Chapter XIII: Introduction (4)

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.

Writing about 1740, Leslie, in his “New and Exact Account of Jamaica,” says:—“Port Royal was once the fairest seaport in America, it flowed in Riches and Trade, now it is only a small place, but yet it consists of three handsome streets, several cross lanes and a fine Church. They have a Hospital for sick or disabled Sailors, and there is lately built a Yard for the King’s Naval Stores and conveniency of Workmen employed about His Majesty’s Ships of War.”

Although doubt had been expressed as to the wisdom of appointing Port Royal as a rendezvous, “for fear of the soldiers staying too long there, and getting sickness, by drinking too much rum, as has usually been the case,” on January 17, 1740–41, by far the largest force that ever assembled in Jamaica waters was gathered together. On that day twenty-four ships of the line under Sir Chaloner Ogle, with nine thousand soldiers under Brigadier Wentworth, reached Port Royal as a reinforcement for Vernon’s fleet. The attempt on Cartagena was a miserable failure, owing to divided command, lack of ability on Wentworth’s part, disease caused by the rainy season, and general mismanagement, which was exposed by Smollett, the novelist, who was surgeon’s mate on one of Ogle’s vessels. He married a Jamaica lady (the original of Narcissa in “Roderick Random”) and lived for a time in Jamaica.

Ill-feeling also between Vernon and Wentworth was responsible for the lack of success which attended the attack on St. Jago de Cuba.

During a storm in 1744 the larger part of the fleet was luckily at sea under Sir Chaloner Ogle, but there were in the harbour nine men-of-war and ninety-six merchant-ships. One hundred and four were stranded, wrecked or foundered, so that only the _Rippon_ rode it out with the loss of her masts. A great number of marines perished.

We learn from a petition from the inhabitants of Port Royal to the Assembly, in October 1751, that during the hurricane of that year, the sea “by forcing up the sand to a level with the wall, has rendered it quite unserviceable, as it gained, by that means, a free and easy passage into the town, and filled the greatest part of it with such a quantity of water, that many of the inhabitants, in the extremity of the weather, were obliged to abandon their houses, and fly for shelter to places of greater safety.” It then appeared that the law of 1717 arranging for the repairing of the wall had been a dead letter since 1737.

When Rodney assumed command in 1771, he found that apartments only were provided for the admiral at Port Royal, and it was doubtless due to his action that “Admiral’s Pen” near Kingston (the present poor-house), was purchased just before he left in 1774. One of the chief objects to which he devoted his attention while on this station was the watering of the fleet—the water having hitherto been purchased by the naval authorities; and he, after investigation at Kingston and the Rio Cobre, decided on Rock Fort, Vernon’s old spot, at =Harbour Head= as a source of supply. The sailors, when they found themselves spared the task of rolling heavy water casks long distances in the hot sun, said “God bless the Admiral,” but when they realized that improved methods of watering meant shorter leave on shore, they changed their tune and said, “The devil take the Admiral.”

Till about the year 1902, when pipes were laid along the Palisadoes to Port Royal, that town had its water conveyed to it, from Rodney’s source at Rock Fort, in a sailing ship fitted for the purpose.

Rodney, in order to get timely notice of the approach of foreign ships, had a look-out erected on the top of the Healthshire Hills on the opposite side of the harbour from Port Royal; and on the site of =Rodney’s Look-out= there is still a mark for navigation.

It is quite likely that during the voyage which Nelson made to the West Indies in 1771–72 in a merchant ship he visited Jamaica, as the ship belonged to a Jamaica firm; but no such visit has been recorded.

On September 19, 1771, Rodney wrote from Port Royal:

Since my letter to their Lordships [of the Admiralty] of the 4th
instant, giving their Lordships an account of the violent earthquake
which happened the day before, which has been attended with frequent
shocks till within these few days and, in the opinion of the
inhabitants, done more damage than any since the great one in 1692,
particularly in the towns of Port Royal and Kingston, in the former of
which there is not a single house that has not been damaged, I find
His Majesty’s dockyard has suffered considerably. The pitch-house is
split up the middle of the arch, the chimney thrown down, the coppers
and chimney where the people cook while at the wharf are rendered
useless; the smith’s shop split in several places, and so shaken as to
be quite unserviceable. The foundations of the capstern and
mast-houses have likewise received much damage.

His Majesty’s hospital at Port Royal seems to have suffered more than
any other building, the chimneys shaken down, the walls shattered; the
partition walls and gable end of the northern wing, and a southern
wall next the dispensary greatly damaged.

As the sick men were very much alarmed, and really in danger, I found
it necessary to order the surgeon and agent to repair it with all
possible despatch. There have been nine shocks since the first, but as
each has appeared weaker, I hope we shall experience no more of them.

