1692:Earthquake of Port Royal
'There never happens an earthquake, but God speaks to men on Earth.'
Boston Puritan Cotton Mather, 1706

ON JUNE 7, 1692, after winding up his morning prayer service, Dr. Emmanuel Heath, the Anglican rector in Port Royal, left St. Paul's Church and walked to a nearby tavern. There he met his friend John White, who was president of the island's Council, and the two men got to chatting. Soon goblets of wormwood wine were brought out and White lit his customary pipe of tobacco. Before it was outed and the wine drunk, the floor suddenly began to rumble and shake. "Lord, Sir," the Rev. Heath asked his friend, "what's this?" (Gragg, 2000).

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Three hundred and nine years ago on this day, somewhere between 11:15 a.m. and noon (reports differ as to the actual time, although in the 1950s, in an archaeological first, divers are said to have found a watch which X-ray photography revealed to have stopped at 11.43 a.m.), the ground opened up in different places simultaneously, swallowing bodies and buildings alike.

Dead bodies and bones from uprooted graves covered the harbour replacing ships tossed by the mammoth waves into the town's destroyed buildings and onto the shells of its once bustling streets. In total, between 1,500 and 2,000 people lost their lives.

Naval, merchant and fishing fleets were wrecked and the former jewel in England's 17th century colonies brought to its knees. The duration of the quake is unclear, many Port Royal residents are documented as saying that it lasted at least 15 minutes, but most reports indicated that the catastrophe took no more than two to three minutes. That was all it took to wipe out almost one-third of Port Royal's population, as in addition to those who died, up to 3,000 were reported to have sustained serious injuries.

Remarkably, both Heath and White survived this utter devastation. Rev. Heath is even believed to have reached his house and found everything in the same order in which he had left them. Many, including Rev. Heath, felt the quake to be a sign of divine retribution for Port Royal's reputation as the 'wickedest city in the world.'

Founded in 1650, Port Royal was first captured by the English in 1655 and turned into a strategic military and naval base. Initially intended as a heavily fortified garrison by the late 17th century, the town had developed into the most important commercial centre in the English colonies. Port Royal's location in the middle of the Caribbean made it ideal for trade. Its location was also strategic for pillage and plunder as the many pirates who desired to launch attacks on the Spanish main flocked to it. From 1660 to 1692, Port Royal therefore became a haven for rogues such as the Welshman, Henry Morgan and 'three-fingered' Jack Rackham.

According to a September 2000 "History Today" article by Larry Gragg, Port Royal was densely populated, covering little more than 50 acres. It was filled with close to 6,500 people of various professions -- "Smiths, Carpenters, Bricklayers, Joyners, Turners, Cabinet Makers, Tanners, Curriors, Shoemakers, Taylors, Hatters, Upholsters, Ropemakers, Glasiers, Painters, Carvers, Armourers, and Combmakers." They lived in nearly 2,000 multi-story, often brick buildings that miraculously managed to stand upon a foundation of sand. There were as many if not more gambling and drinking dens and brothels as places of worship for Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Jews.

Historical accounts reveal that close on the heels of the earthquakes and during its many aftershocks, looters broke into homes and warehouses taking every thing of value. The dead were said to have been robbed of all they had on them, and on the very night of the quake, many in the destroyed town were even said to have been back at their "old trade of drinking, swearing and whoring".

The Rev. Heath hoped that this terrible judgment would stand as a warning and that God would make these people of ill repute reform their lives. Some, like Boston-based Puritan minister, Cotton Mather, believed God intended it as a warning to Christians everywhere.

If it was such, it went unheeded. All that was left of Port Royal was about 25 acres, a substantially depleted population and a skeleton of a town. Yet, five years later a visitor to Jamaica described Port Royal as a place where the residents "regard nothing but money, and value not how they get it".

Although it continued to serve as a British naval base throughout the 18th century, Port Royal yielded its commercial role to its neighbour across the harbour, Kingston. A fire in 1703 and a devastating hurricane in 1722 hastened the Port Royal's full decline. By 1774, there were scarcely a hundred houses in Port Royal.

Rebecca Tortello

1692:Earthquake of Port Royal

I Was There
By Claude Mills, Staff Reporter

I WAS running, running all out across the square, my arms pumping in short jabbing strokes at my side, dodging the people milling around in the late morning foot traffic of the city. The red-brick shoulders of Fort Charles rose like a dinosaur in the distance.

The light sack at my side banged unpleasantly against my hip with my prize in its belly. I hazarded a glance back and saw that the man was gaining, Big Jim was gaining all the time. Even from 20 metres away, I could see the cords in his neck standing out like a nest of riled-up snakes as he strained to keep up.

Big Jim was the ship's mate on the Bloody Moon, a ship owned by Captain Andrew Morgan, the kindest hearted gentleman to ever cut a throat or scuttle a ship on this side of the Caribbean Sea. Big Jim was not a misnomer, he was a hulk of man, at least 6 feet 7 inches (metric was centuries away), and he liked to boast that he had the biggest musket in his pants in the New World.

And if he had had a few pints, he would gladly prove it to you as well.

I zigged past a lady dressed for some morning prayer service, hung a right at Bonney's Tavern, took a left at the Presbyterian church, then another right at Macey's Whorehouse and Grill where pirates after weeks of plundering Spanish treasure galleons, came to engage in a 'little drinking, swearing and whoring' as my mom liked to say.

