PARADISE LOST


ring to go off into the jungle to shoot instead. It was not long before supplies dwindled and the settlers began arguing amongst themselves. To add insult to injury, on 1 April the settlers


received a visit from King George Augustus, who explained that because MacGregor had assumed sovereignty, he had revoked the land grant. It was at this point that any remaining optimism dissolved into despair. By mid-April, when the rains came, the camp was in disar- ray. Many had simply given up: ‘In spite of every exhortation,’ wrote Hastie, ‘some would not exert themselves to get their huts made water-tight.’ Along with the monsoon rains came malaria


and yellow fever. On 25 April, one doctor noted in his diary that: ‘Of 200 individuals, all were sick, with the exception of nine.’ People began to die, including one of Hastie’s children. In an attempt to fi nd help, one of the settlers


was eaten by an alligator whilst attempting to swim across the bay. The day after that was when the Edinburgh cobbler shot himself. Before he died he asked the doctor to ‘take charge of his little property, and of a letter to his wife’. Finally, at the end of May, the jungle was


Kennersley Castle, left Leith with a further 200 passengers, including sawyer James Hastie and his family; Andrew Picken, the new manager of the National Theatre of Poyais; and the poor, Edinburgh cobbler, who had left his wife and children behind with a view to bringing them over once he had found a suitable place to live. Before the ship left, it was visited by MacGre-


gor himself, who brought a chest of Poyaisian currency, for which many on board exchanged their few remaining pounds. He also announced that the fares for women and children were to be waived before he left the boat with jubilant cheers ringing in his ears. In March 1823 Kennersley Castle fi nally


made it to the Bay of Honduras. But, as James Hastie later wrote: ‘We were very much disap- pointed to fi nd no town, houses, nor people, except a part of the former settlers, some of them still in tents, and some in houses, or huts, made of bamboo, and thatched with reeds.’ Sure that there had been some mistake, the


settlers allowed their ship to sail away, confi dent that with almost a year’s worth of supplies, a plentiful supply of fresh water, a jungle teeming with fruit, wild pigs and quail and a river full of fi sh, that they could make a go of it. However, with a lack of leadership, order in


the camp quickly disintegrated. Only a handful of settlers made any real effort; many of the ‘gentlemen’ settlers refused to work, prefer-


fi nally breached and a ship was found to take the sick and exhausted settlers to Belize, where more succumbed to illness. ‘Among the fi rst who died in the hospital was another of my poor children,’ wrote Hastie. Fewer than 50 of the 240 or so made it back


to London on 12 October 1823. The following day the story hit the headlines and MacGre- gor fl ed to France, where a couple of years later he narrowly avoided prison for attempting the same scheme. In 1839, after further unsuc- cessful attempts at selling Poyaisian bonds, a virtually penniless MacGregor moved to Vene- zuela, dying in Caracas, on 4 December 1845. Little is known about


MacGregor’s early life, other than that he was born in 1786 at Glen Gyle and was the son of a sea captain. He was not chief of Clan Gregor, or directly related to Rob Roy MacGregor, nor was he a military hero with Wellington or in South America. As one Venezuelan offi cial wrote: ‘I am sick and tired of this bluffer – this man heaps ten thousand embarrassments upon us.’ One thing is certain though. As the 200


men, women and children who lost their lives, those who suffered intolerably and lost their life savings can attest, Gregor MacGregor defi - nitely wasn’t the Prince of Poyais.


WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 63


‘In an attempt to fi nd help one of the settlers was eaten by an alligator while trying to cross the bay’


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