Note (return) — Chapter VII

Two years later, in January 1692, Lord Inchiquin also succumbed to disease in Jamaica, and in the following June Colonel William Beeston was chosen by the queen to act as lieutenant-governor.504 Inchiquin before he left England had solicited for the power to call in and pardon pirates, so as to strengthen the island during the war by adding to its forces men who would make good fighters on both land and sea. The Committee on Trade and Plantations reported favourably on the proposal, but the power seems never to have been granted.505 In January 1692, however, the President of the Council of Jamaica began to issue commissions to privateers, and in a few months the surrounding seas were full of armed Jamaican sloops.506 On 7th June of the same year the colony suffered a disaster which almost proved its destruction. A terrible earthquake overwhelmed Port Royal and "in ten minutes threw down all the churches, dwelling-houses and sugar-works in the island. Two-thirds of Port Royal were swallowed up by the sea, all the forts and fortifications demolished and great part of its inhabitants miserably knocked on the head or drowned."507 The French in Hispaniola took advantage of the distress caused by the earthquake to invade the island, and nearly every week hostile bands landed and plundered the coast of negroes and other property.508 In December 1693 a party of 170 swooped down in the night upon St. Davids, only seven leagues from Port Royal, plundered the whole parish, and got away again with 370 slaves.509 In the following April Ducasse, the new French governor of Hispaniola, sent 400 buccaneers in six small vessels to repeat the exploit, but the marauders met an English man-of-war guarding the coast, and concluding "that they would only get broken bones and spoil their men for any other design," they retired whence they had come.510 Two months later, however, a much more serious incursion was made. An expedition of twenty-two vessels and 1500 men, recruited in France and instigated, it is said, by Irish and Jacobite refugees, set sail under Ducasse on 8th June with the intention of conquering the whole of Jamaica. The French landed at Point Morant and Cow Bay, and for a month cruelly desolated the whole south-eastern portion of the island. Then coasting along the southern shore they made a feint on Port Royal, and landed in Carlisle Bay to the west of the capital. After driving from their breastworks the English force of 250 men, they again fell to ravaging and burning, but finding they could make no headway against the Jamaican militia, who were now increased to 700 men, in the latter part of July they set sail with their plunder for Hispaniola.511 Jamaica had been denuded of men by the earthquake and by sickness, and Lieutenant-Governor Beeston had wisely abandoned the forts in the east of the island and concentrated all his strength at Port Royal.512 It was this expedient which doubtless saved the island from capture, for Ducasse feared to attack the united Jamaican forces behind strong intrenchments. The harm done to Jamaica by the invasion, however, was very great. The French wholly destroyed fifty sugar works and many plantations, burnt and plundered about 200 houses, and killed every living thing they found. Thirteen hundred negroes were carried off besides other spoil. In fighting the Jamaicans lost about 100 killed and wounded, but the loss of the French seems to have been several times that number. After the French returned home Ducasse reserved all the negroes for himself, and many of the freebooters who had taken part in the expedition, exasperated by such a division of the spoil, deserted the governor and resorted to buccaneering on their own account.513