Part 8

Jamaica. From on board the _Richard and Sarah_, June the 20th, 1692.

The old bell in the Institute of Jamaica, is said to have been sunk originally by the great earthquake, and to have been recovered during some dredging operations off Port Royal. Tradition said that it was given to the old Spanish church at Port Royal, by a convent in Spain, but this is obviously incorrect as the Spaniards had no church, or in fact, any building at the Point. It is, of course, possible that the early English settlers took it from the ruins of some Spanish Town church, for use in the church they built at the Point, or it may have been taken to Port Royal at a later date. In any case it is curious that the only Spanish bell known in Jamaica should have been discovered at Port Royal and not at Spanish Town or at St. Ann’s Bay, where the first Spanish settlement stood.

[Illustration:

SPANISH CHURCH BELL ]

Either in the ordinary course of events by the continual beating of the clapper, or through a flaw in the metal, or through its fall at the time of the earthquake or at some other time, the bell was cracked; but after its recovery the crack was stayed by a drill hole, and the bell is said to have been hung in the new church which had been built at Port Royal in 1725.

In 1855, as the crack had extended in two directions and rendered the bell useless, the “whitewash and plaster” churchwardens of the day sold it for old metal. During the administration of Sir John Peter Grant it was pointed out to the Government that it was lying in an old curiosity shop in Kingston, in imminent danger of being melted down; and it was purchased by the Government and deposited at the Ordnance Wharf, whence it found its way to the Institute of Jamaica. It is 2 feet 1¾ inch in height and 6 feet 7 inches in circumference at the base. Round the edge runs the following inscription:

_Ihesv Maria et Verbum Caro Factum Est et Abita_.

In the Vulgate, the 14th verse of the 1st chapter of St. John’s Epistle commences thus: “_Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis_.”

The bell also bears a cross made of a series of stars, and two small designs in relief placed in duplicate on opposite sides, representing the one the Virgin and Child, and the other, a saint, probably St. George or St. Michael.

The bell, in the opinion of an expert to whom a photograph was sent, is certainly Spanish; the cross and letter are from fifteenth-century moulds, but the small designs are later, probably sixteenth century. In casting, old moulds were frequently used. The cross is decidedly Spanish.

In September 1692, the Council wrote home, “Port Royal which was our chief stay and where we could muster two thousand effective men is, since the earthquake, reduced to about two hundred men.”

The old plan of Port Royal which was reproduced on page 442 of the “West India Committee Circular” of September 23, 1913, was formerly in the Dockyard there, having been presented to that office by Commodore the Hon. W. J. Ward, in August 1880. It was handed over to the Institute of Jamaica by the last commodore after the dockyard was given up. It is obviously a copy of an older plan in the Colonial Secretary’s office. In mistake it is stated on it that the original plan was surveyed in June 1857. It should have been 1827.

The wording on the original plan is as follows: “A general plan of the town, forts and fortifications, etc., of Port Royal, performed by an order from His Grace William, Duke of Manchester, Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Island of Jamaica and the territories thereon depending in America, Chancellor and Vice-Admiral of the same. Surveyed in June 1827 by Philip A. Morris, Crown Surveyor.”

On the original plan are the following notes: “All within the yellow lines is Crown property.” “The blue lines represent the town of Port Royal before the great earthquake of 1692.” “The red line is what remained of the town after the earthquake.” “The ochre colouring represents the town as it now stands.” “True copy from Morris, original Survey. The blue, red and yellow lines added by me.” (Signed) Thos. Harrison, Govt. Surveyor, 20th September, 1870; (Signed) J. R. Mann, D. of Rds. and Surveyor-General, 24th October, 1870.

The following interesting experience of a diver during his visit to submerged Port Royal, appeared in the “Falmouth Post,” of October 7, 1859.

SIR,—Being aware that many erroneous statements regarding my explorations of old Port Royal have been circulated, I beg to offer the public, through the medium of your valuable journal, the following statement, should you deem it worthy a place in your columns.

I first went down on the remains of the old Port Royal on the 29th August, and found that what I had heard with regard to some of the buildings being seen when the water was clear was correct. I landed among the remains of ten or more houses, the walls of which were from 3 to 10 feet above the sand. The day was rather cloudy and I could only get a view of a small portion at a time.

