The Scottish Darien Colony: Scotland's Lost Settlement in Guna Yala

The Darien scheme was Scotland’s attempt to found a colony, New Caledonia, on the Caribbean coast of what is now Guna Yala. About 1,200 settlers sailed from Leith in July 1698 and built Fort St Andrew at Caledonia Bay, later called Puerto Escocés. Disease, hunger and a Spanish siege ended the colony in 1700.

Where exactly was the Scottish colony?

At Caledonia Bay, in the far east of today’s comarca of Guna Yala, close to the Colombian border and roughly 160 kilometres in a straight line from Cartí, where most visitors board their boats. The Scots built a fort, Fort St Andrew, and began laying out the huts of a town they called New Edinburgh. In Spanish the anchorage became Puerto Escocés, the “Scottish port”. In 2011 Panama’s Law 64 renamed it Sukunya Inabaginya, honouring the Guna leader Inabaginya, as the researcher Simón Herrera García explains in Panamá América.

The word “Darien” causes confusion. In the 1690s Europeans used it for the whole isthmus east of Panama City, which is why the venture is remembered as the Darien scheme. The site is not in today’s province of Darién and has nothing to do with the jungle crossing in the news; we untangle the two in is San Blas part of the Darién Gap?

What happened, from 1698 to 1700

The idea belonged to William Paterson, a Scottish banker and merchant who had co-founded the Bank of England. The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies would plant a colony on the isthmus and use it to move goods between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Scots of every rank subscribed: the University of Edinburgh’s online exhibition Dreams of Darien lists professors among the investors, one of whom put in about four times his annual salary. According to the University of Bristol, the venture absorbed roughly half of Scotland’s wealth.

Date	What happened
1695	The Scottish Parliament creates the Company of Scotland
1696	Subscription books open in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Ayr
July 1698	Five ships leave Leith with about 1,200 people
Late 1698	Landfall at Caledonia Bay; Fort St Andrew and New Edinburgh begun
Mid-1699	The survivors of the first expedition abandon the colony
30 November 1699	A second expedition arrives, unaware the first has gone
Early 1700	A Spanish force besieges Fort St Andrew; the Scots surrender and leave
1707	The Company collapses as Scotland enters union with England

Fever was the killer. Malaria, yellow fever and dysentery spread through the camp, and the Bristol team notes that as many as twelve deaths a day were recorded. Of about 4,000 Scots who sailed in the successive fleets, more than 2,000 died, among them Paterson’s wife, Hannah. English colonies gave no help, and a supply ship sank in the harbour after a sailor knocked over a candle while reaching for brandy. The Gazetteer for Scotland sums up the outcome: the colony was finally abandoned in 1700, many Scots lost fortunes, and the collapse is widely seen as a factor in the 1707 Treaty of Union.

The Guna and the Scots

The people the Scots met on that coast were the ancestors of today’s Guna, whom Europeans then called Cuna or “Darien Indians”. The Company had read about them before sailing. Lionel Wafer, a Welsh ship’s surgeon, had lived with the Guna-Dule in 1681 after a gunpowder accident, and his account, published in 1699, was studied by the Company’s directors in Edinburgh.

According to research by the historian C. Alasdair Macfarlane for the Hakluyt Society, a local leader the Scots called Captain Andreas received them, and the Company’s publicity insisted that the colony rested on the full and free consent of the natives, that it had landed at their invitation and that the Cuna were sovereign over the isthmus, never possessed by any European nation. That framing was useful to Scotland, because Spain claimed the whole region.

Modern historians read the story with less romance. The Edinburgh exhibition points out that, had New Caledonia succeeded, it would probably have displaced the Indigenous people of Darien, and that Company directors and colonists supported the use of enslaved labour. What is not in doubt is the long view: the Gunadule, as the same exhibition puts it, have kept their sovereignty despite colonial incursions since the sixteenth century. The Scots were one episode among many. How the Guna later secured that autonomy within Panama is the subject of our history of San Blas, and the meaning of the territory’s own name is explained in what does Guna Yala mean?

Renaming Puerto Escocés in 2011 was a statement in itself: the bay best known abroad for a failed European colony now carries a Guna name and honours a Guna leader.

What remains of New Caledonia today

Less than you might hope. The archaeologist Mark Horton of the University of Bristol first visited the site in 1979 and returned in 2003 with BBC Scotland. His team found that the jungle had almost reclaimed the area, but they traced parts of the fortifications of Fort St Andrew, the remains of huts at New Edinburgh, a communal oven and the wreck of a supply ship. Finds included Scottish pennies, a pocket sundial, musket balls, cannonballs, a grenade and tools, and the evidence suggested the Spanish attacks were fiercer than once thought. Other expeditions have passed through as well, including Operation Drake between 1977 and 1981, according to a 2020 column in Panamá América.

Can you visit the site of the Scottish colony?

Honestly, not as part of a normal San Blas trip. Every day tour and overnight stay from Panama City enters the comarca through Cartí in the west (here is how that route works), and Caledonia Bay sits at the opposite end of the territory. Getting there means a long boat journey or a small plane to one of the comarca’s local airstrips, which our flights guide describes, followed by boat arrangements made on the ground.

Three things to know before you try:

• Permission comes first. Under the Fundamental Law of Gunayala, every foreigner who enters the comarca must present themselves to the saglas of the communities they visit and to the migration authorities. The site lies within a Guna community’s land.
• There is little to see without a guide. The sources describe a site the forest has largely taken back, not a prepared visitor attraction.
• Sailing does not change the rules. Boats on the Cartagena crossing follow their own sailing line (our sailing guide explains it), Caledonia Bay is not a standard stop, and any landing still needs the community’s agreement.

For most travellers, the best way to meet this story is to read it before you go and to remember, as the boat crosses from Cartí, that the Guna were already here when the Scots arrived and are still here three centuries later.

Frequently asked questions

Where was the Scottish colony in Panama?

At Caledonia Bay, on the Caribbean coast in the far east of Guna Yala, near the Colombian border. The bay was long known as Puerto Escocés and was renamed Sukunya Inabaginya by Panama’s Law 64 of 2011.

When did the Darien scheme take place?

The first expedition left Leith in July 1698 and reached the coast late that year. The first settlers gave up in mid-1699, a second expedition arrived in November 1699, and the colony was finally abandoned in 1700 after a Spanish siege.

Why did the Scottish colony fail?

Mainly disease: malaria, yellow fever and dysentery killed more than 2,000 people. Food ran short, English colonies gave no help, and Spain, which claimed the region, attacked and besieged Fort St Andrew.

How did the Guna treat the Scots?

A local leader the Scots called Captain Andreas received them, and the Company claimed it had settled with the consent of the native people. Historians now stress that a successful colony would probably have displaced them.

Can you visit Fort St Andrew today?

Only with effort and permission. The site is remote, largely overgrown and far from the Cartí route used by tours, and any visit has to be agreed with the local Guna community.

Is the Darien scheme connected to the Darién Gap?

No. “Darien” was the old European name for the whole isthmus. The colony stood on the Guna Yala coast, not in the roadless jungle of today’s Darién province.