The most brilliant period of Port Royal’s glory was perhaps the command of Sir Peter Parker, from 1778–1782.

Of all the forts which have been erected from time to time round the coast of Jamaica for its protection the oldest, and most important from an historic standpoint, is undoubtedly =Fort Charles= at Port Royal. It was not the first fort built at The Point, for Sedgwick writing home in November 1655, to the Commissioners of the Admiralty, said, “Are building a fort at the harbour’s mouth, and 9 or 10 guns are mounted.”

Nelson’s Quarter-deck
]

The construction of Fort Charles, named after Charles II, was commenced in the reign of that monarch. When originally built it was washed by the sea on two sides. In course of time Chocalatta Hole became silted up, and is now the parade-ground. It is thus referred to in a “Journal Kept by Colonel William Beeston from his first coming to Jamaica,” in connection with a fear that the Spaniards, enraged by the loss of St. Jago de Cuba, might meditate revenge, and make some attempt on the island:

“Therefore what money was due to the King was called in, and in November [1662] about forty men hired to work on the fort, which is now called Fort Charles, with intent to finish it, which hitherto lay open, with only a round tour of stone and banks of board and sand towards the sea....”

And on May 29, 1678, he writes: “Being the King’s birthday, and all the flags abroad upon all the forts, the great flag of Fort Charles blew down, which we doubted was ominous, being so noted a day and on the most noted Fort....”

The fort was “not shook down, but much shattered” by the earthquake of 1692. It was subsequently reconstructed in 1699 by Colonel Christian Lilley, who had laid out the city of Kingston four years earlier, and who in 1734 was captain of the fort.

From the earliest times the members of the House of Assembly were admitted to view the forts and fortifications, and a joint committee of the Assembly and Council used to report annually on Fort Charles.

Long, writing in 1774, says: “The Captain of the fort [Fort Charles] has of late years been appointed by the Governor’s warrant, upon the nomination of his Ministry. His salary is only £109 10_s._ per annum, but the profits of this post make it far more considerable.”

In June 1779, war was declared with Spain, and on the 11th of that month Nelson was promoted to the command of the _Hinchinbrook_, thus becoming a post-captain while yet four months under twenty-one years of age. The ship was then at sea, and had not returned by July 28, when Nelson wrote from Port Royal to his friend Captain Locker, and she apparently did not return till September 1. During this period Nelson was in command of the batteries at Port Charles, as he twice mentions in his published correspondence—once when writing under date August 12, 1779, to Locker, and once in the “Sketch of My Life,” written twenty years later. At this time Jamaica was, to use Nelson’s own words, “turned upside down” by fear of capture of a French fleet. In his own letter to Locker he says, speaking of the measures of defence taken:

Five thousand men were encamped between the Ferry and Kingston, 1000
at Fort Augusta, 300 at the Apostles’ Battery, and we expect to have
500 in Fort Charles, where I am to command. _Lion_, _Salisbury_,
_Charon_, and _Janus_ in a line from the Point to the outer shoal;
_Ruby_ and _Bristol_ in the narrows going to Kingston, to rake any
ships that may attack Fort Augusta; _Pomona_ and _Speke_ Indiaman
above Rock Fort, and _Lowestoffe_ at the end of the dock wall.... I
have fairly stated our situation, and I leave you in England to judge
what stand we shall make; I think you must not be surprised to hear of
my learning to speak French.

In his sketch of his life, Nelson tells us:

In this critical state [_i.e._ fear of invasion] I was by both Admiral
and General entrusted with the command of the Batteries at Port Royal,
and I need not say, as the defence of this place was the key to the
port of the whole naval force, the town of Kingston, and Spanish Town,
it was the most important place in the whole island.

The admiral was Sir Peter Parker, Nelson’s lifelong friend and patron; the general was the Governor, Dalling.

This was Nelson’s first actual command after he was posted, though it lasted probably but three or four weeks, and gave him no opportunity of showing what he could do in that capacity.

Nelson’s reputation still survives in Port Charles itself, and there still exists his wooden “quarter-deck” from which he could, while pacing up and down, command a view to windward.

There is also an inscription to his memory in gilt letters on a white marble tablet fixed into the brickwork of the west wall of Port Charles. In size the tablet is 2½ feet by 1½ feet, and the following is a copy of the inscription:

IN THIS PLACE
DWELT
HORATIO NELSON.

You who tread his footprints
Remember his glory.

Nelson’s memory was kept green in Jamaica for many years. Monk Lewis saw, at Black River, at New Year, 1816, a “Nelson’s Car” with “Trafalgar” written on it, which formed part of the procession of Blue Girls in the John Canoe festivities. But there is no monument to the great hero in Jamaica as there is at Barbados; and yet the larger island owes just as much to Nelson as does the smaller.

