December 3rd 1845 saw the death in Venezuela of Gregor MacGregor, Prince of Poyais.
MacGregor was the ‘Prince of the Principality of Poyais’ a central American colony on the Bay of Honduras, or so he told his investors.
Gregor MacGregor began his working life in the army but his family bought him a commission in the navy, by 1805 he had bought the rank of captain for about £900, yes it was that simple back then! He ended up being seconded to the Portuguese army as a Major by 1910 he managed to “retire” from service and received all the money back! It sounds ridiculous but it is true!
By 1811 he was a Colonel in the army of the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1811 who were fighting for their independence from Spain. It was reported that, in 1817, the now General MacGregor took a small group of men and captured San Fernandina on Amelia Island, Florida from the Spanish.
From then on, MacGregor’s career became somewhat more notorious, he became a successful conman who persuaded many English and French people to invest in the imaginary colony of Poyais.
In 1820 MacGregor and his wife Josefa arrived in London where he claimed to be the ‘Cazique’, or Prince, of the Principality of Poyais which he claimed was an independent nation on the Bay of Honduras. His story was that Poyais occupied 12,500 square miles and had been granted to him by the local native chief, he also claimed that he had all the necessary infrastructure in place but his new nation lacked the necessary people to inhabit it and said he was looking for both investors and settlers and that he wanted to give the opportunity for both to residents of major cities, such as London, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
To this end, MacGregor began selling shares in Poyais and even managed to raise a loan of £200,000 and on the 10th of September 1822 some seventy colonists had been recruited and they set sail on board the Honduras Packet. Those that went looking for a better life included lawyers and doctors. Four months later another two hundred settlers sailed to Poyais from Leith, complete with the ‘Poyais Dollars’ that had been printed by MacGregor and so thoughtfully exchanged for their Sterling currency.
When the settlers arrived in the Bay of Honduras they discovered that their new home was nothing but virgin jungle. They failed to settle and were then evacuated a month later by a ship out of British Honduras. Some of the survivors settled in the Americas but around 50 of them returned to London, leading to the story of Poyais featuring heavily in the newspapers in 1823. Unsurprisingly, Gregor MacGregor disappeared from the limelight.
Soon afterwards, however, he reappeared in France where he repeated the same scam in 1825, this time raising a loan of £300,000 and selling shares to French investors and settlers. The French authorities stepped in, however, when they realised that a ship full of their citizens was about to depart for a non-existent country and many involved were arrested, including MacGregor. Somehow he was freed and he returned once more to London and attempted to borrow £800,000 for the development of Poyais.
He failed to acquire this loan though because investors had become wise to the scam, especially since other con men were also trying to sell the same spot of land!
Eventually MacGregor returned to Venezuela in 1839 where he lived until his death in 1845. Whilst there he was awarded an army general’s pension for his services during the war for independence.
I’ve tried to chop and shorten this as much as I could but it’s not easy with a story like this, if you want to know the whole tale check this link out. http://www.glendiscovery.com/gregor_boach.html
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