Port Royal
Port Royal
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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| Port Royal | |
| —n | |
| 1. | a fortified town in SE Jamaica, at the entrance to Kingston harbour: capital of Jamaica in colonial times |
| 2. | the former name (until 1710) of Annapolis Royal |
| 3. | an educational institution about 27 km (17 miles) west of Paris that flourished from 1638 to 1704, when it was suppressed by papal bull as it had become a centre of Jansenism. Its teachers were noted esp for their work on linguistics: their Grammaire générale et raisonnée exercised much influence |
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Port Royal
historic harbour town on the southern coast of Jamaica, once the busiest trading centre of the British West Indies and infamous for general debauchery. The town was founded on a natural harbour at the end of a 10-mile (16-kilometre) sand spit between the modern Kingston Harbour and the Caribbean Sea. In the late 17th century it came to serve as the base of operations for buccaneers and privateers who raided the Spanish islands and ships. When the notorious Captain Henry Morgan established his headquarters there, the plundered gold poured in, followed by merchants and artisans who eagerly catered to all the appetites of the pirates. There were more than 8,000 inhabitants living in fine brick houses of two and three stories in this "richest and wickedest city in the New World." Ultimately, however, the government in England and the landowners in Jamaica saw prospects of greater profit in a regularized trade with Spain and a stable economy based on agriculture, and they appointed Morgan the governor of Jamaica, in which capacity he prosecuted his former comrades until his death.
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