KINGSTON HARBOUR IN 1774

From an engraving in Long’s “History of Jamaica”
]

Figure-head of the Aboukir
]

The following, amongst others, commanded at Fort Charles: Major Man (1661–64), Major Byndloss (1664–65), Sir James Modyford (1667), Col. Theodore Cary (1675), Col. Charles Morgan (1682), Col. Molesworth (1683), Col. James O’Brien (1691–92), Peter Beckford (1692), Col. Knight (1703), Major Howard (1713), Col. Joseph Delawnay (1715), Gabriel, Marquis Duquesne (1723–25), Captain Dalrymple (1730–33), Col. Christian Lilly (1733–35), Captain Charles Knowles (1734), Col. Philips (1737), Captain Newton (1742), Captain Hamilton (1743), Lieut.-Col. Spragge (1753), Captain Trower (1762), Exelbee Lawford (1776), John Dalling (1776–77), Horatio Nelson (1777), Edward FitzGerald (1777–79), Montgomery Mathan (1779–80), Hans Carsden (1780).

A portrait bust in wood, which formed the figurehead of the _Aboukir_, port guardship from 1862 to 1877, and now rests in the dockyard (alongside the figureheads of the _Imaum_, the port guardship from 1856 to 1862; the _Argent_, the port guardship from 1877 to 1903, and the _Megaera_, wrecked on Bare Bush Cay in 1843), was until quite lately thought to represent Nelson; but recent investigation has tended to prove that it is a portrait of the celebrated general Sir Ralph Abercromby, who received his death wound in the hour of victory at the battle of Alexandria, on August 1, 1801 (when he was conveyed to Nelson’s old flagship, the _Foudroyant_): the blind eye of the _soi-disant_ Nelson has been removed, and the figure painted to represent Abercromby. If this be the true version, one rather wonders what wag had the audacity to transform it into a Nelson.

After a cruise of a few months in his ship, the _Hinchinbrook_, Nelson wrote to Locker from Port Royal on January 23, 1780, “Our mess is broken up. Captain Cornwallis and myself live together.... I have been twice given over since you left this country with that cursed disorder, the gout.” Early in 1780, Nelson went on that ill-fated expedition to Nicaragua, originated by Dalling, the governor, in which Dr. Dancer, the island botanist, and the unfortunate Colonel Despard took part.

This expedition, while it laid the foundation of his subsequent fame, nearly cost Nelson his life. On his return to Port Royal he was suffering so much from fever and dysentery that he had to be carried ashore in his cot to the lodging-house of his former black nurse, Couba Cornwallis, a favourite nurse with naval officers. From Couba’s hands Nelson passed under the care of Sir Peter and Lady Parker, who first nursed him at Admiral’s Pen, and afterwards sent him to Admiral’s Mountain[4] (as the Admiral’s hill residence was named) to recuperate; but there he missed their kind attention, and wished himself back with Couba. While at Jamaica Nelson made many friends—in addition to his naval companions, Parker, Prince William, Locker and Collingwood—such as Simon Taylor, a wealthy sugar planter and Hercules Ross, the Navy agent, to whose son Horatio, afterwards a celebrated sportsman, Nelson stood godfather. A portrait of Charles II (said to have been painted in 1679 and to have been in the possession of Bishop Falconer), presented by Hercules Ross, for many years hung in the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers’ mess at Fort Charles, and now adorns the former residence of the commodores, now used as the mess room.

Footnote 4:

This was probably in the Red Hills, but has never been identified. It
was possibly Mount Salus.

Towards the close of Parker’s service at Jamaica, Rodney gained his celebrated victory over the brave De Grasse off Dominica, on April 12, 1782. De Grasse after fighting hard all day till only himself and two men remained unwounded, at the setting of the sun and the arrival of the _Barfleur_ fresh to the fray, lowered with his own hands his flag on his ship the _Ville de Paris_, the gay Lutetia’s present to Louis XV, and thus completed the British victory which had commenced the moment that Rodney’s flagship the _Formidable_ had broken the French line.

On April 24, news reached Jamaica from St. Lucia, that both French and English fleets had sailed. The worst was feared, and the suspense was intense; but on the morrow arrived the joyful news from Rodney that Jamaica was saved from invasion.

On the morning of Monday, April 29, Rodney’s fleet with nine prizes was seen approaching, and though it was evident that it would be near sunset before the ships could be moored we can imagine that that would not have restrained many from starting off from Kingston to Port Royal to witness the triumphal entry.

