The station was formed, following the capture of Jamaica, by assembling about a dozen frigates in 1655.[1] The first "Admiral and General-at-Sea" was Sir William Penn.[2] Its main objectives in the early years were to defend Jamaica and to harass Spanish ports and shipping.[3] In the late 1720s three successive commanders of the station lost their lives to tropical diseases while undertaking a Blockade of Porto Bello during the Anglo-Spanish War.[4] The general ill-health associated with the station continued throughout the century. An assessment of Navy strength at the Jamaica station in 1742 found around 3,000 men were fit to serve out of a total Navy complement of 6,620.[5] A Navy hospital was constructed in 1745 but its location was poor and many patients brought in for shipboard diseases developed additional tropical illnesses while in the hospital itself. A report to the Admiralty in 1749 found that the hospital was "rather a hurt to the [Navy] Service than a Relief."[6]
The station closed in 1830, but the Royal Navy continued to operate the dockyard until it closed it in 1905. An earthquake in 1907 and hurricane in 1951 damaged the abandoned dockyard. Part of the station now houses the headquarters of the Jamaica Defence Coast Guard (HMJS Cagway, Port Royal); the rest is being restored as part of the Port Royal Heritage Tourism Project.[7]
^Admiralty papers 1/234, 15 January 1749. Cited in Baugh 1965, p. 218
^"Port Royal Heritage Tourism Project" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 January 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2017.
^Cundall, Frank (1915). "Historic Jamaica : With fifty-two illustrations". archive.org. London : Published for the Institute of Jamaica by the West India Committee, pp. 28-31. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
^Winfield. British Warships of the Age of Sail 1793–1817. HMS Thalia.
^Cundall, Frank (1915). Historic Jamaica : With fifty-two illustrations. England: London : Published for the Institute of Jamaica by the West India Committee. p. xxii.
Sources
Baugh, Daniel A. (1965). British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691624297.
Bradley, Peter (2000). British Maritime Enterprise in the New World: From the Late Fifteenth to the Mid-eighteenth Century. Edwin Mellen Press. ISBN 978-0773478664.
Cundall, Frank (1915). "Historic Jamaica : With fifty-two illustrations". archive.org. London : Published for the Institute of Jamaica by the West India Committee, pp. 28–31.
Winfield, Rif (2007). British Warships of the Age of Sail 1793–1817: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates. Seaforth. ISBN 978-1-86176-246-7.
External links
A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, St. Christophers and Jamaica : with the natural history of the herbs and trees, four-footed beasts, fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, &c. of the last of those islands; to which is prefix'd an introduction, wherein is an account of the inhabitants, air, waters, diseases, trade &c of that place, with some relations concerning the neighbouring continent, and islands of America ... by Hans Sloane London : printed by B.M. R. Bentley and M. Magnes for the author, 1707-1725 (contains map of Jamaica Station). Royal Geographical Society of South Australia