I ducked down a narrow alley, artfully dodging the low-hanging clothes lines that crisscrossed the length of the alley. I glanced down at my watch, it was 11:37 a.m., and my head came up just in time to ram my forehead into one of the metal lamp-posts.

The world swam out of focus. Forget about stars, I saw whole constellations. I was struggling to my feet when a pair of rough hands lifted me up, and set me one-handed against a nearby wall.

Rumbling

He drew back his meaty right hand to hit me, and then the low rumbling began. At first, I thought it was Big Jim's stomach, but soon, it began to spread. The building beside us began to shake, a few bricks rained down upon us. Invisible hands crushed the cobblestone streets like parchment paper. A woman screamed, but failed to drown out the crunch of giving metal. I saw a nearby building lean drunkenly to its right.

Big Jim dropped me and began running, he had forgotten about the pearls at my side. He never made it to safety. One minute he was running, the next second he had been gobbled up by the ground. Only his head was now visible. He bellowed in pain.

"Help me," he screamed. When I failed to respond. He spat at me and yelled loud profanities, which while colourful, do not have any place in this account.

I was in a daze. My legs would not move. Using the ball of my fist, I rammed it up my nose to break the stupor that I was in. It hurt like hell, but it got the desired results. My nose hurting like hell, I ran back to the stylish arches of a Catholic school, I splayed my hands out in a T against the brick surface -- almost like Samson -- this is where I would make my last stand.

All hell was breaking loose.

People were streaming past me in the streets. It had been at least three minutes since the rumbling had begun. Huge columns of smoke billowed into the sky. People were throwing buckets of water on a fire that had broken out at Macey's brothel. The clothes of a girl, no more than 6 years old, had burst into flames on my right, her mother was using a large towel to smother the blaze. I smelled something in the air like burning pork.

The smell of faeces, smoke, piss and blood profaned my nostrils. One man, with a red handkerchief draped over his head, shot another at point blank range, and immediately hunkered down to search the pockets of his victim. A drunken trio, arms linked, swaggered down Wright Lane. They were singing '15 men on a deadman's chest, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum'. One of them screamed when the heavy cedar marquee which read Henry's Woodwork and Carpentry fell on him. His friends hardly missed a beat.

Looting

A man with a 'tortoise-back' dining table on his head sprinted past me. The looting had begun in earnest.

Something. Something to my left. I looked up and in the left quadrant of the sky saw a foaming wall of water, at least sixty feet high, rise up like boiling Armageddon. It carried three schooners in its wake, and there was an almost musical crash as the water slammed into the heart of the city. One of the schooners smashed a huge stone monument to Lord Horatio Nelson. I peered through the smoke, my eyes were watering, protesting slits against the acrid fumes, and saw Fort Charles, and took solace that it was still standing.

The day seemed darker somehow, it seemed that even sunlight failed to breach the dark chambers of this wretched city. I heard the wail of a far-off siren. It was 11:49 a.m.

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http://nautarch.tamu.edu/portroyal/

Principal Investigator: Dr. Donny L. Hamilton

Once known as the 'Wickedest City on Earth,' Port Royal on the island of Jamaica was one of the largest towns in the English colonies during the late 17th century.  It was a haven for privateers and pirates, such as the famed Sir Henry Morgan, due to its excellent geographic location in the middle of the Caribbean.  From Port Royal, these buccaneers preyed upon and plundered the heavily laden treasure fleets departing from the Spanish Main. 

After 1670, the importance of Port Royal and Jamaica to England was increasingly due to trade in slaves, sugar, and raw materials.  It soon became the mercantile center of the Caribbean area, with vast amounts of goods flowing in and out of the port through an expansive trade network.

Unfortunately, the glory of Port Royal was short-lived.  On the morning of June 7th, 1692, a massive earthquake hit Jamaica.  The tremors rocked the sandy peninsula on which the town was built, causing buildings to slide and disappear beneath the sea.  An estimated 2000 Port Royalists were killed immediately in the disaster.  Many more perished from injuries and disease in the following days. 

From 1981 to 1990, the Institute of Nautical Archaeology, in cooperation with the Nautical Archaeology Program at Texas A&M University and the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, began underwater archaeological investigations of the submerged portion of Port Royal.  The following pages highlight what we have found so far. The last excavation season was in 1990 and no further excavations are planned. 

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PORT ROYAL PROJECT DIRECTORY

	History of Port Royal
	Archaeological Excavations at Port Royal
	Historical Research
	Simon Benning, Port Royal Pewterer
	Artifact Anaylses
	Selected Port Royal Publications
	Port Royal Archives

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RELATED LINKS

	Texas A&M University		Conservation Research Laboratory
	Texas A&M College of Liberal Arts		Archaeological Preservation Research Laboratory
	Texas A&M Anthropology Department		Texas Historical Commission (THC)
	Texas A&M Nautical Archaeology Program		La Salle Shipwreck Project (THC)
	Institute of Nautical Archaeology

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© 2000 Copyright and All Rights Reserved by Donny L. Hamilton
Last modified May 21, 2001.

Citation Information:

Donny L. Hamilton
2000, The Port Royal Project, World Wide Web, URL, http://nautarch.tamu.edu/portroyal/, Nautical Archaeology Program, Texas A&M University.

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