Those, however, who remained behind and lined every vantage spot of
view and every housetop, witnessed a goodly sight, for a long line of
tall ships, on the tallest of which flew the lilies of France with the
Red Cross of St. George of England surmounting it, followed by ship
after ship each bearing similar signs of subjugation, and attended by
a brave show of their captors, swept in slow but stately array past
the Palisadoes with the last of the sea breeze, and rounding the point
brought up in good order, their enormous wooden anchor stocks causing
such a splash as they fell from their bows as to be visible by help of
a good glass from Kingston Church tower.

The _Ville de Paris_, was, it is said, the first first-rate man-of-war ever taken and carried into port by any commander of any nation. A painting by Pine, of Rodney in action aboard the _Formidable_, attended by his principal officers, is, with a volume of charts taken from De Grasse’s cabin, and a series of prints illustrating the engagement, in the Institute of Jamaica. The prizes were sent home under convoy, which was of course a special one. In those days the planters, merchants and others interested were wont to meet and settle the rates of freight to be paid by the fleet of merchantmen which went home four times a year, under the convoy of a man-of-war. In war time the rates were nearly three times as high as in peace. The merchantmen were then wont to assemble at Bluefields in order to await their convoy for England.

The _Ville de Paris_ and the other prizes encountered a hurricane on their way to England on September 16; and being hove to on the wrong tack, and perhaps overladen with the captured battering train and other stores, besides being weakened by the heavy fire to which they had been exposed, they with the exception of the _Ardent_ foundered with 1200 men; several ships of the convoy also sank.

A series of four aquatints by Robert Dodd, published in 1783, illustrates the fate of this convoy with special reference to the _Lady Juliana_.

It is worthy of record that two sons of Flora Macdonald went down in the late flagship of the Comte De Grasse.

In this connection the following extract from the Minutes of a Meeting of the West India Merchants—now the West India Committee—held on January 29, 1782, Mr. Long presiding, may be of interest:

The following letter from the Chairman, and Deputy Chairman, to Mr.
Stephens, was read.

SIR,—We take the Liberty of desiring you to submit to the Lords of the
Admiralty, to recommend to their Commander in Chief, the request we
made at the Board some time ago, of having _early and frequent_
Convoys home, both from Jamaica and the Leeward Islands, instead of
the Ships being sent home in such large and delayed Fleets, which in
the present Situation of Affairs, is found to be attended with great
Inconveniences, and very severe losses, besides, a greater Object of
Attention to the Enemy.—Early Convoys are particularly desirable, from
the Produce being extremely wanted, on account of its scarcity, and
coming home in a favourable season for safe Passages, the Strength of
the Convoys may be regulated by the number of the Trade in each.

We decline naming the Times of the Appointment of the Convoys (as has
been usually done) in order to prevent their expected arrival in
Europe being known to our Enemies.

We are, etc.,

10th January, 1782. (Signed) BEESTON LONG.
RICHD. NEAVE.

From 1796 to 1800, Sir Hyde Parker was commander-in-chief of Jamaica, and the cruising ships as stationed by him were exceptionally fortunate, and brought into Port Royal a great many prizes, merchantmen, privateers and ships of war, “by which both himself and his country were materially benefited.”

From October 1782 to July 1783, Nelson was cruising under Hood in West Indian waters, and more than once put into Port Royal.

In 1783, William IV, as a midshipman on the celebrated _Barfleur_, came into Port Royal, the first prince of the blood royal of England to put foot on Jamaica’s shore. He then made the acquaintance of Couba Cornwallis, the _chère amie_ of the admiral of that name and the kindly nurse of Nelson, who lived till 1848.

Lady Nugent in her voluminous Journal, does not make much reference to Port Royal. On their arrival in July 1801, she records:

It is now seven o’clock in the evening and we have only just anchored
in Port Royal Harbour. An express is just sent off to the Governor at
Spanish Town. Colonel Ramsay of the Artillery, and Captain Coates of
the 69th Regiment, with a Navy officer from Lord Hugh Seymour, came on
board immediately. I am disappointed. I hoped to have landed
instantly, but there is so much etiquette about it, that it is settled
we are not to stir till to-morrow morning.

29th [July]. General N. landed at six o’clock under salutes from the
forts and all the ships of war in the harbour. The _Ambuscade_ fired
on his leaving the deck, and I lay down to my cot, with a pillow over
my ears, the noise was so stunning.

All this is in marked contrast to the simpler landing of a governor in these days—even on his first arrival.

In March 1804, Lady Nugent records:

Dress by candle-light, and our whole party proceeded to Port Royal
where the Admiral gave us a grand breakfast on board the
_Hercules_.... The _lion_ for the morning for the gentlemen was a
large cannon, taken from the French, but I own it did not interest me
much.