After repairing H.M. Ship _Valorous_, I went down again on the 9th instant, at what is called at Port Royal, “The Church Buoy,” but which ought to be called the “Fort Buoy,” it being placed on the remains of old Fort James; but the day was unfavourable, the water being muddy—so that I could not see much; and being impressed with the idea that it must have been the remains of the church on which I was, my explorations that day were not satisfactory. About 12 o’clock (being then down four hours) the water cleared a little, and getting a better view I concluded that the ruins which I was on must have been those of a fort. But soon after I found a large granite stone somewhat the shape and size of a tombstone, which was covered with a coral formation, so that I could not tell whether it had an inscription or not. Fancying this stone to have been a tombstone, thereby indicating the vicinity of a churchyard, I was not satisfied what the character of the building could have been. I came to the surface about 1 o’clock determined to wait a more favourable day. In the meantime Mr. de Pass was so good as to obtain for me, from the collection of Henry Hutchings, Esq., a map of the old town as it stood before the earthquake, by which I learnt that the ruins, of the nature of which I had all along my doubts, were in fact the ruins of old Fort James, and that the Church stood about the east end of the present dockyard.

Monday, the 19th instant, being a very clear day, I went down about 2 o’clock, and had a very good view of the Fort. At times I could see objects 100 feet each away from me. The Fort forms an obtuse angle to the west, on a line with the north end of the hospital—the wall of the angle runs in a N.E. direction, the other in a S.S.E. The walls are built of brick, and are as solid as so much rock. I have traced and examined several of the embrasures and have no doubt but that the guns in them are covered with coral; that known as “brain stone,” being large and numerous on the fort. After being down about two hours, I found an iron gun in one of the embrasures almost covered in the ruins, with a heavy copper chain to the breech. After sending up the gun next day, I found the end of another chain not far from where the gun lay. On heaving it out of the sand and mud, I found it was attached to a granite stone similar to the one I had seen before. I have no doubt these stones were part of the embrasures and that the copper chains were used for slinging the guns. The gun which I found had no trunnions to it, and therefore could not have been used on a carriage.

I am of opinion, from what I have seen of old Port Royal, that many of the houses remained perfect after the earthquake, though sunk in the water, and that the sand has been thrown up, and the mud settled around and in them from time to time, until all the largest buildings are covered over, so that the remains of the houses which I have seen may have been the top part of the highest buildings; which is apparently the case from the irregularity of the heights.

I intend paying another visit to the ill-fated town, in a week or two; and I will take the first opportunity of informing you, and through you the public, of anything new that may come to my notice.

I remain, Sir, &c., (Sgd.) JEREMIAH D. MURPHY.

It would be interesting to know what became of the gun referred to.

Port Royal as a town, never recovered from the effects of the earthquake of June 17, 1692.

Shortly after, the town of Kingston rose on the mainland across the harbour, and thither much of the wealth of Port Royal went, and the principal commercial and shipping street was not unnaturally called Port Royal Street.

In August 1702, brave old Benbow sailed into Port Royal after his fight with Du Casse off Santa Marta, extending over five days (a fight which, thanks to his cowardly captains, was one of the darkest blots on Britannia’s shield) only to die here of his wounds two months later.... He was buried in Kingston parish church.

In 1703 arrived from Massachusetts one good foot company of volunteers, “the first men in armes that ever went out of this Province, or from the Shoar of America”: they were intended for a further expedition.

In January 1703–04, a fire destroyed that part of Port Royal which the earthquake had spared. The occurrence is thus described by Christian Lilly: “Between 11 and 12 of the clock in the morning a fire hapn’d thro carelessness to break out in a warehouse at Port Royall which before night consumed all ye Town, and left not one house of it standing, by which meanes a great many people, especially merchants are ruin’d. For this Town being scituated upon a small Cay, now, of about Thirty Acres of Land surrounded with the sea, and the whole place taken up with houses and the streets and lanes extreamly narrow, the poor people had not that conveniency of saving their goods as might have been expected in a place where they might have been more at large.”

In 1708, Admiral Sir Charles Wager, commander-in-chief of Jamaica, met and conquered a Spanish treasure ship, and though, owing to the cowardice of two of his captains, much of the treasure (said to have been worth from four to ten millions) was lost, Wager became a wealthy man. During his command (1707–9), a greater number of prizes were taken than at any former period of like duration.

On March 23, 1692–93, Beeston, in writing home, had said: “But there is little of Port Royal left, being now a perfect island of about twenty-five acres and too small to hold the trade and people.” After the fire a bill was passed in the Assembly to prevent the re-settling of the town, but this was warmly opposed and in October 1703 another bill was passed entitled “an Act for making the Key, whereon Fort Charles and Fort William are erected, a port of entry”; and in a letter written from Jamaica in 1712, Port Royal is referred to as a “small island about fourteen miles from Spanish Town”: In 1716, William Wood, in his preface to “The Laws of Jamaica” says, “The Town of Port Royal, formerly much larger and very populous, is built on a key, which before the great earthquake, joyned to an Isthmus of Land that divides the sea and the Harbour of Kingston,” and there is additional evidence that, at various stages in the history of the Palisadoes, channels were formed by the sea across what is, after all, nothing but a string of islands more or less closely connected by drifted sand and stone. And an engraving, in Long’s History, as late as 1774, shows it as an island.

