Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
5
Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: A History of Port Royal
Port Royal
Founded in 1518 by the Spanish, it was once the largest city in the Caribbean
Port Royal
The British
The Spanish first landed in Jamaica in 1494 under the leadership of Christopher Columbus.
The town was captured by England in 1655 during the invasion of Jamaica.
British Capture Port Royal
By 1659 two hundred houses, shops and warehouses had been built around the fort; by 1692 five forts defended the port.
British
The Brethren
The Brethren
In 1657, as a solution to his defense concerns, Governor Edward D'Oley invited the Brethren of the Coast to come to Port Royal and make it their home port.
Trade Racket
Spain could not retake the island or provide their colonies in the New World with manufactured goods.
Merchants paid pirates to attack Spanish ships
Buccaneers
1682 Francis Hanson wrote that there was more wealth per resident in Port Royal than in London.
The average estate value of a merchant was £1,096 (in Boston the highest value was £170 in 1687.)
Ned Ward, 1698
People
Pirates and Rum
Rum in Port Royal
Governor Sir Thomas Modyford of Jamaica said in 1655, ‘the Spaniards wondered much at the sickness of our people, until they knew of the strengths of their drinks, but then wondered more that they were not all dead’.
Kill-Devil or Rumbullion
The ‘Dry Gripes’
Pissed Pirates
In 1678, Alexandre Esquemeling wrote crew members under Bartholomew Roberts ‘had taken a considerable quantity of rum and sugar, so that liquor was as plenty as water, and few there were who denied themselves the immoderate use of it; nay, sobriety brought a man under suspicion of being in a plot against the commonwealth.’
Navy rum ration was standardised in 1730 to half a pint a day
Captain Charles Johnson wrote ‘A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates’ in 1724. Describes rum as being a valuable commodity among pirates, and describes the ship’s surgeons as ‘being tolerably drunk’.
Rum in Port Royal
Tippling Houses
- John Style, 1670
Sign of Bacchus, Black Dog, Blue Anchor, Cat and Fiddle, Cheshire Cheese, The Feathers, The George, The Green Dragon, Jamaica Arms, King’s Arms, Mermaid, The Ship, Sugar Loaf, Three Tuns, The Windmill.
Rum in Port Royal
Punch Houses
Ned Ward, 1698
Captain Henry Morgan
Henry Morgan, a Welshman thought to have arrived in Jamaica in the 1650s.
He raided cities in Cuba, Panama, Gibraltar, and Venezuela.
Following the plunder of Porto Bello, Morgan returned to Port Royal, with between £70,000 and £100,000
He was knighted in 1674 and was awarded the position of the Lieutenant Governor position in Jamaica in 1675.
(1635-1688)
Harlots of Port Royal
Harlots
Ned Ward, 1698
Harlots
On cleric said Port Royal was home to ‘such a crew of vile strumpets, and common prostitutes, that tis almost impossible to civilize’ the town, since they were ‘its walking plague, against which neither cage, whip nor ducking-stool would prevail’.
Strumpets
‘Wine and women drained their wealth to such a degree that [...] some of them became reduced to beggary. They have been known to spend 2 or 3,000 pieces of eight in one night; and one gave a strumpet 500 to see her naked. They used to buy a pipe of wine, place it in the street, and oblige everyone that passed to drink.’ Alexandre Exquemeling, 1678
Mary Carleton (1642 –1673)
Mary Carleton
'A stout frigate she was or else she never could have endured so many batteries and assaults … she was as common as a barber’s chair: no sooner was one out, but another was in’.
'The Crafty Whore of Canterbury'
Transported to Port Royal, Jamaica in 1671, but sneaks back in 1672
Mary Carleton
Carleton was hanged on 22 January 1673. She was buried at the St. Martin's Churchyard. Later, someone wrote on her grave:
‘The German Princess here, against her will, lies underneath, and yet, oh strange! lies still.’
Time at the Bar
In 1687, Jamaica passed anti-piracy laws.
The end of Port Royal
Port Royal became noted as their place of execution. Gallows Point welcomed many to their death, including Charles Vane and Calico Jack, who were hanged in 1720.
Mary Read died in the Jamaican prison in Port Royal.
Two years later, 41 pirates were hanged in one month.
Earthquake
On June 7, 1692, a devastating earthquake hit the city causing most of its northern section to be lost.
The earthquake and tsunami killed between 1,000 and 3,000 people combined, nearly half the city's population.
Earthquake
‘Those audacious whores who remain still upon the place, are as impudent and drunken as ever.’