To drive or not to drive.... to Port Royal

Today was the day of Port Royal... We had organised to get a rent-a-car to head out to Port Royal for to see PIRATE HISTORY, more importantly - to see where Captain Henry Morgan lived and ruled etc.

We decided to get a taxi to the rent-a-car place since we couldn't find it on the map. This was a good decision since - it was MILES away. If anyone ever is on Knutsford road, and wants to get to Robert Plaza on Redhill - DON'T even think about walking - it would take forever!

Upon getting to the rent-a-car place, it looked like something out of what you would find in the lower end of Woodstock back in Cape Town. The place looked dodgy - so we got our taxi driver to wait for a bit. The lady there was really disorganised and took forever to do anything. Luckily the Inspector from some Governing body was there, who drew us a map to get to Port Royal, and she sort of helped us communicate with the rent-a-car people. When the Owner rocked up, she then went off and spoke to her... so we continued with the signing of the contracts.. The lady (rent-a-car lady) then said that we had to pay an extra 50 US dollars to drop the car at the airport. We threw our toys out, and the owner guy then stepped in cos the Inspector was there, and that was waived - WOHOO. We also got the car for a reduced rate. The car we got was a Mazda Demlio or something. Its not that great, but it does the job!!

So we headed out - with James behind the wheel since he had his drivers license with him, and my ones expired! Traffic was interesting - we have a LOT of video footage of that, so I'll spare the gory details. We also put in $500 in petrol (Jamaican) which was about 8litres!

The road to Port Royal goes passed the airport, and we stopped on the side to look at a ship wreck - just lying there. If this was Cape Town - it would have been salvaged quickly! This ship was just rusting and rotting away.... quite sad to see. The beach it was lying on was filthy - no one interested to do any form of clean up...

James here, just a bit of Indiana Jones style history about the Port and Captain Henry Morgan :)

In the days before Pirates, Port Royal was like any other Port in the Caribbean, not doing so well for itself with the occasional merchant ship coming in and regularly be plundered by Buccaneers of enemy nations. Buccaneers were basically Pirates operating under a blessing from their King and country and ransacked other countries ships and ports.
The then Governor of Port Royal took it upon himself to invite Buccaneers into the port without prejudice from the law under the condition that they help protect the port, this agreement worked well and the town flourished with the added protection of the buccaneers.
Eventually the buccaneers became to numerous and the town was over run with brothels, taverns and generally bad folk, and yep you guessed it the main man was Captain Henry Morgan! At the same time Port Royal was also home to Edward "Black Beard" Teach and at some stage in its history, Lord Horatio Nelson.
Eventually in the 1600's England and Spain signed a treaty and ordered their buccaneers to cease all hostillities. The bucaneers, now jobless, were unimpressed and the lead bucaneer, Henry Morgan, took no heed of the new treaty and in true Pirate fashion raided and flattened the Spanish port of Panama City in one of his most famous conquests, and so were born the new buccaneers, Pirates!
Shortly after Morgans Panama City raid the English arrested him and brought him back to England for trial. Here the story gets sketchy as soon he is back in Port Royal and is made Governor of the Port by the English King!
Henry Morgan died before the 1692 earth quake that sunk Port Royal and is buried in the old city of Port Royal that was swallowed but the waves.
Before he died Henry Morgan donated three of his personal possessions to St Peters Anglican Church in Port Royal, a Silver Tray, Silver Wine Goblet and a Silver Beer Tankard that he plundered from his raid on Panama.
In the years leading up to the earthquake Port Royal became know as "The wickedest city in the new world" and was over run by lawless Pirates who answered to no one!

Back to Richard

Now - more importantly - when we eventually got to Port Royal, we sort of just followed the one road and ended up at Fort Charles, the main defences of the Port which in its heyday bristled with 104 cannons!. This was cool. We parked right there, and joined a tour immediately. We heard all about the Fort, and the history of Port Royal, and about the two earth quakes. The first one in 1692, and then the second one in 1907. Both of these changed Port royal dramatically by reclaiming new land from the sea and sinking half the town into the sea. Also - some of the buildings were either raised or sunk a few feet into the ground. Eg. - Giddy house (buit in 1888 and where they stored the ammo prior to 1907) - was tipped at about a 30degree angle!

James here again, I have edited the next paragraph to be more dramatic :)

After the Official Tour, we got our Tour Guide to give us a rundown of who Henry Morgan was, and what he did while he was the head honcho at Fort Charles, We then enquired about St Peters Church - where Henry Morgans Goblet was used for communions. She told us that the church was closed and only open on Sundays but if we go down the road and look for a lady named Patty who lived next to the Church she might open the church for us. Needless to say, we did, and found patty sitting in her yard. She took us to the Church and opened the door with the biggest key we have ever seen! Inside the church was amazing. There were plaques on the wall for several old sailors that had passed away. We looked for a glass display cabinet that might still hold the possessions of Henry Morgan, but alas we could not see one.
We asked Patty about the goblets etc and we were not prepared for what happened next. She took us to the side Rectory office, opened a cupboard and removed all three items! The tray, goblet and tankard that were pillaged from Panama City by Captain Henry Morgan and used as his personal utensils until donated to the church, were right there in front of us! (insert suitable "holy grail" music here) The man must have been a serious drinker, (well he was a Pirate!) as I have never seen such a massive tankard in mt life! 2Litres easy! Needless to say we had pictures taken and paid our respects to The Captain and Patty before leaving.

Back to Rich :)

When we left the church and drove around for a bit, but there wasn't much else to see. We stopped in at the Morgans Warf Hotel and that seemed nice and had an Appletons VX Jamaican Rum on the rocks. VERY SMOOTH!!!!

Now - one of the reasons we went there was to find Pirate stuff and in particular - a PIRATE FLAG! There were no shops there let alone PIRATE shops! We were directed to go to the Harbour in downtown Kingston to the Craft Market... So off we went!

Now the craft market was basically just into stuff that said Jamaica on it. We bought a bottle opener and some playing cards. This was after walking around the whole thing, and going through almost every stall. I started to get tired of this - since every store sold basically the same stuff! We were there for a little while, then headed off.

Next we took a drive into the Blue Mountains in search of world famous coffee and a look out over Kingston, but you will get that story next time along with the pics of Port Royal and Strawberry hill in the Blue Mountains.