In association with Kirkcudbright Parish Church Drama Group

Historical Re-Enactment - The Planter

Sunday 25th July 2010 at the Harbour & Moat Brae. 2.30pm onwards, but be early!!

A little over a year after the Mayflower established the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, a Scotsman Sir William Alexander was granted settlement rights to a huge swath of eastern North America, including present-day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, eastern Quebec and northern Maine.

Alexander's dream was to establish a 'New Scotland' -- or 'Nova Scotia' -- to be filled with Scottish-born settlers and to rival what were then the fledgling French and English colonies of New France, New England, Newfoundland and Virginia. On April 9, 1622, he signed a contract with Thomas Hopkins, the owner of the ship The Planter. The ship was contracted to make the first colonial expedition and first trans-Atlantic voyage from Scotland. To this enterprise Nova Scotia owes its name. Sir Robert McLellan of Bombie was a partner of Alexander in this venture and the Planter's captain, hired in London, was sent to Kirkcudbright to get local Scots to sign up for the journey.

The story of The Planter, first re-enacted in 2009, will again be played out in front of the harbour. Last year a large crowd came to watch from the Moat Brae and were not only very well entertained but were made aware of Kirkcudbright's important role in the early colonisation of the New World. Below are some images from 2009 followed by details of what became of the expedition.

 

The ship encountered storms off the coast of Cape Breton and eventually deposited its passengers in St. John's, Newfoundland, before returning to Britain. Many of the would-be settlers of Nova Scotia died in that first year or were absorbed into the Newfoundland population.

The colonization project financially ruined Alexander but scholars credit him with inspiring other colonization projects in early Canada, and Nova Scotia did - generations later - become the most important overseas destination for the Scottish Diaspora.

Alexander's entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography notes, "As to his chief colonial venture, although two centuries were to elapse before unassisted Scottish emigration made New Scotland a reality, it cannot be regarded as a complete failure so long as the name Nova Scotia survives, and its citizens treasure their armorial achievement and their flag."