By 1690, the city of Port Royal, Jamaica, was not merely a dot on a map; it was the heavy, thrumming heart of the English Atlantic. To the uninitiated, the title "Wickedest City on Earth" suggests a chaotic sprawl of lawless buccaneers. The reality was far more industrial, calculated, and lucrative. Port Royal was a high-functioning machine of commerce, a port of entry that processed more wealth than any other English settlement in the Americas, including Boston or New York. It was a dense, vertical city of brick and mortar built upon a foundation of shifting sand—a geographical contradiction that would eventually lead to its total erasure.
The city served as the primary counting house for the Caribbean. It was where the spoils of state-sanctioned theft were laundered into respectable merchant capital. It was a place where a man could walk into a tavern with Spanish pieces of eight and leave with a deed for a sugar plantation. This was not a peripheral outpost; it was the financial frontier of an empire.
The Anatomy of Port Royal: Understanding the Scale
To understand the magnitude of what was lost on June 7, 1692, one must first grasp the sheer density of the city. Port Royal was squeezed onto the tip of a sand spit known as Cagway Point. At its peak, the city occupied approximately 51 acres of usable land, yet it housed upwards of 7,000 residents. This created a population density that rivaled the most cramped districts of London.
Unlike other colonial settlements that favored sprawling wooden structures, Port Royal’s elite—driven by a desire to project permanence and European sophistication—built upward. They constructed multi-story brick houses, many three or four stories high, with heavy slate roofs and deep cellars. These buildings were packed tightly along narrow, paved streets such as High Street and Thames Street. The city boasted four massive forts—Charles, James, Carlisle, and Walker—mounting over 100 cannons that commanded the harbor entrance.
The economic scale was equally staggering. Port Royal was the "Storehouse of the West Indies." In a single year, the port might see the arrival of 200 ships carrying everything from French silks and German linens to West African captives and New England timber. The currency of the city was global: Spanish doubloons, Dutch guilders, and English shillings circulated with a velocity that defined the local culture. It was a city of excess, not just in vice, but in material accumulation. Inventories from the era reveal a staggering concentration of wealth: silver plate, fine porcelain from the East, and heavy mahogany furniture were standard in the homes of even the middling merchant class.
The Strategic Spit: The Geography of the Palisadoes
The existence of Port Royal was a triumph of strategic necessity over geological common sense. The city sat at the terminus of the Palisadoes, an 18-mile-long tombolo—a thin ribbon of sand and coral debris—that connects the mainland of Jamaica to the point.
The primary draw was the harbor. The waters off Port Royal dropped away almost immediately to a depth of 30 to 60 feet, allowing the largest frigates and merchantmen of the 17th century to moor directly alongside the wharves. This eliminated the need for "lighters" (smaller boats used to ferry cargo), significantly speeding up the logistics of loading and unloading. This deep-water access made Port Royal the only site in the Caribbean capable of serving as a primary naval careening station, where ships could be tilted on their sides to have their hulls scraped of barnacles and repaired.
However, the ground beneath the city was a "reclaimed" illusion. As the population swelled, the residents had literally pushed the shoreline outward by backfilling the shallow waters with loose sand and rubble. Most of the city’s grandest buildings were constructed on this unconsolidated fill. They were heavy, rigid structures resting on a foundation that had the structural integrity of a saturated sponge. The very geography that made Port Royal the most defensible and efficient port in the Americas also made it a geological ticking time bomb.
The Privateer Economy: The Logistics of State-Sanctioned Piracy
The engine that drove Port Royal’s growth was the "Letter of Marque." This legal document, issued by the Governor of Jamaica, transformed piracy into a legitimate branch of the English military-industrial complex. Privateers were not outlaws; they were private contractors. They were required to bring their "prizes" back to Port Royal, where an Admiralty Court would legally condemn the Spanish ships and cargo, taking a percentage for the Crown and the Governor, while the rest was distributed among the crew and the city’s merchants.
This was a vertical economy. A privateer raid on a Spanish town like Portobelo or Panama required significant upfront capital. Merchants in Port Royal would "victual" the ships, providing salt pork, hardtack, gunpowder, and iron shot on credit. In return, they took a lion’s share of the plunder.