This was probably one of those cannons which were removed to the present King’s House on the shutting up of the dockyard.

In 1806, Port Royal saw the victorious Duckworth bring in three French ships taken off Santo Domingo after what was called, before the days of Togo, “one of the completest victories on record.”

In the memorable year 1805, Dacres was commander-in-chief of Jamaica, and he detained at Port Royal for the protection of the island four of the six ships (of Cochrane’s squadron), which had come out in chase of Missiessy, and Nelson had hoped would reach him at Barbados, when he sailed in pursuit of the French fleet under Villeneuve, immediately before Trafalgar.

With Trafalgar, Port Royal’s chief importance as a naval station may be said to have ended. Nothing of great moment, except the almost complete destruction of the town by fire in 1815, occurred afterwards, although Jamaica remained as a separate station for some twenty years more.

Monk Lewis writes in February 1816:

The Jamaica canoes are hollowed cotton-trees. We embarked in one of
them at six in the morning, and visited the ruins of Port Royal,
which, last year, was destroyed by fire: some of the houses were
rebuilding; but it was a melancholy sight, not only from the look of
the half-burnt buildings, but the dejected countenances of the ruined
inhabitants.

Bleby records in his “Scenes in the Caribbean Sea” (1854) having seen as he entered the harbour in 1831, several slavers captured by British cruisers and sent in here to be condemned and broken up.

In “The Wanderings of a Marine,” a series of letters to a friend comprising descriptive sketches at sea and on shore, at home and abroad, written in 1831—a manuscript volume in the West India Library of the Institute of Jamaica, we read:

As we approached Port Royal Bay a novel and pleasing sight was again
displayed to our view. The hills now gradually gave place to gentle
slopes and green knolls till towards the entrance the land became
perfectly level. Still advancing, we found ourselves in a narrow
channel between the projecting headlands beautifully ornamented with
cocoanut trees and separated from each other by a very small distance,
scarcely sufficient to permit two large vessels to pass. At the
extremity of these headlands, where the bay begins to sweep, there are
placed two very strong forts, and there is a third at the opposite
side so that no enemy can force an entrance if a good outlook is kept.
The water in this channel is remarkably clear, and exhibits with great
distinctness the tops and chimneys of houses at the bottom. It is now
many years since a dreadful earthquake destroyed great part of the
town of Port Royal and covered it with the sea, by which means the
site of the harbour was completely changed, and what was formerly dry
land, on which stood the town, became part of the entrance of the bay.

In the “Statistical Report of the Sickness, Mortality, and Invaliding Among the Troops in the West Indies,” published as a Parliamentary paper in 1838, the following is the account given of Port Royal:

... The barracks stand at the very extremity of the peninsula on which
the town is built, only three feet above the level of the sea, and
frequently at high water a great portion of the parade-ground is
inundated by the tide. The hospital is in a narrow street leading from
the town to the barracks, and consists of a ground floor and upper
storey, divided into six wards, with balconies in front and rear....

... During the above period [1817–1836] the average mortality has been
about 113 per thousand of the strength annually, but it exhibits
remarkable variations at different periods. Last year it was less than
1 per cent., while in 1825 about a third part of the force was cut
off; thus demonstrating how difficult it is to form any fair estimate
of the influence of these climates, except on the average of a long
series of years. This station suffered very severely from the epidemic
fevers which raged throughout the island in 1819, 1822, and 1825. A
large proportion of the force also was cut off in 1821, when most of
the other stations were comparatively healthy....

On comparing the ratio of deaths by each of the above classes of
diseases with that which has prevailed generally throughout the
island, there appears little difference in any except fevers, which
have been rather under the average, particularly since 1830; and so
irregular has been their operation that, though in 1819 and 1825, they
cut off a third part of the force; in 1831 not a death took place from
them.

On visiting Jamaica in 1844, while the captain and the other passengers of the ship, which was bound for Savanna-la-Mar, went up the harbour, to see Kingston, Gosse spent his time in examining the fauna and flora of the Palisadoes.

It is true there was little of the luxuriance or beauty that we
associate with tropical scenery here. It is a low land of sand nearly
nine miles in length; but scarcely anywhere more than a few hundred
yards in breadth, forming a natural breakwater that separates the
broad lake-like harbour of Kingston from the Caribbean Sea. I found it
barren enough; but it was all strange, and to feet which for nearly
two months had not felt the firm earth, even a run along the beach was
exhilarating. The graceful cocoanut palm sprang up in groups from the
water’s edge, waving its feathery fronds over the rippling waters that
dashed about its fibrous foot. Great bushes of prickly-pear and other
_Cacti_ were growing on the low summit of the bank, covering large
spaces of ground, with their impenetrable masses, presenting a
formidable array of spines: as did also a species of _Acacia_ that
grew in thickets and single trees. All along the line of high water
lay heaps of seaweeds drying in the sun, among which was particularly
abundant a species of _Padina_, closely resembling the pretty
“Peacock’s tail” of our own shores, though less regularly beautiful.
Sponges of various forms, and large Fan-corals with the gelatinous
flesh dried on the horny skeleton, were also thrown up on the higher
beach; and I found in some abundance, a _Coralline_, of a soft
consistence, and of a bright grass green hue, each branch of which was
terminated by a radiating tuft of slender filaments.