A manuscript chart, in the Institute of Jamaica, entitled “A plan of the Harbour of Port Royal in Jamaica, survey’d in the year 1724, and carefully examin’d in the year 1728, by Capt. John Gascoigne,” tells of the severe shocks which the town and harbour have received within historic times. As we see by the map, the hurricane of 1722 once more cut it off from the isthmus to which it is now connected, if, indeed, the passage existing ten years before had silted up.

Professor Robert T. Hill, in “The Geology and Physical Geography of Jamaica,” writes:

The Kingston formation is the oldest of the formations of old gravel and other alluvium occurring upon the plains of the Liguanea type. This is the formation upon which the city of Kingston and suburbs are built, including the strip of land known as the Palisades, and the plain extending back of Kingston to the foot of the mountains. The material consists of boulders, gravel, and pebble of varying sizes, usually very angular, and representing every known material of the Blue Mountain series. These are embedded in a matrix of dull red arenaceous clay, producing a chocolate soil and derived from the Minho beds so completely exposed _in situ_ in the mountains north of Kingston.

With reference to the chart, Mr. Charlton Thompson, R.N., the harbour master, wrote in 1907 as follows:

“I have always been of opinion that the Palisadoes were originally coral cays joined gradually by sand-spits. To my knowledge of Port Royal Point (thirty-one years), I am sure it had grown out about 50 feet during that time, which portion sank during the last earthquake; and the depressions or subsidences which took place then were all made-up land. There were also subsidences in the Palisadoes.”

The following account of the hurricane of 1722 above referred to is from “A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West Indies; in His Majesty’s ships the _Swallow_ and _Weymouth_” by John Atkins, a naval surgeon (2nd edition, London, 1737).

The present hurricane was a week after our arrival; began at eight in the morning, two days before the change of the moon, gave at least forty-eight hours notice, by a noisy breaking of the waves upon the kays, very disproportioned to the breeze, a continued swell, without reflux of the water; and the two nights preceding, prodigious lightnings and thunder; which all the old experienced men foretold would be a hurricane; or that one already had happened at no great distance. I was ashore at _Port Royal_ and found all the pilots returned from the windward part of the island, (where they customarily attend the coming down of ships,) and observing upon the unusual intumescence of the water, so great the day before, and beat so high, that our boats could not possibly put on shore at _Gun Kay_ to take the men off that were set there, to the number of twenty, for trimming up our cask; themselves making signals not to attempt it. Betimes next morning, the wind began in flurrys at N.E. and flew quickly round to S.E. and S.S.E. where it continued the stress of the storm, bringing such quantities of water, that our little island was overflowed 4 foot at least; so that what with the fierce driving of shingles (wooden staves used instead of tiling upon their houses) about our ears, and the water floating their boats, empty hogheads, and lumber about the streets, those without doors were every moment in danger of being knocked on the head, or carried away by the stream. Within it was worse, for the waters sapping the foundations, gave continual and just apprehensions of the houses falling, as in effect half of them did, and buried their inhabitants! Nor indeed after the storm had began, was it safe to open a door, especially such as faced the wind, lest it should carry the roofs off; and escaping thence, there was no place of retreat, we remaining in a very melancholly scituation, both from wind and water. _The perils of false brethren was nothing to it._ It may be worth notice, what became of the purser in this common danger; I was regardless at first, as suspecting more of timidity in the people, till finding myself left alone proprietor of a shaking old house, the streets full of water and drift, with shingles flying about like arrows; I began to meditate a little more seriously upon my safety, and would have compounded all my _credit_ in the victualling, my hoops, and bags, for one acre (as _Gonzalo_ says in the _Tempest_) _of barren ground, long heath, or brown furze_, to have trod dry upon. Our neighbours had retreated towards the church, as the strongest building, and highest ground, which I was luckily too late to recover; but endeavouring to stem upwards for a safer station, was taken into a house in the lower street, with an old woman wading in the same manner from her ruined habitation. We were no sooner in, but new fears of this also falling, thrust us into the yard (the water then at eleven o’clock, breast high) where we helped one another upon a low brick-built outhouse, that being more out of the wind, and surrounded with others, kept the water still. The unhappiness of those who suffered in stronger, was their facing the wind, which brought the sea upon them with violence. A platform of one and twenty guns and mortars were drove some of them to the market-place; the two lines of houses next the sea, with the church, was undermined and levelled with the torrent, and in their ruin was our safety; for altho’ we had a greater depth, they were by such a bank made motionless. The whole rise of the water was computed at 16 or 18 foot, very admirable at a place where it is not ordinarily observed to flow above one or two. At 5 in the evening the waters abated, and with so quick a retreat as to leave the streets dry before 6; when every one was congratulating his own safety in condolancies upon the loss of their friends. Of 50 sail in this harbour, only four men-of-war and 2 merchant ships rid it out, but with all their masts and booms blown away. All the men we left at _Gun Kay_ were washed off and perished, except one _Indian_ that drove into harbour upon a broken gallows that had been there erected. Wrecks and drowned men were everywhere seen along shore; general complaints of loss at land (least at _St. Jago_) which made it a melancholy scene, and to finish the misfortune, the slackness of the sea-breezes, calms, and lightning, stagnating waters, broods of insects thence, and a shock or two of earthquake that succeeded to the hurricane, combined to spread a baneful influence, and brought on a contagious distemper, fatal for some months through the island. There being no volcanos, the earthquakes felt here are always after great rains, on a parched earth that admits their penetration; and possibly nigher the coast, as at _Port Royal_, may be from the sea in a long process of time undermining in some manner a loose earth, or finding in its deep recesses new caverns; or subterranean heats working towards them, the dreadful contest shocks.

