o succumbed to
disease in Jamaica, and in the following June Colonel William Beeston
was chosen by the queen to act as lieutenant-governor.[504] Inchiquin
before he left England had solicited for the power to call in and pardon
pirates, so as to strengthen the island during the war by adding to its
forces men who would make good fighters on both land and sea. The
Committee on Trade and Plantations reported favourably on the proposal,
but the power seems never to have been granted.[505] In January 1692,
however, the President of the Council of Jamaica began to issue
commissions to privateers, and in a few months the surrounding seas were
full of armed Jamaican sloops.[506] On 7th June of the same year the
colony suffered a disaster which almost proved its destruction. A
terrible earthquake overwhelmed Port Royal and "in ten minutes threw
down all the churches, dwelling-houses and sugar-works in the island.
Two-thirds of Port Royal were swallowed up by the sea, all the forts and
fortifications demolished and great part of its inhabitants miserably
knocked on the head or drowned."[507] The French in Hispaniola took
advantage of the distress caused by the earthquake to invade the island,
and nearly every week hostile bands landed and plundered the coast of
negroes and other property.[508] In December 1693 a party of 170 swooped
down in the night upon St. Davids, only seven leagues from Port Royal,
plundered the whole parish, and got away again with 370 slaves.[509] In
the following April Ducasse, the new French governor of Hispaniola, sent
400 buccaneers in six small vessels to repeat the exploit, but the
marauders met an English man-of-war guarding the coast, and concluding
"that they would only get broken bones and spoil their men for any other
design," they retired whence they had come.[510] Two months later,
however, a much more serious incursion was made. An expedition of
twenty-two vessels and 1500 men, recruited in France and instigated, it
is said, by Irish and Jacobite refugees, set sail under Ducasse on 8th
June with the intention of conquering the whole of Jamaica. The French
landed at Point Morant and Cow Bay, and for a month cruelly desolated
the whole south-eastern portion of the island. Then coasting along the
southern shore they made a feint on Port Royal, and landed in Carlisle
Bay to the west of the capital. After driving from their breastworks the
English force of 250 men, they again fell to ravaging and bu