Shells were very scarce on the sea beach; but on the harbour side many
species were found in the crevices and pools of the low rocks, and
just within the margin of the water. All were small, and few presented
any facts worthy of being noticed: they were chiefly of the genera
_Turbo_, _Phasianella_, _Planaxis_, _Buccinum_, _Vermetus_, and
_Fusus_; the bivalves _Ostrea_, _Anomia_, _Spondylus_, _Avicula_,
_Arca_, _Cardium_, _Venus_, and _Pholas_. Several specimens of a
brilliant little _Choetodon_ were swimming and darting about the
narrow, but deep pools; they were not more than an inch in length,
marked with alternate bands of black and golden yellow. In the
vertical position in which they swim, with the eye of the observer
looking down upon them, they appear to bear the slender proportions of
ordinary fishes; and it is only by accident as in turning, or on
capturing one, that we detect the peculiar form, high and vertically
flattened, of this curious genus.

For the naturalist there is a work of lasting interest in the form of a small rare volume published in 1855, by Richard Hill, the friend and collaborator of Gosse, entitled “A Week at Port Royal.” Even in his day it was “a place for the memory.”

One passage records that:

Admiral Sir Charles Hamilton related that in 1780 the submerged houses
were plainly discernible between the town as it now stands and the
usual anchorage of vessels of war. Bryan Edwards says, in 1793, the
ruins were visible in clear weather from the boats which sailed over
them; and Lieutenant B. Jeffrey, of the Royal Navy, states that when
engaged in the surveys made between the years 1824 and 1835, he
repeatedly traced sites of buildings where the depth of the water is
from four to six fathoms. When there was little wind, he perceived
traces of houses, especially distinct when he used the instrument
called “the diver’s eye” let down below the ripple of the wave.

A later work, published in 1893 by Major M. M[artin] and others, entitled “Port Royal and its Harbour,” is of more general interest.

In 1891, at the time of the exhibition, Jamaica was visited by the present King and his elder brother, and Port Royal was not overlooked; nor was it when Prince Albert visited Jamaica in the spring of 1913.

In 1894, experimental borings were made by the military authorities with a view to obtaining a supply of fresh water, but these were abandoned when a depth of 270 feet had been reached.

By the irony of fate, the impetus given a few years since to British naval development was destined to result not in the increase in importance, but in the withdrawal of the remnants of the faded glory, of a fort which was formerly one of the principal advance guards of Britannia’s realm.

A shadow of coming events was cast in 1903 by the sale of the old depot ship, the _Urgent_, which for many years, after serving as a troop ship, had swung to the tide at the entrance to the harbour, which before the days of monster vessels boasted that it could hold the navies of the world. By a special order in council the commodore then flew for a short time his broad pennant in the dockyard instead of in the _Urgent_, which was destined to spend her last days in the inglorious capacity of a coal hulk in Boston harbour. Then the edict went forth that the office of commodore, which in 1838 replaced that of admiral, when Jamaica ceased to be an independent command, was to be abolished, and on March 31, 1905, Commodore Fisher struck his flag.

Of later years Port Royal has become most important as a military fort; if that glory were taken from it, it would sink almost into the insignificance of its neighbour Port Henderson, across the harbour’s mouth—where the old _Aboukir_, rebuilt, does duty as a storehouse, and where memory still lingers of the days when it formed a seaside resort for the gay folk of St. Jago de la Vega—and it would be without Port Henderson’s importance as a banana port.

Its ancient glory was recalled on September 10, 1914, when a large crowd assembled to see H.M.S. _Essex_ bring in as prize the Hamburg-Amerika line steamer _Bethania_ with five hundred naval reservists on board.

It is to be hoped that the completion of the Panama Canal may give to Port Royal a new era of commercial prosperity, unaccompanied by the drawbacks which attended its acquisition of wealth in the seventeenth century.

