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Sunken City · Permit dives

Port Royal, the Wicked City

Sank 1692 · 5 to 12 m, Kingston Harbour, Jamaica
PROTECTED
Evidence status: Historical tradition. no documented source (historical tradition); legal status unknown (manual verification recommended). This account is presented as historical tradition, not verified fact. Manual verification recommended. Repository evidence: 0 sources · 0 timeline events · 0 media items · legal unknown · view on the Map Evidence on file: historical tradition

Port Royal, the Wicked City: still unexplained.

The drowned streets of the richest, wickedest port in the Americas

The law of this ground: Protected by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, diving by special permit through licensed operators only; nothing may be lifted.
The subject
developing the photograph…
The manifest
The drowned streets of the richest, wickedest port in the Americas
The account

At twenty minutes to noon on June 7, 1692, the sand under Port Royal turned to liquid and two-thirds of the pirate capital of the world slid into the harbour, taverns, warehouses, two thousand souls. A pocket watch pulled from the seabed had stopped at 11:43. The streets are still down there, laid out under the silt, the best-preserved sunken English town on earth.

Leads, where the trail points now
  • The wickedest city on earth, the pirate haven that slid into the sea in the 1692 Jamaica earthquake; underwater archaeologists have mapped it off Kingston.
  • It is a protected submerged site, famously preserving the exact moment of the quake, down to a pocket watch stopped at 11:43.
  • The lead is the large unexcavated portions of the drowned town still in the harbor mud.
What the record holds

What remains open

  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
What we know, and what we don't
Established

No documentary claim is yet established. The account rests on tradition.

Still open
  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
The evidence room

No documentary or visual exhibits have been located yet. The trail below and the open leads are where this dossier grows next — every exhibit that enters here carries a source.

Where the trail points now
  • The wickedest city on earth, the pirate haven that slid into the sea in the 1692 Jamaica earthquake; underwater archaeologists have mapped it off Kingston.
  • It is a protected submerged site, famously preserving the exact moment of the quake, down to a pocket watch stopped at 11:43.
  • The lead is the large unexcavated portions of the drowned town still in the harbor mud.
  • Search Library of Congress + DPLA (IIIF) for period cartography of the site.
  • Run Chronicling America for dated newspaper mentions.
  • Query NARA for archival records tied to the site.

Have a source, a map, or a clipping? Add a lead and it enters the record with its citation.

Start the hunt here
The first leads, so no one walks in cold.
Sources and the record
Related case files

The full hunt kit

Starting brief, what's known and disputed, evidence timeline, source list, map card, coordinate-confidence and legal-access summaries, and a field checklist, free with a Fellowship account.

Latest Word From the Newswire

Context, not proof. The dossier's own sources remain the evidence record.

Checking the wire…

Chart position 17.936°, -76.841° (approx.) View on the Map