Port Royal’s wild run ends abruptly on…
June 1692 CE
Port Royal’s wild run ends abruptly on June 7, 1692, when an earthquake largely destroys the city, causing two thirds of it to sink into the Caribbean Sea, such that today it is covered by a minimum of twenty-five feet (eight meters) of water.
The earthquake and attendant tsunami kill between one thousand and three thousand people combined, over half the city's population.
Disease is rampant in the next several months, claiming an estimated two thousand additional lives.
Many believe the destruction from the earthquake to be an act of God resulting from the city's sinful reputation.
Some attempts will be made to rebuild the city, starting with the one third of the city that is not submerged, but these will meet with mixed success and numerous disasters.
An initial attempt at rebuilding will again be destroyed in 1703, this time by fire.
Subsequent rebuilding will be hampered by several hurricanes in the first half of the eighteenth century, and soon Kingston will eclipse Port Royal in importance.
One of the two largest towns and the most economically important port in the English colonies, with nearly sixty-five hundred residents, Port Royal, the capital of the English colony of Jamaica, located along the shipping lanes to and from Spain and Panama, had provided a safe harbor for pirates, who foundd Port Royal appealing for several reasons.
Its proximity to trade routes allowed them easy access to prey; the harbor was large enough to accommodate their ships and provides a place to careen and repair these vessels; it was also ideally situated for launching raids on Spanish settlements.
Since the English lacked sufficient troops to prevent either the Spanish or French from seizing it, the Jamaican governors had eventually turned to the pirates to defend the city.
The English during the seventeenth century have actively encouraged and even paid buccaneers based at Port Royal to attack Spanish and French shipping.
The city had by the 1660s gained a reputation as the Sodom of the New World, where most residents were pirates, cutthroats, or prostitutes.
At the height of its popularity, Port Royal had one drinking house for every ten residents; forty new licenses were granted to taverns in July 1661 alone.
From Port Royal, the brilliant Welsh privateer Henry Morgan had attacked Panama, Portobello, and Maracaibo.
The psychopathic Dutch pirate Roche Brasiliano, the English buccaneer John Davis, and the Anglo-Dutch privateer Edward Mansveldt (Mansfield) had also based here.
With a reputation as both the "richest and wickedest city in the world", it had become notorious for its gaudy displays of wealth and loose morals, and is a popular place for pirates and privateers to bring and spend their treasure.
Following Henry Morgan’s appointment as lieutenant governor in 1687, Port Royal began to change.
Pirates were no longer needed to defend the city.
The selling of slaves took on greater importance.
Upstanding citizens disliked the reputation the city had acquired.
Jamaica had in 1687 passed anti-piracy laws.
Instead of being a safe haven for pirates, Port Royal had become noted as their place of execution.