Lewis Galdy cheated death twice

WHEN GENERAL Robert Venables and Admiral William Penn failed to capture Hispaniola from the Spaniards for the British Crown, they decided to take Jamaica instead as a consolation prize to appease Oliver Cromwell, the then de facto ruler of Great Britain.

On May 10, 1655, their fleet landed at Caguaya, now known as Passage Fort. From there they marched into Spanish Town, the administrative district of the Spanish colonialists. The Spaniards offered little resistance, and that was the beginning of the end of Spain’s 145-year rule of Jamaica. It officially ceded ownership of the colony to Britain in 1670 under the Treaty of Madrid.

Yet, shortly after the arrival of the British, Cagway, the last of a string of sandy cays separated by shallow marshy lands, had become the haunt of buccaneers, also called pirates and privateers. They were traders, hunters and mercenaries who opposed and resisted the Spanish government, which expelled them from Hispaniola. They found their way to Cagway where they were embraced by the British.

Cagway became the headquarters from which the buccaneers launched their raid on Spanish vessels. It grew into the city of Port Royal, a place of narrow, dirty streets, drinking saloons, brothels, warehouses, gambling dens – a lawless, dog-eat-dog enclave of debauchery and unfettered activities. Soon, it became the capital of the island, where a King’s House was built. The town was laid out and fortified.

By 1675 Port Royal was the destination for most of the loots and ill-gotten treasures from the hijacking of Spanish ships, and raids of cities on the Central American mainland, making it “the richest city in the world”. But, it was also known by another moniker, one not so flattering, ‘The wickedest city in Christiandom, the Babylon of the West’.

In all of this, the Welshman Henry Morgan reigned supreme and died. He was the ‘king’ of Port Royal, pirate of pirates, who was regarded as a brilliant tactician and daring sea captain. He robbed and pillaged for the British and himself, and Port Royal boomed from the loots. He evolved from piracy to knighthood, and served as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica three times, 1673, 1677 and 1680. His success as governor, it is said, equalled his accomplishments from piracy.

LAST DAYS

But, knighthood and governorship did not curb his excessive drinking and penchant for staying up late at night. He spent his last days a sick man. On the morning of August 25, 1688, Sir Henry Morgan expired in his home at Passage Fort, St Catherine. He was taken to King’s House in Port Royal on the 26th. A church service was held for him on the same day when a British warship, the HMS Assistance, was in port. His burial on the Palisadoes strip was accompanied by military flourish, pomp and pageantry.

Yet, Sir Henry’s remains, and other bodies, dead and alive, were shaken from the sandy soil by an earthquake and tossed into the sea, where it perhaps belonged, by an attendant tsunami. It was the morning of June 7, 1692 when the history, the sensibilities, ethos and the stories of Port Royal were crumbled and slide into the sea with most of the stone buildings and the people. Two-thirds of the sand on which the city was built simply liquefied.

Lewis Galdy was one of the people that went down into the water, but unlike many, he lived to tell the tale. A second shock hurled him out of the water, but the tsunami that followed pushed him back into the sea at Kingston Harbour where he remained afloat until he was rescued by a boat.

Born Louis Galdy, in Montpelier, France, in 1659, the Huguenot (non-Catholic) and his brother, Laurent, came to Jamaica to escape religious persecution. They settled in Port Royal, but not able to find consistent gainful employment, they turned to piracy. But Louis was no pirate. He got caught, and was jailed.

It was while he was in jail that the 7.7 earthquake, felt around the entire island, occurred. It freed him, and changed his life forever. He got involved in the trafficking of Africans, being an agent for the suppliers of enslaved people to Latin America. He became a rich merchant, a member of the Jamaica Assembly, and a church warden at St Peter’s Church, which he was instrumental in getting rebuilt.

Galdy died in 1739 at the age of 80, and was buried at a place called Green Bay, perhaps the same place where the massacre of five men took place in 1978. His tomb was transferred to St Peter’s Church in Port Royal in 1953 to facilitate viewing by HMS Elizabeth II during her coronation year visit to Jamaica. His marble tombstone with its still visible inscriptions is one of the things to see in Port Royal, Jamaica’s most active historic community, where he, “beloved by all that knew him and much lamented at his death”, as a part of his inscriptions say, cheated death twice.