hinted at the existence of ``very many gold mines''.

Dozens of people queued up to book their passage to the ``emerald shores'' of Poyais and on December 10, 1822, the first party of 60 Scots colonists set sail from Gravesend on the Honduras Packet. A month later they were followed by the Kinnersley Castle which departed from Leith with 160 emigrants.

The voyage across the Atlantic to the Mosquito Shore took close to two months, but few of the Scots emigrants on board could have anticipated the sight that would greet them when they arrived. There was no town at the mouth of the Black River as they had been led to believe, no fields of sugar cane, and no sign of settlers waiting to welcome them. As far as the eye could see there was only mangrove swamp and dense tropical forest.

A wise man would have turned back immediately, but Colonel Hector Hall, who had been appointed governor by Macgregor, started to offload both passengers and provisions. Disaster struck when a storm blew the Honduras Packet out to sea and with it three-quarters of their stores. The ship never returned, its captain steering a course eastwards to sell the remainder of the settlers' provisions at his first port of call.

The Scots were now in a desperate situation. Faced with the prospect of clearing forest to provide temporary shelter, their chief hope was to await the arrival of the second emigrant ship. Some committed suicide and a few wandered off ill-equipped into the interior in search of the alleged gold mines. They were never seen again.

In desperation, Colonel Hall eventually set off on foot along the coast to get help from the Miskito King who lived 100 miles to the east at Cape Gracias a Dios. When the Miskito chief heard that Macgregor had declared himself Prince of Poyais and was selling off chunks of his fiefdom he was furious and demanded that all the settlers swear allegiance to him. He accompanied Hall back to the mouth of the Black River where they found the number of emigrants had been augmented by the arrival of the second shipload of Scots. The scene was chaotic and once again the ship's captain had run off with most of the provisions before they could be landed.

While Hall was with the Miskito King, a handful of those left behind made a bid to escape. Some were killed by indians, but a few of the Scots found their way by canoe to the British settlement at Belize. The superintendent and merchants of the colony reacted swiftly and a ship was dispatched to the mouth of the Black River. One of the rescuers later described in graphic detail the horrific scene they encountered when they arrived:

``Most of the people were lying on the ground under a few leaves and branches thrown across some stakes which it would be a violation of truth to call houses, many were in a state of ague and fever, and absolutely unable to crawl to the woods for the common offices of nature.''

Colonel Hall agreed to abandon Poyais and the survivors were transported north to Belize. Most were in a poorly state, and of the 200 emigrants who had come out on the two ships, almost 20 were already dead. The fever had taken a grip and another 70 were to end their days in the hospital which still stands on the waterfront of Belize City. Starting with the interment of David Ross on May 24, 1823, the record of burials in the Yarborough graveyard outside St John's Church is a long and sad litany of Scottish names.

News of the Poyais disaster began to filter back to Scotland, but not before another ship had set sail from Leith carrying a further 105 emigrants. Oblivious to the fate of their fellow colonists and the furore that was about to break out in the British press, the passengers on board the 400-ton Skene first caught sight of Poyais on July 29, 1823. They were naturally surprised to find the place deserted. Bewildered and short of provisions, the ship's captain decided to head straight for Belize where they were greeted with astonishment by a hard-pressed local population still tending to the needs of the first detachment of emigrants.

Major-General Edward Codd, superintendent of the colony, had the difficult task of working out what to do with all these people. More than #4000 had been spent rescuing and looking after the so-called ``Poyais sufferers'' and there was barely enough food in town to support a population that had nearly doubled in the space of a few weeks. Some of the emigrants, mostly those women and children whose husbands or parents had died, were sent home to Scotland, but those with useful skills were allowed to stay in Belize if they could find employment.

There still remained, however, some 50 people who had just arrived on board the Skene and had hoped to farm land in Poyais. The magistrates of Belize decided that these emigrants should be settled in a ``healthy and dry situation'' on the coast of Stann Creek district, 40 miles to the south.

Transported to their new home, the Scots emigrants set about clearing the land, building houses and planting crops with the help of labour drawn from the population of Black Caribs who had also just arrived in that district from Honduras. Simultaneously on either side of the North Stann Creek there emerged two settlements - Scotchman Town to the north and Carib Town to the south.

It was the fate of Scotchman Town that intrigued me. The name had disappeared from the map, swallowed up by Dangriga, a largely Black Carib town with a population of 7000 that became the citrus capital of Belize during the early years of this century. Clearly the Carib settlement had thrived, but what had become of the Scots? The telephone book was full of Scottish names like Leslie, Sharp, Anderson, Ferguson, and McKenzie, but were they descendants of the Poyais settlers who founded Scotchman Town in 1823? The easiest way to find out was to go there and ask.

Dangriga is a friendly town and within minutes of getting off the bus someone came up to me and grabbed me by the hand. He was an old man with thin grey hair and a face that was black but smooth like vellum. ``Where ya from, man,'' he asked. ``Scotland,'' I replied. ``Scotland?'' he shouted, slapping me on the shoulder, ``I speak Gaelic - you betta believe it man - Ciamar a tha sibh an diugh - yeah man, you betta believe it.''

Although I was in search of a Scottish connection, a Gaelic-speaking Black Carib was the last person I expected to find in Dangriga. But as I was soon to discover, like all the rest of the people in town with Scottish names, he was in no way related to the Poyais settlers. During the Second World War he had been part of a contingent of almost 800 men brought from British Honduras to work in the forests of Scotland. A few words of Gaelic he could still remember had been taught to him during a year at Achnasheen.

During that week in Dangriga the Garifuna or Black Carib people celebrated the annual re-enactment of their arrival by canoe on the shores of southern Belize, but there was no sign of any Scots settlers. The Scottish names in the phone book all belonged to Creoles of African descent who came to Belize via the plantations of Jamaica where they adopted the names of their Scottish masters. So what had become of the 50 Scots emigrants sent down from Belize to Stann Creek in 1823?

John Campbell who had been in charge of the settlers who founded Scotchman Town recounted what happened during a public inquiry into the Poyais fiasco. Suggesting that the emigrants had been selected from ``the worst and idlest of their country'' he described how the settlement had been gradually deserted over a period of six months. Left with only half a dozen people, he had decided to abandon the town and return to Belize. That would have been the end of Scotchman Town had it not been for another Scot, James Grant, who kept the name alive, not as a settlement but as a mahogany concession.

No-one knew anything of the original settlers of Scotchman Town, but the name was still remembered among the older people of Dangriga. I was pointed towards a stone close to the waterfront at the entrance to the smart Pelican Beach Resort and there I found the name Scotchman Town barely legible in faint red letters. Yes, the Scots have been everywhere. But as I stood on the beach listening to the Garifuna drums beat a frenzied celebration, I realised that I was the only Scotsman in Scotchman Town that night.

n David Munro, leader of several research expeditions to Central America over the past 15 years, is a Fellow of the University of Edinburgh and editor of The Oxford Dictionary of the World.