II
ST. CATHERINE

The parish of St. Catherine derived its name from the queen of Charles II., who was king of England when the parish was formed. In the first act in which it is mentioned it is correctly spelled Katharine. It consists of what before the passing of law 20 of 1867 constituted the parishes of St. Catherine, St. Dorothy, St. John and St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. St. Thomas-in-the-Vale was probably named after Sir Thomas Lynch. St. Dorothy, Roby, in his “Memorials of the Cathedral Church and Parish of St. Catherine” (1831), conjectures, received its name in compliment to Dorthy Wale, who had probably a large estate there.

=Passage Fort=, at first known as The Passage, probably so called by the Spaniards as being their place of embarkation from St. Jago de la Vega (Spanish Town), situated at the west end of Kingston harbour, first appears in the annals of Jamaica as the landing-place of a predatory expedition fitted out chiefly in Barbados and St. Kitts in 1642 by a certain Captain William Jackson, of whom little is known but of whose expedition a graphic account is given in a manuscript in the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum entitled: “CXVIII—Mercurius Americanus—A Briefe Journall, or a succinct and true relation of the most Remarkable Passages observed in the Voyage undertaken by Captain William Jackson to the West Indies or Continent of America. Anno Domini, 1642, September 27,” reprinted in “The West India Committee Circular,” May 9, 1911—January 16, 1912. The date, September 27, 1642, it may be mentioned, is the date of sailing, not of the writing of the account.

Richard Norwood, who was a minister of religion and a school teacher, writing under date May 14, 1645, from Somers Islands, now known as Bermuda, to the Governor and Company of Adventurers to the Somers Islands, alluded to the time when of late the valiant and victorious General Capt. Jackson arrived after his voyage through the West Indies, and added “it was doubtful how things would go.”

After attempts more or less successful on various islands and the Spanish main, Jackson, in the _Charles_, accompanied by the _Dolphin_ and the _Valentine_, put into Port Royal harbour on March 25, 1643. After trying the west coast of the harbour, where they perceived “noe passage,” they interrogated some prisoners and were led to Passage Fort “at a place where we found an Old Trench and a storehouse of Timber, lately sett by but not fully finished,” where, after a skirmish with both horse and foot of the enemy, they took the fort and marched past “divers workes,” one of which they dismantled, into Spanish Town. Jackson’s men were so pleased that they wished “to sett by their stacon here”; but the general, bent on robbing the Spaniards, had no taste for bucolic simplicity and gave up the town for “200 Beaves and 10,000 weight of cassavi bread for ye victualling of our ships, besides 20 Beaves every day for ye general expense till our departure and 7,000 pieces of Eight.” After spending sixteen days in “salting up our Beaves” Jackson and his men sailed away, but a few days later took a Spanish frigate “in an Harbour next to that where wee had formerly ridd at ankor,” probably Old Harbour.

The most important event, however, in the history of Passage Fort is the taking of Jamaica by the English in 1655. After an inexcusable failure on Hispaniola (or, to give it its original name, Haiti), due in some measure to silly jealousy between the naval and military authorities, when, to use Venables’s own words, passion usurped the seat of reason, and also to want of care—one might almost say of honesty—on the part of those responsible for the organization of the expedition, Penn and Venables, joint commanders of an expedition intended “to assault the Spaniard in the West Indies,” entered what we now call Kingston harbour on May 10, 1655, and anchored at about 11 A.M. On nearing the island it had been proclaimed to the whole army, as a result of the cowardice displayed in the attack on Hispaniola, that whoever should be found to turn his back on the enemy and run away, the next officer (that brought up the rear of that division) should immediately run him through, on penalty of death if he failed to do it.

PASSAGE FORT
]

There were thirty-eight ships in the three squadrons, and about seven thousand troops, without counting the sea regiment, who numbered nearly one thousand more.

A few shots fired into the fort from the _Martin_ (one of the smallest of the fleet, carrying but twelve guns and sixty men), which was run ashore as near the fort as possible, and the landing of the troops, seemed to have sufficed to disperse the Spaniards, whose best soldier, a major, had been disabled by a shot. They left three guns mounted in the fort.

Thus Jamaica was captured by a wretched army without the loss of a man. Colonel Clarke, who had died at sea on the 9th from wounds received at Hispaniola, was buried at Passage Fort on May 11.

The following account, signed W.B., and written probably by William Burrows, who was Sir William Penn’s chief clerk in the Navy Office after the Restoration, is taken from the journal of the _Swiftsure_:

The landing-places are two, and are only banks supported with stakes,
a matter of twenty yards long towards the water; all the rest being
trees and bushes, among which can be no good going ashore. At the more
eastward, where we landed, we saw the ordnance the Spaniards left; the
army having landed at the other, within that to the westward. A pretty
parcel of ground is cleared within the landing-places. About a furlong
and a half thence, the way leads into the wood, which continues till
within a quarter of a mile of the town; all the way being even,
without hills, and a fair path for eight to march abreast. At the
issuing out of the wood begins the Savanna, which stretches about, and
is very fair and plain to the westward of the town; so that I deemed
there might be room enough for 50,000 men to draw up in battalia.

