“In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power.”
Bartholomew’ Black Bart’ Roberts (1682-1722)
One of the most successful pirates of all time
I try to visit every place I write about in my books because I find it much easier and more interesting to describe places I’ve seen than to make up descriptions of fictional places. The same goes for people, except that I search the internet for pictures for my characters.
So, as much as I’ve liked my domestic trips to see places like Chimney Rock National Monument, Salem, Massachusetts, and participate in things like the Ute Bear Dance and eating dead crickets, I find the international trips much more fascinating. I’ve been trying to figure out which trip I’ve liked the best and can’t. They’ve all been interesting, albeit in very different ways. For my book 2 trip – the Caribbean, my travel guide daughter and I visited Jamaica and Haiti (with a brief stop in the Turks and Caicos Islands). I’ll talk more about Haiti in a later post.
In Jamaica, we saw the coffee plantations on the hike up Blue Mountain Peak (the highest mountain in Jamaica at 7402 feet), toured Kingston, and spent time in the Port Royal area since I felt compelled to include pirates in The Pair Dadeni. And if you have pirates, and live in the Western Hemisphere, then you have to include Port Royal, Jamaica – once called the Richest and Wickedest City in the World. In the late 17th century, it was the 2nd largest city in the Americas (behind Boston) and was the home base of the Brethren of the Coast (pirates) until a giant earthquake and tsunami in 1692 leveled it.
But it wasn’t until I started researching Port Royal, Jamaica’s history that I learned how fascinating its history was. I read in horror about the 1692 catastrophe that nearly wiped the city off the face of the Earth and, in its aftermath, left a UNESCO site (part of the old city was swept away and is preserved in the Kingston harbor just offshore of present-day Port Royal).
All the sites Alex Scire visits in Port Royal are real.
- I decided to have Alex, Jane, and Diana come ashore near the Coast Guard station because that end of the peninsula is spooky.
- The spookiest place in Port Royal, however, is the old Naval Hospital. It’s a perfect setting for ghosts in the book.
- Fort Charles was fascinating because you can see three centuries of defenses there (see picture below).
- The rebuilt St. Peter’s Church is where the remains of the three spirit children and Galdy (all in my book) are buried. As soon as I read their tombstones at the church, I knew I had to include them in the book.
- As for dinner, we heard students from Alabama extol Gloria’s restaurant on the top of Blue Mountain, so we had to go there. It was great food and a wonderful setting.
The picture below is looking south towards the Caribbean from one of the ramparts in Fort Charles in Port Royal, Jamaica. It captures three centuries of history. I took the picture from the fort, built in the mid-17th century, to guard the entrance to Kingston’s harbor. It managed to withstand the earthquake and tsunami that wiped out much of Port Royal in 1692, as well as the 1907 Jamaica Earthquake.
The leaning building in the front right background is ‘The Giddy Building.’ Built in 1880, the British intended to use it to house munitions for the nearby artillery batteries. Unfortunately, the 1907 earthquake caused the building to sink into the sand. The round concrete structure in the background housed one of the artillery batteries until the British pulled it out in the 19th century.
Fascinating city, but you forgot to tell them about the mosquitos!! 😉