| Disasters
|
[
Disasters ] [ Main Menu ] |
|
|
|
11922 |
|
|
Date: August 06, 2022 at 13:15:11
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Port Royal Earthquake Jamaica June 7, 1692 |
URL: https://devastatingdisasters.com/port-royal-earthquake-jamaica-june-7-1692/ |
|
Port Royal Earthquake Jamaica June 7, 1692
History of this disaster:
Port Royal was a city on a sand spit in the harbor of
Jamaica, Kingston. It was hit with an earthquake and
tsunami and the whole city sank into the ocean.
On June 7, 1692, Port Royal, Jamaica, experienced a
powerful earthquake and a tsunami. Larger houses
collapsed almost immediately and smaller ones slid off
the land into the harbor as a widespread state of
liquefaction dislocated their sandy foundations. Before
the end of the day most of the city had disappeared
beneath the waters of Kingston Harbor. Most of those
who were left standing in the midst of all the
destruction were swept into the sea by the tsunami. Two
thousand were killed immediately and an additional two
thousand died later from injuries or disease. The
citys graveyard was a victim of the earthquake so the
survivors, as they sought to recover some of their
possessions, had to cope with a frightening scene.
There were coffins and bodies from the graveyard
floating around along with those who had just been
killed. As they continued their search they had to
fight against a group of thieves who were taking
advantage of the chaotic situation.
Few people seeing modern day Port Royal, Jamaica, a
small isolated fishing village at the tip of a sand
spit that extends into Kingston Harbor for about
eighteen miles, would ever think that it once played a
major role in the politics of the Caribbean and
England. All the evidence now lies beneath the water of
Kingston Harbor. Port Royal is the only sunken city in
the western hemisphere. Founded soon after the conquest
of the island of Jamaica from the Spanish by an English
invasion force in 1655, Port Royal went through a
spectacular rise in wealth and influence. Just before
the earthquake it was the largest English town in the
New World, and the most affluent. Every visitor was
impressed with the multistoried brick buildings, quite
a contrast to other English colonial towns in the New
World. It had a population of more than seven thousand
and rivaled Boston in size and economic power, the only
other city of comparable importance at that time.
The English turned Port Royal into a strategic military
and naval base. Its location in the middle of the
Caribbean made it ideal for trade. Trade, as well as
loot, dominated the economy in those times. The
European powers extracted wealth from their colonies
and brought it back to Europe in ships. If a country
happened to have a powerful naval force it was
considered fair game to raid the ships of other
countries and empty their cargos of gold and other
valuables. England was one country that engaged in that
kind of enterprise. During its heyday, Port Royal was
laid out with broad unpaved streets, named after
familiar streets in London, each lined with buildings
ranging in height from one to four stories. There were
several sidewalks lined with bricks and rents ran as
high as the highest found anywhere in London, maybe
because London was still recovering from a devastating
fire and an equally destructive plague. Port Royal in
1692 occupied a space of more than fifty acres at the
western tip if the sand spit that extended out from
Kingston Harbor, and after the earthquake only twenty
of those acres were still above water. It was a little
different on parts of the spit nearer to shore. Their
underlying foundations of coral, below a hundred feet
of unconsolidated sand, seemed to be more solid. Those
who started running toward the shore at the first
indication of an earthquake were saved.
The tsunamis that caused so much trouble came from
submarine landslides. The various movements in the
faults around the harbor of Kingston occurred
horizontally, as strike-slip actions. There were no
vertical displacements. The powerful earthquake created
spaces for these landslides and the five-foot tsunami
that ensued, mainly inside the harbor area between the
peninsula and the main part of the island, swept more
than twenty vessels off their moorings and sunk them
into the harbor. At the same time, Port Royal was
overwhelmed by the same tsunami and most of it sank
into deep water to remain submerged for more than two
centuries, providing scientists today with a well-
preserved record of an early settlement. A brass watch
that was recovered in later years appeared to have
stopped at 11:43 and archeologists wondered if that
represented the exact time of the earthquake. For
earthquakes like the one of 1692, the return period
lies between two hundred and five hundred years. Hence,
a repeat of a similar earthquake and tsunamis could
occur at any time. The experiences of those who were
still standing after the disaster, mainly by holding on
to a branch or pole, provide a useful description of
liquefaction. They told of streets rising and falling
like waves of the sea. They saw people disappear in the
sand and later reappear as stronger waves washed over
the streets and carried quantities of sand out to sea.
Others that sank into the sand never reappeared.
Experiences of this type have often been documented in
other earthquakes. Similar events happened in San
Francisco in 1906, in Massachusetts in 1755, and more
recently in New Orleans in 2005. The reasons for these
recurrences are easy to understand.
Unconsolidated stretches of sand, especially these near
the sea in major cities, are valuable and suitable
sites for building. Either because they did not know of
the dangers of liquefaction, or because they did know
but were able to persuade authorities to give them
permission, construction companies have built large
subdivisions on such places, hoping that the next
earthquake would not arrive soon. In far too many
places it was a false hope. As so often occurs, in the
midst of tragedy, there are instances of unexpected
courage and generosity. The slave of one master of a
ship decided to jump overboard to save his master after
he had been swept off his ship into the sea. The slave
reached his master and brought him safely back to the
ship but then, too exhausted to stay afloat, lost his
own life. Slaves were still slaves in 1692 and they
were valuable property for those who owned them. In the
chaotic situation that followed the earthquake slave
owners were afraid that they would either start a
revolt or escapeneither happened.
