Why Is There a City Full of Dead Pirates on the Ocean Floor?

hey 42 here for a few short decades in the 17th century a tiny city perched at the end of a 29 kilometer sandbar in the caribbean earned itself the unofficial title of the wickedest place on earth the reason for this formidable reputation was simple port royal as the city was known was packed almost to bursting with the free peas of pure perversion pirates privateers and prostitutes and plunder the four p's of pure perversion pirates privateers prostitutes and plunder and parrots the five you get the idea port royal was a place where money could buy you anything or anyone where keeping yourself well hydrated meant downing rum until you went blind and where petty squabbles were settled not with words but with swords and yet as fast as both the city and its reputation grew within just 37 years almost everyone in port royal would be dead so was it drink that killed them the constant fighting the impressive array of stds no according to many it was something rather more biblical than that good old-fashioned divine retribution but before we get into all that let's see how this apparently insignificant settlement in the caribbean grew to become the world's most notorious city on his second voyage to the new world christopher columbus landed on a rather beautiful island in the caribbean despite being italian by birth columbus sailed under the patronage of spain and so upon arrival he claimed the island for his adopted monarchs queen of isabella and king ferdinand which probably came as something of a shock to the indigenous taino people who'd been living there for a good thousand years or so at the time but it's safe to say columbus wasn't overly worried about hurting anyone's feelings and after a hastily mumbled hippity-hoppity the island's my property as far as he was concerned the mata was settled the locals called the island jamaica which the spanish gradually morphed into the name we know today jamaica jamaica would remain under spanish rule for some 146 years but it wasn't seen as much of a priority for the spanish empire whose colonization efforts were focused on the mainland to the west as a result the strange sand pit poking out from the island where the city of port royal would eventually flourish was almost entirely overlooked but that all changed when the brits turned up looking for a fight in 1655 the invasion force of 17 warships had been dispatched to the spanish west indies by oliver cromwell as part of his western design campaign cromwell was very much of the opinion that taking over the world was a one player game and he was determined to boot to pesky spanish off his server before they ticked off all the achievements the island of espanola was the main target for the attack but when cromwell's fleet turned up they found it to be rather better defended than expected the invasion had been planned with the element of surprise in mind but the spanish had gotten wind of the impending attack and since in those days it took up to two months to cross the atlantic they'd have plenty of time to shore up to defenses on hispaniola when the british fleet eventually arrived it was repelled with almost laughable ease the leaders of the invasion force were left with two options either return home to face oliver cromwell who wasn't exactly famous for his merciful nature empty-handed or try and distract from their failure by offering him something else instead they opted for the latter and that something else turned out to be the far less well-defended island of jamaica which the british force soon captured and stuck a flag in it by my book as it happened cromwell wasn't fooled by this weird kind of island-based bait and switch and he threw the leaders of the invasion force into the tower of london as soon as they arrived home but back in jamaica those who had stayed behind were quickly beginning to realize the strategic value of their shiny new colony with its strange sandbar that created a large natural harbour perfect for sheltering ships port royal was built right at the end of the sunspit which was surrounded by deep water meaning large ships could dock there easily to offload their cargo it was the perfect spot to establish what would soon become the caribbean's premier trade hub but there was one problem the british were still very much outnumbered in the caribbean and with the invasion force long since departed it was feared a spanish counter-attack could come at any moment despite the fact the invasion force had clearly called no takesies backseas when capturing the island with this in mind no fewer than five forts were built around the new city of port royal but even a hundred forts aren't much use when you don't have the men to fill them and seeing as attempting to conquer the world was very much a full-time occupation for the british at this point there simply weren't enough able-bodied men left over to defend either jamaica or port royal and so the island's new governor a man named edward doily had to get creative he figured that seeing as he didn't have an army of his own to protect port royal he might as well hire a few people from the local area to defend it for him and this being the caribbean in the 17th century the locals he found turned out to be a bunch of fearsome pirates now on the face of it inviting a horde of pirates into your city in the name of national security might sound like a monumentally bad idea a bit like hiring a kleptomaniac to house it in the hope of scaring off burglars but it was actually kind of ingenious not only was port royal suddenly extremely well defended by scary types with eye patches and a fondness for rum but by getting the pirates on side the governor had effectively eliminated them as a threat you could