Port Royal, Jamaica Earthquake

On June 7, 1692, Port Royal, Jamaica, experienced a powerful earthquake and a tsunami. Larger houses collapsed almost immediately and smaller ones slid off the land into the harbor as a widespread state of liquefaction dislocated their sandy foundations. Before the end of the day most of the city had disappeared beneath the waters of Kingston Harbor. Most of those who were left standing in the midst of all the destruction were swept into the sea by the tsunami. Two thousand were killed immediately and an additional two thousand died later from injuries or disease. The city’s graveyard was a victim of the earthquake so the survivors, as they sought to recover some of their possessions, had to cope with a frightening scene. There were coffins and bodies from the graveyard floating around along with those who had just been killed. As they continued their search they had to fight against a group of thieves who were taking advantage of the chaotic situation.

Few people seeing modern day Port Royal, Jamaica, a small isolated fishing village at the tip of a sand spit that extends into Kingston Harbor for about eighteen miles, would ever think that it once played a major role in the politics of the Caribbean and England. All the evidence now lies beneath the water of Kingston Harbor. Port Royal is the only sunken city in the western hemisphere. Founded soon after the conquest of the island of Jamaica from the Spanish by an English invasion force in 1655, Port Royal went through a spectacular rise in wealth and influence. Just before theearthquake it was the largest English town in the New World, and the most affluent. Every visitor was impressed with the multistoried brick buildings, quite a contrast to other English colonial towns in the New World. It had a population of more than seven thousand and rivaled Boston in size and economic power, the only other city of comparable importance at that time.

The English turned Port Royal into a strategic military and naval base. Its location in the middle of the Caribbean made it ideal for trade. Trade, as well as loot, dominated the economy in those times. The European powers extracted wealth from their colonies and brought it back to Europe in ships. If a country happened to have a powerful naval force it was considered fair game to raid the ships of other countries and empty their cargos of gold and other valuables. England was one country that engaged in that kind of enterprise.