| Scotland's answer to the Mayflower |
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The Mayflower gathered all the glory , as it deposited England’s Pilgrims at Plymouth in modern Massachusetts. But the Scots were in on the act, too. This story, published in the Daily Mail , was the first to reveal the name of the ship, The Planter, that took these intrepid Scots sailing from Kirkcudbright in South-West Scotland to America two years later. . By Noel Young in Boston
The first-ever transatlantic voyage from mainland Scotland to America, aimed at emulating England's Mayflower, was undertaken by a ship from the same port as the Mayflower, it has been revealed in two little-known documents sold at auction in New York . And no-one in Scotland knew a thing about the sale.
The documents , a letter signed by King James VI and a contract for the actual voyage, were described by one Scots expert as "of national significance" .
They were sold to an American dealer for £41,000 who said of the
lack of competition for the documents, "They have been something of a well-kept secret."
It was known that a ship had sailed from Kirkcudbright in 1622 - two years after the original Pilgrims sailed from England in the Mayflower . However, the name of the ship carrying the would-be Scots colonists, the identity of its captain and its port of origin were unknown .
The contract , auctioned by Sotheby's in New York , reveals for the first time that the vessel carrying Scottish hopes was "the good shippe called the Planter" of London ."
The Planter came from Rotherhithe on the Thames, the same port as the Mayflower. It is likely to have been a similar size to the Mayflower, to be able to withstand a transatlantic voyage. .
And there is possibly an even closer link with the Mayflower: the captain, Thomas Hopkins, may have been related to a six-strong Hopkins family aboard the Mayflower itself.
"These documents are important for Scotland's history" ," said Dr David Devereux , Curator of the Stewartry museum,in Kirkcudbright and an expert in the area's history.
" They are of national significance, illustrating how Scotland tried to get into the empire-building business. It's a pity we hadn't known about them sooner ."
The contract, signed by Sir William Alexander , Scotland's First Secretary of State, and two partners, stipulates that Captain Hopkins and his crew protect the passengers and cargo "without any fraud negligence or deceit.".
The accompanying letter from King James VI, then London-based as James I of England, is complete with his royal seal. It is addressed to his Treasurer in Scotland the Earl of Mar and instructs him to give Sir William "forthwith" a backdated pension to help pay for the voyage.
Dr David Brown, head of the Private Records Branch, at the National Archives of Scotland, confirmed there was no bid to buy the documents detailing the attempt to start a Scottish empire.
He said, "Although we do monitor document sales, we were unaware of the sale in New York. Much of our efforts during the past year have been concentrated on acquiring the Dalhousie collection. Consequently, we would have had no funds available for purchasing this item."
The Planter documents were signed in England , and according to Dr Brown, that would have been another reason for not buying them.
Eric Graham , the Edinburgh-based author and maritime historian, said, "That doesn't surprise me. If it had been William Wallace's signature or a scrap of cloth from Mary Queen of Scots, they would have been falling over themselves. But items like this from outside Scotland they can't seem to cope with. They are very inward-looking."
Dr Devereux said the expedition was described in a 1922 book, Scottish Colonial Schemes 1620-86, but author George Insh did not know the name of the ship and the skipper .
"Although the voyage could have been seen as Scotland's Mayflower, it was never known if there was any actual connection," said Dr Devereux.
"Now with the name, The Planter, the home port, the same as the Mayflower and the possibility that the skipper had relatives on the Mayflower two years earlier, it is clear that this really was Scotland's attempt to repeat the
exercise and set up a colony."
The Planter's voyage was the brainchild of Sir William, a poet who was also tutor of King James's sons. The grateful king had been given him a huge land grant in the eastern part of America, including Nova Scotia. His dream was to create a New Scotland, there, just as England had created a "New England" and France had founded a "New France."
Also named for the first time in the contract are Sir William's two partners: John Mason , governor of Newfoundland and later founder of New Hampshire, and Sir Robert MacLellan, of Kirkcudbright (hence the decision to sail from Kirkcudbright).
Sir Robert, later Lord Kirkcudbright, was something of an expert on colonising: he had been successfully involved in the Scots plantation of Ulster.
Until the voyage of The Planter, Scots had made money abroad only by going to fight for foreign armies - and "swarms" of them did that, according to Sir William. . Colonising was much better, he said. "By this means you enlarge this monarchy without blood and make a conquest without wronging others," he wrote in a pamphlet encouraging colonisation .
But things began to go badly wrong as soon as Captain Hopkins and The Planter arrived in Kirkcudbright .
For a start, the friends Sir William expected to find there to help him were out of the country. One of those Kirkcudbright-based colonial enthusiasts was the daredevil Young Lochinvar, Sir Robert Gordon. He later founded the town of New Galloway, and was keen to set up a New Galloway in Nova Scotia.
Another blow was that the price of food had trebled in Scotland since Alexander's last visit, making it very expensive to provision the ship.
But the biggest problem was that the local Scots were very reluctant to sign up for this great journey into the unknown.
Particularly hard to persuade were tradesmen or artisans. As Sir William put it later, " They were loth to embark for so remote a part. " In fact, some of them didn't even believe Sir William's transatlantic province existed.
Eventually, according to Dr Devereux, only a minister, a blacksmith and an unknown number of farm labourers signed up, compared with the 102 who went on the Mayflower.
Late in leaving, the Scots were held up by unfavourable winds at the Isle of Man for a further month. Finally they set off into the Atlantic, by then whipped with late-summer storms.
They finally reached Cape Breton. just off their chosen landing point in Sir William's New Scotland, Nova Scotia. But storms again drove them back and the Planter finally landed the exhausted Scots would-be colonists at St John's in Newfoundland.
"They even passed by the Bay of Placentia where they might have landed and that would have been on my land," Sir William complained later.
The Planter was sent back to Britain and the colonists decided to winter in Newfoundland. A year later when a relief ship arrived , according to Dr Devereux, the minister and the blacksmith had died and many of the farm labourers had joined the local fishing fleet.
Only ten made the onward journey to Nova Scotia to scout out a site for a possible colony but all dreams of a Scottish settlement there crashed some years later when James's successor, King Charles, did a deal with the French and handed all the land back to them.
The New York dealer, Seth Kaller, who bought the historic documents immediately sold them on to an American collector, who did not want to be named. Encased in a box, the contract had been in family hands for more than 350 years before it was originally sold at auction to a Canadian collector in 1989.
"We took it out of the box to check whether it needed restoration but it is in excellent condition, on handmade woven paper with a watermark, " said Kaller
"The price I paid was about what it had sold for in 1989. People just didn't know about it. It was a well-kept secret - but available for purchase. This is a truly iconic piece. Looking at it you get a real sense of history."
However, there is hope that history buffs will be able to see it.
"Although the document has been hidden for more than three hundred years, it is not going to go underground again," said Kaller. " my client is prepared to make it available for museum display. We are already talking to a Canadian museum and there is no reason why we shouldn't talk to a Scottish museum."
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