The Rio Cobre has, since the conquest of the island, brought down so much sand and deposited it at its mouth that the site of Passage Fort is now some four or five hundred yards off the sea. In dry weather, it now meanders through a new course which it cut for itself in 1838, across the beach to the harbour, giving no idea of the power which it acquires in the rainy season. Here, as of old, is there “no good going ashore,” the slope of the beach being very gradual.

In “The Present State of Jamaica” (1683) we read: “Going from Port Royal to St. Jago de la Vega, people land at Passage, where a fort was in Col. Doyly’s time, and there is about thirty houses that are storehouses, alehouses, and horse keepers, and hackney coaches; this being the greatest passage in the island, it is two leagues from Port Royal by sea, and six miles from St. Jago by land.”

Totally destroyed by the earthquake of 1692, the village was but partially rebuilt, and was, when Long wrote his history (1774), of small importance, consisting of about fifteen houses, chiefly inhabited by wharfingers, warehouse keepers and the masters of wherries and hackney chaises, which plied with passengers to and from Port Royal and Spanish Town. Large ships could not lie alongside as there was not sufficient depth of water; and for this reason it was in a measure superseded by Port Henderson, where the depth of water is greater; but, with the abandonment of Spanish Town as the seat of government, both villages gradually diminished, and Passage Fort is to-day a mere fishing hamlet.

Richard Hill, in his “A Week at Port Royal” (1855), says:

The early maps of Saint Catherine’s show that there have occurred
deviations in the course of the Rio Cobre, that are not easily to be
reconciled by abundant rains. Antecedent to the discovery of the West
Indies, the embouchure of the river was perceptively in the ponds,
shut in by the narrow belt of land on which Fort Augusta stands, the
river having been at that time more of a surface stream, and striking
to _the sea due south; the outlet curving northward_, and embaying
Passage Fort. At the time of the conquest of the island by the English
the river flowed in an opposite direction _due north_, coursing the
foot of the Caymanas Mountains, and making the present lagoons in the
upper part of that plain its channel, seeking the _sea southward_,
through what is now an independent stream, called the Ferry River
(Fresh River). In 1722, in the midst of an extraordinary rain-storm,
this channel was suddenly quitted, and a straight line made
_eastward_. The settling waters, as they reached the Harbour of
Kingston, impeded by the easterly winds, regurgitated through the
lakelet into which they gathered themselves, and digging out the soil
at the foot of the mountains, made the present lagoons, increasing the
sea-board lands of Hunt’s Bay 3000 feet (three thousand).

In Spanish Town, the ancient capital, although there is nothing to speak to us of the native Arawâk, we can perhaps, better than anywhere else in the island, picture to ourselves the deeds of the Spaniards in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century; and especially the long struggles between the people’s or rather planters’ representatives and the government in the House of Assembly for a century and a half; together with the political and social entertainments at King’s House, as narrated for one short period in the graphic pages of Lady Nugent’s Journal, until, with the removal of the government to Kingston by Sir John Peter Grant, Spanish Town was shorn of its grandeur, to be only revived at rare intervals by such episodes as the consecration of the Bishop of Antigua in 1911.

Jackson gives the following account of the town in 1643.

The fame of our proceedings in other places had arrived here eight
days before us, so that they had time enough to convey all their best
household stuff away, leaving nothing behinde them of any value, but
onely ye possession of empty houses, with some few chaires, bedsteads,
jarres of Mountego, and ye like poore materialls. However, we feasted
ourselves this night with Hoggs, Henns, and other good provisions,
which wee found in and about ye Towne. This place is called by ye
inhabitants Sant Jago de la Vega, being a faire Town, consisting of
four or five hundred houses, built for ye most part with canes,
overcast with morter and lime, and covered with Tyle. It is beautiful
with five or six stately churches and chapples, and one Monastery of
Franciscan Fryers, and situated upon descent of a delectable and
spacious plaine, on ye North West whereof runneth a pleasant River,
whose streame doth empty itself into ye Harbour, distant from hence
about four miles Eastward, where our Fleet lay at ankor.

The houses, unlesse it bee in ye Markitt Place, stand somewhat
separated one from another, by which means it taketh up farr more
roome than thrice ye number of our comparted building in Europe.

The churches and houses of the Spaniards were for the most part destroyed by the Venables’s soldiery in sheer wantonness. But when they began to settle the island, they repaired those which were worth repairing. It is doubtful, however, if much Spanish work exists to-day.