Cities have been smothered with volcanic ash, leveled by hurricanes, shaken apart by earthquakes. But no disaster quite matches the one that struck Port Royal, Jamaica, at 11:43 A.M. on June 7, 1692. In the space of less than ten minutes, the thriving pirate port sank into the Caribbean.

An eyewitness described the scene. "The earth heaved and swelled like a rolling billows, and in many places the earth cracked, opened and shut, with a motion quick and fast. In some of these, people were swallowed up; in others they were caught by the middle, and pressed to death. The whole was attended with the noise of falling mountains at a distance, while the sky was turned dull and reddish,'like a glowing oven."

Bodies were enveloped and crushed as the earth's ravenous jaws opened and closed. More than two thousand people perished in the chaos.