In the sea beyond, he saw an English merchant brig anchored past the cay, near Rackham’s reef offshore. Looking away from the cramped, narrow streets of the town to the harbor, he saw the rocking thicket of masts, the hundreds of ships of all sizes moored in the harbor and drawn up to the docks. Otherwise, Port Royal was quiet, enjoying the brief moment between the time the last of the evening’s drunken revelers collapsed in a stupor, and the start of the morning’s commercial bustle around the docks. Directly beneath his window, the first of the flat, horse-drawn carts of water carriers rumbled by, bringing casks of fresh water from Rio Cobra some miles away. On Ridge Street, the morning patrol of garrison soldiers was collecting drunks and dead bodies, which had fallen in the mud. In the streets below he could see the lamplighters making their rounds, extinguishing streetlights from the night before.

It was also the only three-story building in Port Royal, and his view of the town was excellent. The Governor’s Mansion was an impressive brick structure with a red-tile roof.

On the morning of September 7, 1665, he followed his usual routine, arising in his chambers on the third floor of the Governor’s Mansion and going directly to the window to survey the weather and the coming day. This was in part the tendency of an aging widower, in part a consequence of restless sleep from pains of the gout, and in part an accommodation to the climate of the Jamaica Colony, which turned hot and humid soon after sunrise. SIR JAMES ALMONT, appointed by His Majesty Charles II Governor of Jamaica, was habitually an early riser.

Crichton pirate latitudes