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As a city, Port Royal was notorious for its flashy displays of wealth and status as a place with loose morals — there’s no wonder it was known by people as “the most wicked and sinful city in the world”.
Vast sums of money were poured into the place and soon, it became a thriving hub of shipping and commerce.
Established by colonial Spain in modern-day Jamaica, Port Royal became a haven for pirates looting the shipping lanes to and from Spain and Panama.
Privateers, as they were known, offered their services to colonial powers who wanted to wage war on their foes without making an official declaration. Everything was, in the context of the time, going smoothly.
That all changed on an otherwise ordinary day in June 1692 when disaster struck and an earthquake tore through the city, followed by a series of freak weather fronts. Within the blink of an eye, everything Port Royal had become was no more.
“The earth opened and swelled many people, before my face, and the sea I saw came mounting in over the wall, upon which I concluded it impossible to escape,” wrote Edmund Heath, one of the few eyewitnesses who survived the earthquake, in a letter sent back home.
At the time, the English were relatively new to the island. Jamaica had been held by Spain ever since Christopher Columbus first set eyes on it in 1494. The island lacked the natural resources and treasures the Americas had in abundance, so although Spain invested money into it, it largely left it alone.
Fast-forward to 1655 and England swept in and took the island after failing to secure nearby Hispaniola, present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The Spanish put up little resistance: why save somewhere like Port Royal?
Well, there were many reasons. Perhaps the biggest is the fact that the settlement lay above a natural harbour. The English took advantage of this and soon, Port Royal became central to English life abroad. By the late 1600s, it had grown into one of the largest European-style cities in the world.
During this time, it became famous for its bandits, pirates, sex workers, and expert bootleggers who were particularly skilled at crafting what was known as Kill Devil Rum. In what was a sign of the times, one of Port Royal’s most successful privateers, Henry Morgan, later went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica.
Those who made it home would never have anticipated what was to come. On the morning of June 7, 1692, a massive earthquake thought to be around 7.5 in magnitude struck the island, almost instantly liquefying Port Royal and sending buildings, roads, and countless citizens sinking into the ground.
The earthquake triggered the eruption of geysers and a tsunami whose waves swept up anything not taken by the quake itself.
Some 33 acres of the city fell beneath the waterline, four of the five forts were destroyed or submerged and between 1,000 and 2,000 people were killed. Over the following days, another 3,000 people died from injury and disease.
The authorities attributed the disaster to an act of god, and members of the Jamaica Council declared: “We are become by this an instance of God Almighty’s severe judgment.”
Much of the city at the time of the earthquake was relatively new and had only been built in the last 40 years. Because they were so fresh, many buildings and monuments fell into the water and stayed as they were, preserved by the lack of oxygen and minerals in the water.
It is as such one of history’s few disasters where sites of cultural and historical significance remain almost untouched.
Under UNESCO, Port Royal falls into the category of “catastrophic sites,” places it describes as having been devastated by some natural disaster but, in the act of destruction, preserved in situ.
Its World Heritage branch tells the story of one of the sunken streets as follows: “Cast-iron skillets and pots were still in the hearth with charred wood from the fire concreted to their surfaces. Stacks of pewter plates were found as they fell from their storage space under the stairs in what is surmised to be the serving area of one building.
“The remains of children were found among the broken walls of their home. Also uncovered were the remains of barrels containing the trash of the day, including the trimmings of a man’s beard and hair in a yard area. Many ceramics were found intact or broken where they fell. Impeccably preserved.”
The presence of such relics has enabled researchers to learn exact information about the earthquake. For example, in 1960, underwater archaeologist Edward Link discovered a pocket watch whose hands were frozen at the very moment the disaster struck, a first for archaeological study.
Today, most of the 17th century remains sit beneath 40 feet of water. Since the 1950s, divers have been exploring the underwater city and recording all of the items that never again saw the light of day.
In the name of preservation, the ruins are strictly out of bounds. However, special access can be granted by the Government.
Many of the items pulled from the water can be seen at the Museums of History and Ethnography at the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston.
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