The hurricane occurred on the tenth anniversary of one that visited Jamaica on August 28, 1712. In it about four hundred persons perished, and August 28 was appointed by the House of Assembly as a “perpetual anniversary fast.”

At this time it was “ordered that all masters of sloops and vessels employed as sugar-drogers in and about this island, shall before they are permitted to pass His Majesty’s fort at Port Royal, be obliged to bring one load of stones each, in order to repair the damages done to the fortifications by the late hurricane.” The Marquis Duquesne got into trouble with the assembly owing to the manner in which he enforced the order, and generally in his duties as captain of the fort, and had to vindicate his position, in “The Marquis Duquesne vindicated in a letter to a noble lord,” published in 1728.

In a petition presented by the garrison of Fort Charles to a committee of the Assembly that was inspecting the fort in September 1725, the following representations occur:

That abundance of us from time to time have been swept away into our graves; besides several of us, by reson of divers sorts of lingering distempers, are rendered incapable of doing further service:

“... You are sensible, sirs, our beds are the hard stones, our covering nothing but the expanded canopy of the heavens! This certainly is very grievous, especially when we see the company at Spanish-Town lie in beds, and having barracks fit for men of their function. Are they more loyal subjects, or more dutiful soldiers, than we are? Be it far from us to reflect on them or their happiness! but with sorrow and regret we behold our own misfortunes.

In 1733 Fort Charles was considered not sufficient protection to Kingston Harbour and a fort at Mosquito Point was suggested; this was the origin of Fort Augusta.

In 1734 was passed an act to vest Lands in Port Royal in His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors for the use of His ships of war. The property consisted of “Lands, tenements, hereditaments or shoal water.” The act, in the edition of 1738, is accompanied by a plan of land proposed to be acquired to the north-east of Port Royal. From this it appears that there was at the time a town wall on the sea front.

In the first half of the eighteenth century smuggling was prevalent in the British colonies, and subject to violent repression on the part of Spain. The well-known case in 1731 of Robert Jenkins, master of the brig _Rebecca_, who lost his ear on his way from Jamaica to London was not unique. Rear-Admiral Stewart, who then commanded on the Jamaica station, saw that the fault lay largely with the Jamaica merchants, but the English merchants made their wrongs felt in the House of Parliament, and Vernon was amongst their warmest supporters. He pleaded for the destruction of Porto Bello (where the Spanish guardacostas fitted out), and offered to effect it with six ships; which he did to his own renown and the gratification of the English nation in general and the Jamaica merchants in particular. While in command on the Jamaica station, Vernon issued an order, which was quickly adopted by the Admiralty, and made marked improvement in the discipline and efficiency of the British navy, and enriched the English language with the word grog. The order was to the effect that the sailors should qualify their rum with water—a quart of water to half a pint of rum. The sailors did not like their “grog,” as they nicknamed the new drink, adopting the nickname of Vernon, derived, it is said, from his using a grogram boat cloak.