Evening Star Newspaper, December 9, 1934, Page 87

PART 6. C e — — — The Sunday %im‘ Magasine WASHINGTON D C., DECEMBER 9, 1934, Features 16 PAGES St e POETRY, PIRATES AND A NEW ROAD Port Royal, Jamaica, Once Known as “the Naughtiest Place in the World,” Will Soon Be Open to American Tourists, After Being Forgotten for Centuries—Haunt of Notorious Pirates—‘the Bold and Bad Buccaneers.’ ‘At left: Street in the present town of Port Royal. ISTORY is calling for an encore at the “naughtiest place on earth.” This “Babylon of the seventeenth century,” Port Royal, “Port of Orgies,” Carib= bean lair of the buccaneers—“thé most hideously ruthless miscreants that ever disgraced earth and sea,” wrote Andrew Lang—bids fair to emerge from lethargy and become once more, in a modified sense, at least, the stage of bacchanalian revelry and midnight frolic. Until now, practically inaccessible, except by sea, the vestige of “the most wicked city in the world”—this was another of its ques- tionable titles—is soon to be connected with the mainland by an automobile road, which, when completed within a few months will bring the historic old haunt of the pirates within a short hour’s ride by car to Kingston, Jamaica’s cap- ital and tourist mecca of a Southern sea. Over this same ground, on these same palm-lined shores, where some two cen- turies and a half ago bearded rufflartE, their clothes still drenched in blood, squandered myriad “pieces of eight,” wrung from victims of their torture and murder, will soon strut another type of pirate, effete, armed with the weapons of persuasive cosmopolitan manners, from points north of the Tropic of Cancer. SEEN in the glaring rays of the torrid sun, the motley and insignificant group of ruins and modern buildings which now make up the town of Port -Royal recall but the sordidness of its At right: Old watch tower in Port Royal, “City of the Dead.” pirates on its walls, survived the great earthquake of 1692. BY WILLIAM W. CORCORAN United States Consul, Kingston, Jamaica. notorious past. Legend has it that the old town, lowered to coral depths, as if by some magic elevator during the ex- traordinary seismic upheaval of 1692, can still be seen on a clear calm day; its spires and steeples still erect, as if destiny had chosen the distant Caribbean as a crystal mausoleum, that the world might moralize on the fate of the wicked. Imagine a long wraithlike peninsula going out into the sea from the left of the city of Kingston; a stretch of land, which, like a skeleton left arm, clutches a clear glass bowl, and you will have a precise idea of how this bent promon- tory makes one of the greatest land- locked harbors in the world. What re- mains of the old buccaneer port is situ- ated at the extremity of the peninsula, as if it were lying in the palm of the skeleton arm. It is along this narrow strip of land, thrown out into the Carib- bean like a lasso, the end of which is returning to the cowboy, that the new road, which is destined to open up the old pirates’ haunt is being built; it is some 8 miles in length. In 1668 when New York had only 500 houses, Port Royal was a city of 800 habitations. On the conservative esti- mate of 10 persons to the house, includ- ing Negro slaves, made by W. Adolph Roberts in his recently published life of Sir Henry Morgan, one of the “baddest, boldest buccaneers,” this meant a pop- ulation of some 8,000 souls. Richard Blome, in “A Description of the Island of Jamaica,” published in 1672 in London, states that the buildings of Port Royal were “as dear-rented as if they stood in the well-traded streets of London.” In the streets of the historic old town strutted and reeled in drunken revelry most of the noted pirate chiefs who oper- ated in the Western Atlantic during the sixteenth century. Here came Francis L’'Ollonalis, who would hack a man to pieces, tear out his heart and “gnaw it with his teeth like a ravenous wolf, say- ing to the rest, ‘I will serve you all alike if you show me not another way.’” Here lived and swayed with an iron hand that archmurderer of the high seas, Sir Henry Morgan, whose iniquitous valor did much to break Spanish influence and probably changed the map of the West- ern Hemisphere. Among its long calling list of notorious sea-robbers were those other gentle souls, Roche Brasilliano and Bartolomew Portugas. ’ This tower, which has the scrawled names of many JOSEPH ESQUEMELING, himself =& buccaneer, has described the con- duct and exploits of his companions in plain prose, warning eager youths that “pieces of eight do not grow on trees.” Esquemeling’s work, originally written in Dutch (1645-1707), was published in Am- sterdam in 1678 under the title, “De Americanische Zeerovers.” He gives & fairly good picture of “street scenes” in Port Royal, when he describes the in- dulgences of his fellow pirates ashore: “Their gains they spend with great lib- erality,” he wrote, “giving themselves freely to all manner of vices and de- bauchery, among which the first is that of drunkenness, which they exercise for the most part with brandy; this they drink as liberally as the Spaniards do clear fountain water. Sometimes they buy together a pipe of wine (an old meas- use of 110 gallons). This they stave at the one end, and never cease drinking till they have made an end of it. Thus they celebrate the festivals of Bacchus so long as they have any money left. Neither do they forget at the same time the goddess Venus. For all the tavern keepers and strumpets wait for the coming of these lewd buccaneers, even after the same manner that they do at Amsterdam for the arrival of the East India fleet at the Texel.” Again, in writing of the pirates’ con- duct ashore, Esquemeling says: “All these prizes they carried into Ja- maica, where they safely arrived and, according to their custom, wasted in &