Reconstruction of Port Royal was ultimately a big
problem. It had so little land left that everyone
wondered how it could continue to carry its former
responsibilities. Kingston was not an acceptable
alternative for several reasons: it had a high death
rate because it was so unhealthy and it was not easily
defended if attacked by land and sea simultaneously.
Furthermore, since sailing ships were the only kind
available in the late seventeenth century, Kingston was
not accessible in windy weather. England decided to let
both ports, Kingston and Port Royal, share
responsibilities for all shipping.
In 1907, a submarine landslide occurred in almost the
same location as the one that occurred in 1692. This
new submarine landslide generated a tsunami that
overwhelmed the peninsula where Port Royal had stood.
The earthquake that gave rise to the tsunami caused
enormous damage to places all along the shores of
Jamaica. At one location, the sea was observed to
withdraw as far as three hundred feet within three
minutes after the earthquake and to return as a
destructive eight-foot wave. The fact that only three
minutes elapsed between earthquake and tsunami makes it
clear that the landslide happened very close to shore.
A pilot and crew of a ship witnessed the return to
shore of the tsunami. They saw both the peninsula and
the town of Kingston disappear from view for some time.
Shortly afterward, seiches as high as eight feet were
observed in Kingston Harbor. One thousand people died
in the town of Kingston, mainly from falling buildings,
and another thousand were injured. Approximately 90,000
were left homeless.
Nothing like seventeenth-century Port Royal remains in
that location today. Visitors now see a fishing
community of less than 2,000 along with an abandoned
British Naval Base, now used by the Jamaican Coast
Guard. Jamaica is an independent nation now so the
marks of former British activities lie, for the most
part, under the sea. The ships and houses that sank in
1692 now form part of a magnificent museum and a unique
center for archeological research. On land and sea
above all these, in the years since 1692, Jamaica has
experienced many more disasters. There was a fire in
1703, completely destroying all that was left or had
been rebuilt of the old city of Port Royal. Hurricanes
hit it in 1722 and again in 1744 and on both occasions
everything came down and had to be rebuilt. Two
earthquakes came later, one in 1770 and one in 1907.
The former destroyed the hospital and the latter a
large part of the dockyard. Another fire, in 1815, did
extensive damage to all the buildings, and a third
earthquake destroyed the old fortifications.
|
|
|
|
|
Responses:
[11925] [11926] [11923] [11924] |
|
11925 |
|
|
Date: August 18, 2022 at 11:55:54
From: kay.so.or, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Port Royal Earthquake Jamaica June 7, 1692 |
|
|
|
that was so interesting pam, and it seems like there are some forces at work there that just don't want anything there, lol....mother nature at work....but i didn't know that about what had happened there in such detail....would be good material for school classes to know I think...
|
|
|
|
|
Responses:
[11926] |
|
11926 |
|
|
Date: August 18, 2022 at 13:03:45
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Port Royal Earthquake Jamaica June 7, 1692 |
|
|
Kay wrote:
would be good material for school classes to know I
think...
Would be nice. I wrote a post some days ago to
snodrops post about the witches, men and women killed
just prior , during and after this quake took place.
Some of the young girls included in the witch trials
were experiencing horrible painful symptoms, and other
sympstoms, I suggested it could very well be they were
having the similar symptoms some of us earthsensitives
experience - the doctors then and other people's
observing these poor girls had no "logical" explanation
for it, so they all assumed they were under the spell
of the devil or witches, so they killed them! ugh.
her post here
http://www.earthboppin.net/talkshop/wows/messages/41003
.html#41134
and my post replies:
http://www.earthboppin.net/talkshop/wows/messages/41004
.html
http://www.earthboppin.net/talkshop/wows/messages/41134
.html
|
|
|
|
|
Responses:
None |
|
11923 |
|
|
Date: August 10, 2022 at 09:34:44
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Port Royal Earthquake Jamaica June 7, 1692 |
URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake |
|
and another one, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake...if these quakes happened today...man o man...or another new madrid quake...seeing the eq sequence for lisbon quakes is about 210 years, it seems it could happen again any day now...
...
The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon earthquake, impacted Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northwest Africa on the morning of Saturday, 1 November, Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time.[3] In combination with subsequent fires and a tsunami, the earthquake almost completely destroyed Lisbon and adjoining areas. Seismologists estimate the Lisbon earthquake had a magnitude of 7.7[4][5] or greater[6] on the moment magnitude scale, with its epicenter in the Atlantic Ocean about 200 km (120 mi) west-southwest of Cape St. Vincent and about 290 km (180 mi) southwest of Lisbon.
Chronologically, it was the third known large scale earthquake to hit the city (following those of 1321 and 1531). Estimates place the death toll in Lisbon at between 12,000[5] and 50,000 people,[6] making it one of the deadliest earthquakes in history.
The earthquake accentuated political tensions in Portugal and profoundly disrupted the country's colonial ambitions. The event was widely discussed and dwelt upon by European Enlightenment philosophers, and inspired major developments in theodicy. As the first earthquake studied scientifically for its effects over a large area, it led to the birth of modern seismology and earthquake engineering.
|
|
|
|
|
Responses:
[11924] |
|
11924 |
|
|
Date: August 10, 2022 at 10:41:51
From: pamela, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Port Royal Earthquake Jamaica June 7, 1692 |
|
|
|
Yes, have that info already. thanks.
|
|
|
|
|
Responses:
None |
|
[
Disasters ] [ Main Menu ] |