High Modern
1684 CE to 1828 CE
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Port-au-Prince, laid out in a grid pattern in 1749 by the French and called L'Hôpital, suffers from earthquakes in 1751 and in 1770, the year in which it replaces Cap-Haïtien as the capital of Saint-Domingue.
An earthquake that strikes Saint-Domingue on June 3, 1770, is strong enough to destroy Port-au-Prince, and level all the buildings between Lake Miragoâne and Petit-Goâve, to the west of Port-au-Prince.
The Plain of the Cul-de-Sac, a rift valley under Port-au-Prince that extends eastwards into the Dominican Republic, experiences extensive soil liquefaction.
The ground under Port-au-Prince liquefies, throwing down all its buildings, including those that had survived the 1751 earthquake.
One village, Croix des Bouquets, sinks below sea level.
Strong shocks are felt in Cap-Haïtien, about one hundred and sixty kilometers (ninety-nine miles) away from the estimated epicenter in the Léogâne Arrondissement.
Some chimneys on the distant island of Jamaica collapse.
It is estimated that two hundred people died in Port-au-Prince in collapsed buildings, including seventy-nine of the eighty people in Port-au-Prince's hospital.
The death toll would have been higher, but the earthquake was preceded by a rumbling noise that gave people time to flee their houses before the main tremor, which consisted of two shocks lasting a total of four minutes.
Fifty people died in Léogâne.
The earthquake generated a tsunami that came ashore along the Gulf of Gonâve, and rolled as much as seven point two kilometers (four and a half miles) inland into the Cul-de-Sac depression, though this might have been confounded with the effects of the liquefaction.
An additional fifteen thousand people die from what is thought to have been gastrointestinal anthrax from eating tainted meat bought from Spanish traders.
The Great Hurricane of 1780, also known as Huracán San Calixto, the Great Hurricane of the Antilles, and the 1780 Disaster, is the deadliest Atlantic hurricane on record.
Between twenty thousand and twenty-two thousand people die throughout the Lesser Antilles when the storm passes through them from October 10 through 16.
Specifics on the hurricane's track and strength are unknown because the official Atlantic hurricane database only goes back to 1851.
The hurricane strikes Barbados with winds possibly exceeding three hundred kilometers per hour (two hundred miles per hour), before moving past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius; thousands of deaths are reported on the islands.
Coming in the midst of the American Revolution, the storm causes heavy losses to British and French fleets contesting for control of the area.
The hurricane later passes near Puerto Rico and over the eastern portion of Hispaniola.
There, it causes heavy damage near the coastlines.
It ultimately turns to the northeast and is last observed on October 20 southeast of Atlantic Canada.
The death toll from the Great Hurricane alone exceeds that of many entire decades of Atlantic hurricanes.
Estimates are marginally higher than for Hurricane Mitch, the second-deadliest Atlantic storm, for which figures are likely more accurate.
The hurricane is part of the disastrous 1780 Atlantic hurricane season, with two other deadly storms occurring in October.