QUARANTINE BLOG # 607

November 27, 2021

A few miles down the road from Norman Manley International Airport, you reach the limits of old Port Royal. There is a brass plaque. 

Most people do not stop to read the words.

Port Royal lived a short, fast life. It was like Rick’s Café in Casablanca: Sooner or later everyone came to the city. Slave traders, spies, and English dukes brushed shoulders with plantation owners and common whores. 

Port Royal was famous for sexual excess. Men paid 500 pieces of eight just to see “a common strumpet” naked. Some had unique names like No-Conscience Nan, and Salt-Beef Peg. The most famous of them was Mary Carleton. Of her, a contemporary said: “A stout frigate she was or else she never could have endured so many batteries and assaults.” The sights so disgusted one cleric that he left by the same ship that had brought him, declaring: “This town is the Sodom of the New World.”

But people like these can be found throughout the history of the Caribbean. What makes Port Royal special are the pirates. These men altered the fate of the New World but, after having brought the Spanish Main to its knees, they became disposable and were hunted down. Port Royal became the crossroads of two empires because of Henry Morgan and his men. 

The original city lies 15 feet under the surface of the Caribbean Sea, a once rich and vibrant city now fallen silent. Her story begins in England over three centuries ago.

Oliver Cromwell ruled the short-lived Commonwealth of England from 1649 until his death, by natural causes, in 1658. He was buried in Westminster Abbey until the Royalists returned to power in 1660. 

They had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. His head was reburied 300 years later, in 1960.

In the winter of 1654, Cromwell fitted a fleet for an expedition that was aimed at the heart of the great Spanish world empire. There was one man on the ships, anonymous as yet to history. In the space of eight short years, this brilliant leader would be known. His name was Henry Morgan.

The New World had been Spain’s ever since 1493 when Pope Alexander VI  divided the world between Spain and Portugal. England, France, and the Netherlands – the other players in the great game of empire – never agreed to the terms. 

King Francis I of France remarked acidly, “I should like to see the clause in Adam’s will that excludes me from a share in the new world.”

King Francis I of France

When the English reached their goal of Hispaniola they were quickly turned back. The Spanish soldiers, with indulgences around their necks granting them instant entry into heaven should they die fighting the English devils, peppered them with shot and ball. Twenty days after their landing, a retreat from Hispaniola was called. 

The English turned to the lightly defended island of Jamaica which lay in a crucial position along the Spanish treasure routes. It was the choke point between the Central American collection spots and the sea routes to Spain. The English had stumbled on a strategic windfall. They took Jamaica in 5 days, putting themselves in a position to wreak havoc with the stream of gold that helped sustain the Spanish Empire.

It was indeed a rich man's world. This was Spain’s golden age. And gold it was. The amounts of Americas’ wealth are staggering: between 1500 and 1650, 180 tons of gold flowed through the port of Seville.

But it was the 16,000 tons of silver that allowed for uniform coins to be made and distributed throughout the world, creating the global economy. 

The estimated value of the treasure taken from the Americas ranges from $4 to $6 billion in unadjusted dollars; its present-day worth would be $200 billion.

In spite of those staggering sums, Spain was radically overextended; Every mile of territory that was conquered had to be pacified, guarded, supplied, and administered. King Philip IV, in October 1643, the king wrote, “Any disturbance in the flow of gold could threaten the very existence of the empire.”

King Philip IV of Spain

Pirates like Henry Morgan were about to disturb that flow of gold. Next week, “Morgan’s First Raid.”

👉  Today’s close is from Praying with the Psalms, by Eugene H. Peterson.

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, and You have crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:3-5).

In physical size human beings are midgets; in the stellar universe they are barely noticeable, a speck of cosmic dust. In spiritual significance they are giants; set in the purposes of God, the Creator of heaven and earth, they are gloriously majestic.

Prayer: Lord, I look at the skies and am humbled – I am such a minute item in your creation. Then I listen to your word and am exalted – I am such an honored child! “How majestic is thy name in all the earth!” Amen.

-30-