Welcome to the Caribbean in the 17th Century
The first map is a quick look at the most important places the story visits.
**New Spain: The viceroyalty that later became Mexico.
**Spanish Main: South America.
**La Hispaniola: the island currently divided in Rep. Dominicana and Haiti
**Bajamar Islands: Original Spanish name the English tried to adopt, and over time changed into Bahamas. Bajamar = low tide.
**Windward Islands: Lesser Antilles.
TORTUGA
The French stronghold, berthing of the Brethren of the Coast, is a tiny slice of land ten miles north of modern Haiti. Pretty much a long hill stretching from east to west with good timberland and some patches and strips of flat land with good soil for growing tobacco.
The tiny square under the words "bien cultivée" points at the location of Fort-de-Rocher, a 40-gun fortress built by Governor Jean Le Vasseur about 1635.
Cayona was located between Fort-de-Rocher and the coast, and it was the larger of two towns --the other one is believed to have been on the west end of the island, and it was the English basecamp until the French kicked them out. Then they took over Jamaica in 1655 and moved there.
If you take a look at the map, you'll see the crosses all along the northern coast, pointing at reefs and shoals that make it almost unreachable from the sea.
Cayona Bay, on the south coast, was enclosed by two massive reefs you can also see on the map, and pilots needed to know their thing on the steering wheel to slip a boat between them in order to reach the port.
On this map of Jamaica, the arrow at the bottom points at a soil and sand bar south of Kingston Bay. That was were Port Royal was located, the town with three taverns per home that god-fearing people back in the day called "New Babylon".
It was the main city and harbor of the island, and the seat of colonial government.
On June 7, 1692, an earthquake and the following tsunami swallowed two thirds of the city --including Henry Morgan's grave!-- killing more than half the population.
The survivors crossed the bay. Some of them moved to Spanish Town, while the government of the island and the rest of the people founded Kingston.
Jamaica was a Spanish colony and the English first attacked it in 1596. Four attacks later, in 1655, they finally took it over and it became an English colony.
Funny trivia bits:
*Port Royal is the only city portrayed in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and TV shows like Crossbones. However, they're all set in the early 1700s, and by then the city didn't exist anymore.
*This wasn't the first Port Royal in the Caribbean. That title belongs to a town and harbor in Roatan, the largest island of the Bay Islands in the Gulf of Honduras. Since the Spaniards hadn't populated the island, the English did in 1638. It soon became a great berthing for pirates that wanted to make a living out of attacking Spaniards ships. And their harbor was called, yes, you got it: Port Royal.
In 1650, the Spaniards kicked them off Roatan and the island remained uninhabited for decades, but it was still used as a rendevouz point for pirates.
This is the Sovereign's route on Chapters III - IV
Routes of the Windward Fleet, the Lion and the Phantom in Chapter VII
Map for Chapters VII - VIII
Map for Chapters IX to XII
MARACAIBO