A brass pocket watch pulled from the Caribbean seabed in the 1960s has hands frozen at 11:43, the minute on June 7, 1692 when an earthquake sent much of Port Royal, Jamaica, sliding into the sea. This episode traces how a Taino fishing ground on a sandy spit became the wickedest city on earth and then an underwater time capsule.

We cover the English capture of Jamaica in 1655, Governor Edward D’Oyley’s 1657 invitation to the Brethren of the Coast, the letter-of-marque system that turned piracy into forced trade, Henry Morgan’s 75,000-pound Portobello raid, a town of nearly 10,000 people on 51 acres with a drinking house for every 10 residents, the anti-piracy crackdown and Gallows Point, soil liquefaction under heavy brick buildings, and the Texas A&M excavation that recovered untouched tavern artifacts.

• Why the Spanish held Jamaica for 146 years as strategic denial without ever developing the harbor spit
• How admiralty courts, the crown’s 10 percent cut, and merchant fences laundered captured Spanish cargo
• Accounts of pirates opening wine casks in the street and parrots drinking ale alongside tavern patrons
• Why Morgan, as lieutenant governor, turned on the buccaneers once sugar plantations and the Royal African Company needed safe shipping
• The 1907 quake, the tilted Giddy House, the 2019 cruise pier, and the 2025 UNESCO World Heritage designation