say he'd killed two parrots with one stone you could but you probably shouldn't still hiring bloodthirsty pirates was always going to be a bit of a tricky pr exercise so perhaps to make the idea seem a bit less mental to the higher-ups back in england doily gave his pirates a new more family-friendly job title privateer in reality the difference between a pirate and privateer was paper thin in fact it was a literal piece of paper a commission known as a letter of mark that gave privateers the right to claim enemy ships in the name of the british empire it was still essentially piracy it just wasn't illegal anymore like quantitative easing the more you consider his plan the more you come to realise governor doily was a 4d chess kind of guy take the cost of his new army for example hiring mercenaries in those days was usually an expensive business but these privateers didn't cost port royal a penny quite the opposite in fact whenever the privateers returned from a raid laden with booty a fifth of the loot would be sent back to england a temp would go to the admiralty and the twelfth would go straight into port royal's coffers governor doyley hadn't recruited any old bunch of sea dogs either these were none other than the brethren of the coast a band of pirates and privateers led by welshman captain henry morgan this motley crew may well be the most famous coalition of pirates ever to have sailed the seven seas and their impact on popular culture can still be seen today some 350 years later most of you will be familiar with their leader captain morgan mostly because his name has since been borrowed by the world's third most popular brand of rome and the brethren court from the pirates of the caribbean franchise was based on morgan and his men even those pirates codes jack sparrow wouldn't stop banging on about in the films were real rules well guidelines laid down by the brethren considering their reputation it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that captain morgan and those who sailed with him took to the task of defending port royal like they were born to it although having said that pirates aren't much into manning forts and defending shorelines so instead of sitting around twiddling their cutlasses waiting for action inside port royal the brethren of the coast set about launching a series of devastating raids on nearby spanish trade routes as well as settlements on the spanish-owned mainland and thanks to the sheer weight of gold and jewels the spanish were helping themselves to in central and south america at the time these raids were mind-bogglingly lucrative in a single attack on panama captain morgan and his men are said to have taken home the equivalent of four million dollars in today's money and with the brethren's code stipulating fair distribution of loot amongst the crew a single mission of that size will pay a lowly privateer two or three times the annual salary of most jobs of the day privateering paid so well it was difficult to convince young men to do anything else and labor shortages in jamaica were soon all too common but that didn't really matter because with so many pirates out on the prowl ships laden with booty began arriving into port royal on almost a daily basis and within a matter of years the city was home to many of the richest and most successful pirates i mean privateers ever to have lived these were still bloodthirsty brutal men they just happened to have enough pieces of eight in their pockets to live like kings and so live like kings is exactly what they did drunk sex-crazed kings by the way i should probably clear something up quickly contrary to popular belief pieces of eight aren't some kind of special pirate currency it's just another name for the spanish dollar a silver coin that's widely considered to have been the first global currency first minted in the 1570s pieces of aid were used in parts of asia europe africa and the americas right up until the 19th century believe it or not you could spend pieces of eight in the u.s right up until 1857. the name comes from the fact the spanish dollar was worth eight reals and it was common practice to physically cut the coin into ace to make change so whilst pirates would certainly have used pieces of eight so did everyone else at the time and there was nothing inherently piratey about the currency so if you're wondering why we associate them with pirates today we have robert louis stevenson to thank for that in the novel treasure island long john silva's parrot had been trained to squawk pieces of eight at regular intervals and that one little detail has seen the world connect pirates and pieces of eight ever since as a little piece of bonus trivia two eighths of a spanish dollar also known as two bits made up a quarter of a piece of eight which is why some americans still call quarters two bits today though it's safe to assume most of them have no idea they're referring to pieces of eight when they do so anyway before i accidentally turn this into a video about the history of global currencies what a thriller that would be let me get back to my point it was practically raining pieces of eight in port royal and as you can imagine the average 17th century pirate was careful to invest his hard-won cash into a considered portfolio of diverse asset classes in the hopes of building a nice little nest egg for himself and his pirate family upon retirement just kidding these men weren't the saving types they spent every penny they earned on hard boos and soft women and demand for those two most precious of commodities was so high it's estimated that at the height of port royals infamy one in four buildings in the city was either an inn or a brothel sounds a bit like hull so what do you get if you put a bunch of very rich