Panama, past and present/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
HOW THE ENGLISH FAILED TO TAKE NEW PANAMA
TWO years after the destruction of Old Panama, the city was rebuilt on a better site, six miles to the west. Here, on a rocky peninsula at the foot of Ancon Hill it received even better protection from shoals and coral reefs than at the former place, and was much nearer the islands of Naos and Taboga, that had always been the port for vessels of any size. These natural defenses were strengthened by stone walls so massive and well-armed with heavy cannon that they cost, even with slave labor, over eleven million dollars. "I am looking for those expensive walls of Panama," said the King of Spain, when asked why he stood gazing out of a palace window to the west. "They cost enough to be visible from here."
But those costly walls were to earn their keep, for they alone kept the bucaneers from overrunning Panama, and making it another Jamaica. Only seven years after Morgan left the Isthmus, the town of Porto Bello was plundered by a small gang of bucaneers, the garrison not daring to come out of the forts. Other raiders had already gone through the Straits of Magellan, but the favorite route of these later bucaneers was through the Darien region, by the same pass used by Balboa. The Darien Indians, glad to ally themselves with any enemies 
SEA WALL, PANAMA CITY
of their ancient foes, the Spaniards, guided across large parties both of English and French bucaneers, under many different captains, but all with the same purpose, of plundering the Spaniards in the South Seas. Between 1680 and 1688, these daring raiders had wiped out every settlement and mining-camp on the Pacific shore of Darien, plundered every island, defeated two Spanish fleets in the Bay of Panama, and fought a drawn battle with a third, and were only kept out of the city by its strong walls.
Among these later bucaneers were not a few well-educated men, like Captain Dampier, who carefully studied the natural history of the Isthmus, and made some excellent maps. Lionel Wafer, surgeon on one of the ships, lived for months among the Darien Indians, learned their language, and wrote a long book about them when he returned to England. Several of the captains were discussing the idea of forming a colony among these friendly Indians, and inviting all old bucaneers to come and settle there. This project was stopped, and the alliance between the English and French bucaneers broken off by England's becoming the ally of Spain against France, after the Revolution of 1688. At the same time a pardon was offered to all bucaneers who ceased making private war on Spain, and those that persisted were thereafter to be treated as pirates.
The idea of starting a colony in Darien, reopening the road between Acla and the Gulf of San Miguel, and establishing a transisthmian trade between Europe and Asia, appealed to James Patterson, a shrewd Scotch financier, who had already founded the Bank of England. His scheme met with instant approval in Scotland, then a distinct kingdom, though under the same monarch as England. The royal approval having been given to an act of the Scottish Parliament, incorporating a company for the purpose of founding such a colony, the Scotch enthusiastically declared,
King William did encourage us, against the English will;
His word is like a stately oak, will neither bend nor break,
We 'll venture life and fortune both for Scotland and his sake.[1]
But there was very little of the "stately oak" about William Ill's behavior, when the powerful British East India Company complained that its monopoly of trade with the East might be injured. At once, the governors of Jamaica and all other English colonies were forbidden to help the Scotch colonists, a warship was sent to seize the land if possible, before they disembarked, and, heaviest blow of all, the English subscribers were made to return their shares. So though the Scotch went ahead by themselves, reached Darien before the English warship, and established their colony, they had not enough money to maintain it properly.
The Indians were glad to welcome twelve hundred white men, come, as they supposed, to wage war on the Spaniards. A harbor near Balboa's old town of Acla was now named Caledonia Bay, and on it was built the town of New Edinburgh, guarded by Fort St. Andrew. A treaty of alliance was made with the Indians, who were eager to take the field, and great apprehension was felt at Panama and Porto Bello.
But to the astonishment of every one else, the Scotch did nothing but sit still, until a quarter of them had died of starvation and fever. Then the rest took ship to New York, in June, 1699, eight months after the founding of the colony, and when reinforcements were already on the way. The second expedition only left a few men and sailed away, but the third brought thirteen hundred more. Ship loads of food came from several of the English colonies in North America, in spite of the King's command, but there was no money in New Edinburgh to buy it. Neither was there enough sense among the wrangling ministers and whisky-soaked counselors to realize that if they did not attack the Spaniards while the Scotchmen were still healthy, the Spaniards would certainly attack them after they were sick. Presently a small Spanish force marched against New Edinburgh, but were routed out of their palisaded camp by half their number of Scots under Captain Campbell. But when a strong fleet from Cartagena attacked the town there were very few healthy men left in it, and the colonists were glad to accept the generous terms offered and leave the country. So weak were most of them that the Spaniards had to help them hoist their sails.
So ended the attempt to plant a colony in Darien. It failed for two reasons: the lack of a leader among the Scotch, and the short-sighted jealousy of the English. It was no love of Spain, who had ceased to be her ally, but selfish fear for her own trade, that set England's face against the struggling Scotch colony. Had it been kept alive only a few years longer, until the War of the Spanish Succession, New Edinburgh and its Indian allies would have made it easy for England to take not only Darien but the whole Isthmus of Panama. Later, England realized the truth of Patterson's statement that, "These doors of the seas, and the keys of the universe, would be capable of enabling their possessors to give laws to both oceans, and to become the arbitrators of the commercial world."
When England had her next war with Spain, "The War of Jenkins's Ear," Admiral Edward Vernon, after whom Washington's home, Mt. Vernon, is named, was sent to attack Porto Bello. With six ships of the line he battered down its stone castles, captured the town, and sank some Spanish guarda-costas or revenue-cutters, including the one whose captain had cut off the ear of Captain Jenkins, an English trader, and so started the war. This was in 1739. Next year Vernon captured the present stone castle of San Lorenzo, that had replaced the wooden one destroyed by Morgan, and prepared to send a force across the Isthmus to attack New Panama, against which another fleet, under Admiral Anson, had been sent round the Horn. But Vernon's men began to die of fevers, and he feared to advance without cannon, which could not be taken either up the Chagres or along the Royal Road; so he attacked Cartagena instead, failed there, and went home. Hearing this, Anson sailed away to attack Manila, and Panama was saved.
Only the shell of its former greatness was saved, however, for all these wars had driven trade away from the Isthmus to the Straits of Magellan. Moreover, the Peruvian mines were nearly exhausted, and after the middle of the eighteenth century, the plate fleets sailed 
RENTED GRAVES, CEMETERY, PANAMA CITY.
no more from Porto Bello. Both Spain and England turned their attention away from Panama to Nicaragua, and, in 1780, Horatio Nelson, then a post-captain, was sent to take that country for George III. But though he easily defeated the Spaniards, Nelson was driven away by yellow fever, that killed one hundred and ninety out of the two hundred men on his ship.
So, for one reason or another, from the time when the Isthmus lay helpless under the feet of Morgan until the last of the Spanish viceroys drove a band of English filibusters out of the oft-captured town of Porto Bello, in 1819, the English failed to take Panama from Spain. "These doors of the seas and keys of the universe" were not destined to be theirs.
- ↑ "The Darien Song, by a Lady of Quality."