Henry Morgan, perhaps the most famous figure of this era, was less a romantic rogue and more a shrewd corporate commander. His raids were logistical masterpieces involving thousands of men and dozens of vessels. When Morgan sacked Panama in 1671, the resulting influx of gold, silver, and jewels fundamentally recapitalized the Jamaican economy. This wealth was immediately reinvested into the city's infrastructure and the burgeoning sugar industry. By the late 1680s, Port Royal was attempting to pivot away from its "wicked" roots toward a more "legitimate" mercantile model, but the city’s foundations—both economic and physical—were built on the spoils of war.
The 1692 Cataclysm: A Forensic Reconstruction
On the morning of June 7, 1692, the air in Port Royal was heavy and still. At approximately 11:43 AM, the city was struck by a massive earthquake, likely between a 7.5 and 8.0 on the Richter scale. The disaster was not a simple matter of buildings falling over; it was a total failure of the earth itself.
The Mechanics of Liquefaction
As the seismic waves hit the unconsolidated sand of the Palisadoes, the phenomenon of "soil liquefaction" occurred. The vibration increased the water pressure between the sand grains, causing the ground to lose its shear strength and behave like a liquid. In an instant, the heavy brick buildings began to sink vertically into the earth. Witnesses described the terrifying sight of people being swallowed by the ground up to their necks as the sand opened and then clamped shut again.
The Landslide
Because the northern side of the city was built on fill at the edge of a steep underwater drop-off, the liquefied sand began to flow. Roughly 33 acres of the city—the entire wharf district and the most affluent commercial streets—slid into the harbor. This was not a slow submersion; it was a massive, gravity-driven slump. Buildings did not crumble; they traveled. Archaeological surveys show that many structures stayed largely intact as they slid, settling on the harbor floor in their original orientations.
The Tsunami
The displacement of such a massive volume of earth into the harbor triggered a local tsunami. Within minutes of the initial shock, a wall of water estimated at 15 feet high surged over the remaining portions of the city. The HMS Swan, a fifth-rate frigate that had been undergoing repairs, was picked up by the wave and carried over the tops of the sinking buildings. It eventually came to rest in the middle of the city, its hull miraculously intact, providing a platform for survivors to scramble onto.
By the time the water receded and the earth stopped moving, two-thirds of Port Royal was under the sea. Over 2,000 people were killed in the initial minutes—crushed by falling masonry, swallowed by the sand, or drowned by the surge.
The Aftermath: Decay and Displacement
The catastrophe did not end when the shaking stopped. The city that remained was a charnel house. The heat of the Jamaican summer, combined with thousands of corpses trapped in the ruins and floating in the harbor, created a public health crisis of unimaginable scale.
In the weeks following the quake, an estimated 3,000 additional people died from "malignant fevers"—likely a combination of yellow fever, malaria, and cholera exacerbated by the lack of clean water and the stench of decay. Looting was rampant. Despite the efforts of the authorities, the surviving "lower orders" and sailors stripped the remaining houses and even dived into the shallow submerged ruins to retrieve chests of gold and silver.
The English government eventually realized that Port Royal could not be rebuilt to its former glory. The ground was too unstable, and the strategic advantage of the spit was compromised by the loss of the defensive forts. Residents began to migrate across the harbor to a hog crawl on the mainland, which would eventually grow into the city of Kingston. Port Royal survived as a diminished naval station, but its era as the commercial capital of the New World was over.
Modern Context: Archaeology and Ethics
Today, the "Sunken City" of Port Royal is one of the most significant underwater archaeological sites in the world. It is a time capsule of 17th-century life, preserved by the very sediment that destroyed it.
- The Pompeii of the Caribbean: Unlike sites that accumulate over centuries, Port Royal represents a single moment in time. Excavations led by Robert Marx in the 1960s and Dr. Donny Hamilton of Texas A&M University in the 1980s have recovered hundreds of thousands of artifacts—from intact pewter plates to still-corked bottles of wine—providing an unparalleled look at colonial life.