pirates into a very small city packed with roman prostitutes well you quickly end up with something that would get this video banned immediately if i was to either describe or show it to you but to give you an idea written accounts from the time tell us that the pirates of port royal would spend as much as 3 000 pieces of eight shall we say satiating their various appetites in a single night that's around about 150 000 pounds in today's money according to one story a pirate returning from sea where he'd had the company of only men for far too long paid a passing woman 500 pieces of eight that's about 25 grams today just to see her naked time sure were tough before pornhub if you were to teleport back in time and take a stroll down one of port royal's narrow streets you'd likely find yourself dodging gunfights accepting tankers of rum from passing drunks and turning down the advances of various ladies of the night or possibly haggling with them for a better price if you're the type that thinks sleeping with a prostitute doesn't count when you're time travelling oh and it goes without saying that you would of course be knee-deep in sea men sorry i couldn't resist with a growing reputation as one of the most dangerous yet downright exciting places on planet earth people flocked to port royal from far and wide in just a few years the city was home to as many as 10 000 souls all packed onto just 51 acres of land at the end of a sun spit that might not sound like much in the context of our modern mega cities but the world was a very different place in the 17th century at the time the british captured port royal new york had a population of just four and a half thousand people by the end of the 17th century port royal was the largest richest and fastest growing english city in the new world but like a 12 year old who smokes three packs of benson and hedges super kings a day that growth was about to be brutally stunted to those on the outside looking in the extravagant lifestyle of the inhabitants of port royal had gotten so out of hand they felt it was only a matter of time before someone in a position of authority stepped in and put a stop to it of course this was the 17th century and so the authority figure they were talking about wasn't the governor of jamaica or even william of orange king of england at the time no the person they had in mind went by the name of god in the book of genesis the cities of sodom and gomorrah were destroyed by a vengeful god in an act of divine retribution because they had become senses of vice and sin and plenty of god-fearing christians felt it was only a matter of time before port royal suffered the very same fate which is why nobody was surprised when a massive earthquake shook jamaica in 1692 well i say nobody was surprised it was certainly a surprise for the people living in port royal being built on a sandbar the city's foundations were dug into little more than loose sand the violent shaking of the earthquake combined with the fact the ground was saturated with water caused the sand to liquefy in an instant port royal became one giant pit filled with quicksand which promptly began swallowing entire buildings whole and before the city's inhabitants even had a chance to run for cover a tsunami caused by the earthquake washed in breaking over the city like the tide coming in over a sand castle as many as 5000 people were killed in the disaster 2000 engulfed in sand and water and a further 3 000 from injury and disease in the aftermath when the literal sand had settled almost half the land on which the city had been built was simply gone despite the devastation the people of port royal were tenacious and they began the slow and painful task of rebuilding what was left of the city now as far as i'm concerned the whole divine retribution angle is pretty flimsy but if the big man upstairs really was behind this one it's safe to say someone in port royal must have pissed him off well really because not long after the quake a giant fire consumed half the city and there were a few brave souls stuck that one out too no fewer than four major hurricanes would visit port royal over the following years it was almost as though god had set an ongoing natural disaster schedule running and then completely forgotten to cancel it despite all that port royal survives even now but it's no longer the vibrant den of vice it once was in fact it's pretty much the opposite instead of our three two five peas of perversion the modern day city which is now just a village is home to the free f's of quiet fulfillment fishermen families and yeah i can't think of another ref it's home to the two f's of fulfillment fishermen and families but beneath the waves out in the harbour what's left of the old pirate hideout now known as the city that sank is still uh perfectly preserved it's considered to be the most important underwater archaeological site in the western hemisphere a kind of 17th century pompeii buried not by fire and ash but by sand and water and it has such cultural importance that unesco have it on their tentative list to possibly become a world heritage site if they're feeling in the right mood at some point in the future quite how the good people at unesco are going to frame all the sex murder and alcohol on their educational material remains to be seen but i for one hope we all get the chance to find out thank you for watching you can now buy my new book sticker flag in it on amazon or get the audio book on audible you'll find a link to both in the description below thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,022,300

Rating: 4.9247108 out of 5

Keywords: port royal, pirate, city, underwater, lost, old, mystery

Id: Kinv4VU9YEo

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021