Sodom was not the only city that disappeared into the bowels of the earth. Three thousand years later, a similar fate befell the pirate Babylon - the city of Port Royal in Jamaica. It was the famous residence of the famous pirate Henry Morgan. The same Henry Morgan, who was sent in shackles to England for the attack in 1671 on Spanish Panama. However, there, instead of a legal punishment, he was awaited by the title of nobility, granted to him by King Charles II.
In 1674 Sir Henry Morgan returned to Jamaica as Deputy Governor of the island. He performed his functions until 1688, when he peacefully rested in his own bed.
Apparently, a piece of land, which later received the name Port Royal Cay ("cay" - coral reef or sandbank), already in 1300 was used by the indigenous inhabitants of Jamaica - the Arawak fishermen. Here, at the southeastern end of the island, there is a small sheltered bay. The long sandy spit of the Palisades juts into it. After the capture of the island by the British in 1655, the city of Kingston, the capital and main port of Jamaica, grew up on this small island of sand and silt applied to limestone rocks.
But the port was not always at Kingston. An earlier settlement was Port Royal, which was located just at the end of the Palisadous Spit, which stretched for thirteen kilometers. There was a beautiful harbor here, the importance of which especially increased in the 17th century.
In 1658, Commodore Mings, who was at the head of the pirates who settled in Port Royal, took Campeche in Mexico by storm, as well as a number of cities in Venezuela. By taking the looted goods to his Jamaican hideout, he thereby created a precedent that inspired others to similar "feats".
The population of the city, which flourished in those years, reached eight thousand people. One half of it was made up of immigrants from Africa, the other - immigrants from Asia and Europe (mostly British). Although the city was built on sand, there were about two thousand brick, stone and wooden buildings, some of which were four stories high. Port Royal also had fortifications and churches, a deep-sea harbor with many docks, four markets, a synagogue, a Catholic chapel, a Quaker prayer house, extensive storage facilities, a menagerie, dozens of taverns and military parade grounds.
Most of the pirate wealth settled in the chests of city merchants, as shameless as the filibusters themselves. Safes and warehouses were overflowing with loot: gold and silver bars, jewelry with precious stones, luxurious silks and brocade. And even icons! All this wealth was waiting to be sent to England or to the continent in exchange for money and other goods.
But Port Royal reached the zenith of its glory under Henry Morgan, who plundered many Spanish cities on the Caribbean coast. In conditions of competition with Spain, the British government deliberately supported these "gentlemen of fortune", whose main targets were the Spanish ships. Buccaneer's temperament also determined the way of life of the whole city. Its inhabitants were famous as "the most unbelieving and depraved people." Orgies, violence and murder were common in the pirate city. Gambling flourished here, countless pubs and taverns stretched along the streets, where they vied with each other offering intoxicated rum, abundant food and women.
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Therefore, many perceived the catastrophe on June 7, 1692 as God's punishment sent down to the city. The sky was cloudless that day, the Caribbean was smooth. The sun was already approaching its zenith, and Port Royal was drowning in streams of viscous heat. This stuffiness worried the townspeople: it was in such hot and calm weather that tremors were observed almost every year. However, residents are also accustomed to their regular recurrence, and it seemed that nothing could disturb the usual rhythm of their life.
In the harbor, ships swayed lazily, some were docked under unloading. The crews of some ships reluctantly scraped their sides, overgrown with shells. Wealthy townspeople walked along the pier, sailors crossed the dirty streets from one tavern to another.
And suddenly, for a moment, everything seemed to stop. Then the trees bent over from the hurricane wind, pouring rain poured down, and the instantly foaming sea crashed onto the shore. The earth shook and the wooden dock swayed. From the mountains came a dull rumbling noise like distant thunder.
The first shock was immediately followed by the second, then the third … During the earthquake, a whole block of sedimentary rocks broke off, slid off the cliff and, together with the city, plunged into the sea. It seemed to slide down to a depth of 7-15 meters. Within seconds, the entire coastline of Port Royal was under water. The rugged Fort James and Fort Carlisle are gone as if they never existed. According to eyewitnesses, the earth rose and swelled, houses swayed and collapsed. At first, the bells rang and then fell silent on the church of St. Paul, as the bell tower collapsed. Brick buildings were turning into rubble.
Deep cracks that split the earth greedily devoured buildings and panicked people. One of the surviving eyewitnesses told later:
“The sky turned red like a red-hot oven. The earth rose and swelled, like seawater, began to crack and swallow people. She squeezed them as if with terrible jaws, from which only heads protruded. First, the 20-meter bell tower collapsed with a crash, and the whole church behind it.
The busiest streets disappeared into the depths of the sea. The luxurious governor's residence and royal warehouses collapsed and swallowed up the sea too. The ships in the port fell off anchors and collided with each other with a crash. Some were thrown by the waves onto the rooftops. Corpses from eroded graves floated alongside the victims of the disaster."
The largest wave was formed when the sea retreated from the harbor, but soon it returned and, with a crash hit the city, in an instant covered it.
It was all over in a few minutes. The disaster claimed the lives of two thousand people, and the city itself disappeared under the sea surface. By sunset, 1,800 houses disappeared into the waters of the Caribbean Sea, and for a long time they could be seen at a shallow depth near the coast.
Many after the disaster moved to the opposite side of the harbor and settled in Kingston. But most of the survivors remained in ruined Port Royal and began to rebuild it. However, after the catastrophe, an epidemic of plague broke out in the surviving territory, which took the lives of three thousand more people within a month.
And in 1703 Port Royal was waiting for a new disaster - the city was destroyed by fire. Several hurricanes that swept here in the following years hid the remains of the city under a layer of sand and silt. What remains of the last pirate sanctuary rests today at the tip of the Palisades Peninsula in Kingston under a five-meter layer of silt.
However, the city did not disappear forever. In the 19th century, divers of the Royal Navy made several dives in the area of the sunken city and were convinced of its non-legendary existence.
HUNDRED GREAT DISASTERS. N. A. Ionina, M. N. Kubeev