- The Threat of Development: The site remains under constant threat from both natural and human forces. Storm surges from hurricanes continue to shift the silt, while proposals for cruise ship piers and tourism "theme parks" threaten to disturb the delicate archaeological layers.
- The Ethical Horizon: Port Royal is fundamentally a mass grave. Modern excavations must balance the pursuit of historical knowledge with the respect due to the thousands who perished. There is ongoing debate regarding whether more of the city should be raised or if it should remain "in situ" as a protected underwater preserve.
- UNESCO Status: Port Royal is currently on the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. Securing this status is seen as the primary way to ensure the site’s protection against unauthorized "treasure hunting" and industrial degradation.
Conclusion: The Weight of Witness
The vanishing of Port Royal was more than a localized disaster; it was a rupture in the trajectory of the English Empire. It served as a brutal reminder that the wealth of the New World was built on foundations that were as precarious as they were profitable.
The city’s transition from a bustling, cacophonous hub of global trade to a silent, oxygen-deprived cemetery at the bottom of the harbor marks one of the most dramatic reversals in urban history. Today, the water over the sunken wharves is murky and still. The scent of unrefined sugar and the sound of iron-shod wheels on cobblestones have been replaced by the slow accumulation of silt and the growth of coral over brick. Port Royal stands as a witness to the fragility of human industry when confronted by the raw, industrial power of the earth itself. It is no longer a city of the wicked, but a city of the deep—a permanent archive of a world that was swallowed whole.
The FAQ
Was Port Royal actually a "Pirate City" or a legitimate colony?
Port Royal was a legitimate English administrative hub that utilized "state-sanctioned" piracy as a core economic and defensive strategy. While it hosted high volumes of privateers, it was also a sophisticated mercantile center. Its primary function was to act as a counting house for Caribbean commodities like sugar and cocoa, laundering plunder into legitimate merchant capital through legal Admiralty Courts.
What caused the city to sink during the 1692 earthquake?
The city’s destruction was caused by "soil liquefaction." Because Port Royal was built on unconsolidated sand and reclaimed land, the seismic vibrations increased water pressure between sand grains, turning the ground into a liquid slurry. This caused heavy brick buildings to sink vertically or slide laterally into the harbor as the underlying sand spit lost its structural integrity and flowed like water.
Why is Port Royal often called the "Pompeii of the Caribbean"?
The comparison arises from the "instantaneous" nature of the disaster. Because the city was submerged in minutes, it preserved a precise snapshot of 17th-century life. Unlike terrestrial ruins that decay over centuries, the silt and low-oxygen environment of the harbor protected organic materials, kitchenware, and even fully stocked ships in their exact positions as they were on June 7, 1692.
Can you visit the sunken ruins of Port Royal today?
Access to the underwater city is strictly regulated by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT). While the terrestrial ruins of Fort Charles are open to the public, diving on the submerged remains requires special government permits. These are generally reserved for archaeological research to prevent looting and preserve the delicate structural remains of the streets and brick buildings.
What role did Henry Morgan play in the city’s development?
Henry Morgan was more of a strategic architect than a rogue outlaw. As a privateer commander and later the Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica, he provided the military security and capital influx necessary for Port Royal’s growth. His raids on Spanish territories provided the "seed money" that transformed the port from a small military garrison into the wealthiest trade hub in the Americas.
References
- Hamilton, D. L. (2000). The Port Royal Project: Archaeological Investigations of the 1692 Earthquake. Texas A&M University Nautical Archaeology Program.
- Pawson, M., & Buisseret, D. (2000). Port Royal, Jamaica. University of the West Indies Press.
- Mulcahy, M. (2008). Hubs of Empire: The Southeastern Lowcountry and British Caribbean. Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Jamaica National Heritage Trust (JNHT). The Sunken City of Port Royal.
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The Underwater City of Port Royal (Tentative List).
- National Geographic Society. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Real Story of Port Royal.
- The Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA). Submerged Cultural Resources of Port Royal.
- Smithsonian Magazine. The Earthquake That Sank Port Royal.
- BBC History. The Real Pirates of the Caribbean: The Economics of Privateering.
- Marx, R. F. (1973). Port Royal: The Sunken City. World Publishing.
