Earthquake Destroys Port Royal, Jamaica

June 7, 1692

At eleven forty-three on a June morning, a catastrophic earthquake liquefied the sand beneath Port Royal, the wickedest city in Christendom, and swallowed two-thirds of it into the Caribbean. Two thousand died instantly; another three thousand perished in the aftermath. Preachers across the Atlantic called it divine judgment on a pirate capital that had gorged on plunder.