Vetch, Samuel, 1668-1732

Samuel Vetch (9 December 1668, Edinburgh, Scotland – 30 April 1732) was a Scottish soldier and colonial governor of Nova Scotia. He was a leading figure in the Darien scheme, a failed Scottish attempt to colonise the Isthmus of Panama in the late 1690s. During the War of the Spanish Succession he was an early proponent of the idea that Great Britain should take New France, proposing in 1708 that it be conquered and that the residents of Acadia be deported. (The latter idea would acted on during the Seven Years' War of the 1750s.) He was the grandfather of Samuel Bayard.