Story of cities #9: Kingston, Jamaica – a city born of 'wickedness' and disaster

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Downtown Kingston, the conflicted heart of Jamaica’s modern capital, was born of disaster. A battered pocket watch, its hands frozen at exactly 11:43, memorialises the moment on 7 June 1692 when an earthquake ripped through this English Caribbean colony. Mountains split, buildings shattered and a tsunami swept away uncountable bodies, living and dead, as the earth’s convulsions exhumed corpses from their graves. continue

A depiction of the earthquake that destroyed much of Port Royal in 1692, by Jan Luyken and Pieter van der Aa. Illustration: Alamy