Pirates of the Caribbean

It was calm in Jamaica the morning of June 7, 1692. According to Edmund Heath’s eyewitness account, "there was no wind stirring" and nothing that made anyone suspicious of the calamity about to befall the island.

Suddenly, the earth shook. Within "4 minutes," many Port Royal houses were "swallowed up by the gaping earth." Other homes fell. The church, where Henry Morgan was buried, fell into the sea. (Morgan had died four years before the quake.) At least two-thirds of the pirate’s haven at Port Royal instantly ceased to exist. The town was the victim of a massive undersea earthquake.

The speed of the devastation was shocking. Heath observed:

I never in my life before saw such a day of terror...

It wasn’t the first time Port Royal residents had felt an earth tremor. In fact, as Heath worshiped in his synagogue, another person tried to calm him by suggesting that “after a little shaking it would be over.” When the walls of the synagogue started to fall, however, Heath and his wife tried to flee to Morgan’s Fort where they thought they would be safe. But on the way

...the Earth opened and swallowed up many People before my face...

When the sea came “mounting in over the wall,” caused by an earthquake-produced seismic sea wave, Heath believed he was a dead man. Miraculously, he survived to describe the “sad spectacle” of “the whole Harbour covered” with death and destruction.

Port Royal, a town which had prospered on the “booty” of pirates, would never fully recover. Its importance was replaced by Kingston across the bay, which itself was nearly leveled by a terrible earthquake in 1907.

As for pirates of the Caribbean, their heyday was also approaching its end. Although famous men like Edward Teach (more commonly known as “Blackbeard”) continued to terrorize ships in the vicinity for a time, even he was defeated (in 1718) by the British Royal Navy. He met his end at North Carolina’s Ocracoke Inlet.

Captain William (sometimes called "Robert") Kidd, who had originally received a privateer’s license (this is his Letter of Marque from King William III) to protect ships owned by the East India Company, met a different fate. He was sent back to England, accused as a murderous pirate himself, where he breathed his last at the end of a hangman’s noose. (See page 178 of The Pirates Own Book - Authentic Narratives of the Most Celebrated Sea Robbers, by Charles Ellms, originally published in 1837.)

What, exactly, was the East India Company? How much power did it really have over Caribbean trade?