One of the most historic sites in Jamaica is a city that is now largely underwater. With a population of 2,000, Port Royal is situated on the Palisadoes, a sand spit that extends 18 miles to a spit 15 miles from downtown Kingston. While it forms a continuous peninsula today, Palisadoes has also been a cay, or small island, across the centuries.
At the time of Spanish arrival in the 16th century, the cay was likely used as a fishing camp, as underwater excavations revealed Taino pottery shards and a stone metate for corn grinding. Spanish explorers named the spit Cayo de Carena and put the location to use for careening. They constructed timber warehouses in which they could scrape boat hulls and refit vessels, making them seaworthy once again after long voyages. Natural advantages of the location were deep water near shore and a flat, easy-to-build-on landscape.
British forces, under the sponsorship of Oliver Cromwell, traveled to the Caribbean in 1654 to take Santo Domingo, a strategic Spanish port in Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic). They failed in this endeavor and, as a fallback, attacked Jamaica, which was less well-defended.
In 1655, the British took over Jamaica from the Spanish and made use of the cay, named Point Cagway, as a strategic fort that would be a safeguard against Spanish or French invasion, as they claimed the island. They finished a garrison called Fort Cromwell (with its name ultimately changed to Fort Charles) in two years. Over the next two decades, the British invested heavily in armaments, creating a half-dozen forts at Port Royal, which made the area better protected than other fort-guarded Caribbean ports of the era, such as Havana, Cartagena, and Vera Cruz.
With the forts in place, Port Royal emerged as the most rapidly expanding British-controlled settlement of the New World, growing from a population of 740 in 1662 to around 7,000 people at its peak in 1692. That year, the port city reached a high-water mark of 2,000 structures on only 51 acres of land.
In addition to defending Kingston Harbor from naval attacks, Port Royal served as a haven for buccaneers or English pirates. Edward D’Oyley, an officer who had spearheaded the initial capture of the cay, envisioned Port Royal as an ideal location from which to mount raids on nearby Spanish shipping lanes. The naval presence ensured that the state-sanctioned privateers would not be pursued once they looted enemy ships.
Among the prominent inhabitants of the 600 brick houses of Port Royal, which stood two to three stories tall, was Captain Henry Morgan, a notorious pirate who amassed a storehouse of plundered gold. Ironically, he ultimately became governor of Jamaica and imposed sanctions against pirates as a way of normalizing trade with Spain. One visitor in 1682 described the city: “Town of Port Royal, being as it were the Store House or Treasury of the West Indies, is always like a continual art or Fair where all sorts of choice Merchandizes are daily imported… bars and cakes of Gold, wedges and pigs of Silver, Pistoles, Pieces of Eight and several other Coyns of both Mettles, with store of wrought Plate, Jewels, rich Pearl Necklaces and of Pearl unsorted.”
The history of the often lawless city took a tragic turn on June 7, 1692. At 20 minutes before noon, a major earthquake occurred that hit the spit in a series of shocks that liquified the sandy land and was followed by a massive tidal wave. Forts, cemeteries, and warehouses servicing boats were all inundated by water and permanently sank. In minutes, two-thirds of the city was destroyed, with 20 acres sinking to a depth of 10 feet underwater and 13 acres dropping to a depth of 35 feet. Some 5,000 people lost their lives in the wake of this massive natural disaster.
Remarkably, Port Royal was built anew to accommodate trade and serve its still important strategic purpose of defending Kingston. However, in early 1703, a warehouse fire spread and consumed vast quantities of flammable material and gunpowder. The entire community burned down except for its main fort. At this point, much commercial activity shifted to Kingston, and while Port Royal continued on as a garrison and dockyard, naval operations ceased in 1905. Today, it’s a small fishing community and also a tourist hub for wreck divers who are interested in seeing evidence of Jamaica’s historic past.
