Stephan Talty - Empire of Blue Water

Contents

For Mariekarl

Impious was the man who first spread sail and braved the dangers of the frantic deep.

A UGUSTUS

Timeline

1492: Christopher Columbus makes his first voyage to America.

1493: Pope Alexander VI issues his first papal bull, or charter, giving Spain dominion over all lands discovered and undiscovered in the New World.

14931550: Spain explores and colonizes the New World.

1519: The conquistador Hernn Corts arrives off the coast of Mexico.

1540: Spain forbids any foreign ship from trading with its settlements in the Caribbean.

1544: Potoss silver ore is discovered.

1586: The Elizabethan privateer Francis Drake raids Santo Domingo.

1588: The Spanish Armada is defeated.

1596: Francis Drake dies off the coast of Portobelo.

1621: Philip IV ascends to the Spanish throne.

1623: Thomas Warner takes possession of the small Caribbean island of St. Kitts, the first territory settled by a non-Spanish force in the West Indies.

1625: Charles I is crowned king of England.

1626: English settlers take possession of Barbados.

1628: The Dutch captain Piet Hein captures the West Indies treasure fleet, causing Spain to default on her loans.

1635: Henry Morgan is born in Wales.

1642: The first English Civil War begins, between the forces of Charles I and the armies eventually commanded by Oliver Cromwell.

1648: Thomas Gages A New Survey of the West Indies is published.

1649: Charles I is executed.

1650: The sugar crop in Barbados is valued at 3 million pounds.

1651: The third English Civil War ends.

1655: The Hispaniola expedition conquers Jamaica for England.

1660: Oliver Cromwell dies. Charles II is crowned king of England.

1664: Morgan sacks Granada.

1664: Elizabeth Morgan, Henrys cousin and future wife, arrives in Port Royal.

166566: Morgan marries Elizabeth.

1667: The Treaty of Breda, signed by France, the United Provinces, and England, declares peace between the three nations.

1668: Morgan makes his raid on Portobelo.

1669: Morgan is granted his first tract of land in Jamaica.

1669: The Oxford explodes. Morgan changes his plan to attack Cartagena.

1669: William Godolphin arrives in Madrid to begin negotiations for a peace treaty with Spain.

1669: Morgan sacks Maracaibo.

1670: The Treaty of Madrid between Spain and England is adopted.

1671: Morgan raids Panama.

1672: Morgan is arrested and brought back to England.

1675: Charles II knights Morgan and appoints him deputy governor of Jamaica.

1676: Morgan returns to Jamaica as deputy governor.

1678: Morgan is appointed acting governor of Jamaica.

1678: Esquemelings Buccaneers of America is published in the Netherlands.

1683: The Council of Jamaica suspends Morgan after a dispute with Governor Lynch.

1685: Morgan settles a libel suit with the publishers of Buccaneers of America after reading the English translation.

1688: Henry Morgan dies of dropsy.

1692: Port Royal is struck by a devastating natural disaster.

Introduction: The Lost City

T o get to the lost city of Port Royal, you take the busy road to the Michael Manley International Airport, jostling on the crowded roads with the streams of cars and motorcycles and the taxis packed full of the people that flock to Jamaica from every corner of the world. At the airport entrance, the vehicles carrying the tourists, red and sated with sun, swing right toward the planes waiting to ferry them back to northern, less friendly cities. You continue straight. The faces in the other taxis (perhaps they know you from the hotel) turn and watch with concern as your van disappears down the half-deserted road. Isnt he going home? Everything for which the world comes to Jamaicathe Bob Marley Museum, the hotel poolslies the other way. All that is at the end of this road is the ruins of a very old, and a very wicked, place.

Down the road a way sits the wrecked, overturned cockpit of a plane whose fuselage has completely disappeared, and past that a beached freighter lies stranded by some legendary hurricane. (The driver tells you its been there since he was a boy, and hes easily thirty-five.) Beyond them the land on each side of the road narrows; the water creeps close to the road, and soon you are riding just a few feet above its gleaming, fretted surface. Youre now traveling on the neck of the Palisadoes, the thin peninsula so tenuously attached to the Jamaican mainland that it has disappeared for generations at a time, whipped away by hurricanes, until silt from the ocean rebuilds it. It seems as if a good wave could wash right over it and cut you off from the world and that you would glide toward your destination over the blue waves.

A few miles down the road, you reach the limits of the old town. Across from a bus stop where Jamaican schoolgirls tease schoolboys as they wait for their ride home sits a small, iron-fenced lot overgrown with weeds; in the corner is a brass plaque. Most people not from here stop to read the words.

Once called the richest and wickedest city in the world, Port Royal was also the virtual capital of Jamaica. To it came men of all races, treasures of silks, doubloons and gold from Spanish ships, looted on the high seas by the notorious Brethren of the Coast as the pirates here were called. From here sailed the fleets of Henry Morgan, later lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, for the sacking of Camaguay, Maracaibo, and Panamaand died here, despite the ministrations of his Jamaican folk-doctor.

There is a last, dark chapter referred to on the plaque, but that can wait. The quoted section is an admirable summary; the main facts are all there, if only a hint of their true drama. But if others, such as the Spanish, were given the chance to sum up Port Royals history, there would be a different tone to it: blood, heathen orgies, midnight attacks, decapitations, routine torture, Spanish queens trembling with rage because of what had issued from this old port. The victors write the calmest prose, especially when they are English.

Just past the overgrown lot is a church, and walking toward it is a group of men and women dressed in seventeenth-century outfits. They cant bebut they are. Pirates! Or at least people dressed like pirates. As they get closer, you can pick up their accents and realize they are Americans; it turns out they are members of a pirate club, secretaries and office managers dressed in fantastically authentic period gear, the men in boots and doublets, a pewter drinking mug latched to a leather belt, the women with their breasts cresting out of their blouses. Theyve flown here on a pilgrimage to the home of Henry Morgan, the greatest of the buccaneers. We go together into St. Pauls Cathedral; inside are several pieces of loota chalice, plate, and other silver itemscarried from the great raid on Panama by Morgan and donated to the church. One of the club members speaks up, a shy redheaded young man from Chicago, his face flushed with an urgent emotion. Can I ask you a huge favor? he asks the tour guide. Can I just sit next to them? He does, and his eyes look on them as a Christian would look at a splinter of the true cross.