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| Fictionalized Cap'n Morgan and his fictionalized buccaneers |
I was pretty jazzed when I found out that the National Geographic Channel had a
new documentary coming on about the underwater ruins of Port Royal. For those unfamiliar with this major piece of Caribbean and pirate history, here are the basics.
Port Royal was England's toehold in the Caribbean during the era of the "
Spanish Main." The English captured the town from the Spanish in 1655, and for the next few decades Port Royal was the center of both (illicit) English commerce and English-led
buccaneering. Legends like
Henry Morgan not only sailed from Port Royal to attack Spanish ships and towns but also brought the booty back to spend on rum and women. At its height, over 6,000 people called Port Royal "home." The problem with pirate (or privateer?) paradise was that it was built on little more than a sand spit on the outside of Montego Bay. In 1692, when a major
earthquake struck Jamaica, the ground under Port Royal essentially liquefied, and within minutes two thirds of the town had slid into the ocean and most of the remainder was flooded by the ensuing tsunami. Many of those that were not killed immediately were soon dead from injury or disease. The English shifted their city to Kingston on the other side of the bay. The buccaneer era passed as Royal support waned, and piracy shifted to the Bahamas. The famous Cap'n Morgan had died four years before the earthquake, killed by edema, tuberculosis, and/or the rum. His grave sank into the sea along with the town he had helped make famous.
