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27 unusual facts about Port Royal


16th Regiment New York Volunteer Cavalry

Before dawn on April 26, 1865 a detachment of the 16th New York Cavalry under the command of Lt. Edward P. Doherty cornered Lincoln assassins Booth and Herold in a tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia.

1898 Atlantic hurricane season

At Port Royal, South Carolina, this storm caused 10.82 in (275 mm) of rain over the course of a day, breaking the previous one-day record by 5.89 in (150 mm).

Bartolomeu Português

With a total of 70,000 pieces of eight and a cargo of 120,000 pounds of cacao beans, Português attempted to sail towards Jamaica; however, due to strong winds, they were unable to return to Port Royal - instead sailing for western Cuba.

Brethren of the Coast

Based primarily on the island of Tortuga off the coast of Haiti and in the city of Port Royal on the island of Jamaica, the original Brethren were mostly French Huguenot and British Protestants, but their ranks were joined by other adventurers of various nationalities including Spaniards, and even African sailors, as well as escaped slaves and outlaws of various sovereigns.

Cadwalader Ringgold

While in command of the frigate Sabine on November 1, 1861, he effected the rescue of a battalion of 400 Marines from Maryland whose transport steamer, Governor, was sinking during a severe storm near Port Royal, South Carolina.

Charles Pickard Ware

An abolitionist, he served as a civilian administrator in the Union Army, where he was a supervisor of freedmen on plantations at Port Royal, South Carolina during the Civil War.

CSS Teaser

On December 10, she exchanged shots with a Confederate battery located on the southern shore of the river about three miles below Port Royal, Virginia.

Henry A. Peirce

He helped provide transportation for troops, and was meeting at Port Royal, South Carolina with Admiral William Reynolds whom he had known in Hawaii in 1840, when he heard Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated.

Isaac Norris

Isaac went to Philadelphia in 1690 to arrange for his family to move to that city, but on his return he found that they had all died in the great earthquake at Port Royal.

Isaie and Scholastique Martin House

Isaie Martin was the grandson of Francois Martin who, as an 11 year-old, was one of the Acadians deported from Port Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1755.

Kings County, Nova Scotia

The colonization of "Les Mines" and Grand Pre began in the 1680s when a few families relocated from the French settlement at Port Royal.

Lake Lescarbot

He came to settle in Port Royal, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1606.

Livermore Falls, Maine

It would be granted by the General Court of Massachusetts in 1771 as Port Royal, awarded to heirs of veterans who served in the campaign against Port Royal in Jamaica.

Machiasport, Maine

So in 1634, the trading post was sacked by French forces from Port Royal under the command of Charles de Saint-Étienne de la Tour.

Mathieu Molé

Hitherto Molé's relations with Cardinal Richelieu had been fairly good, but his inclination to the doctrines of Port Royal increased the differences between them.

Ned Ward

This travel account, based on Ward's trip to Port Royal, Jamaica in 1687, was a satire of the way in which settlers were recruited to the Americas.

Pierre Morpain

Since France and England were then at war, he made for the nearest safe port, which was Port Royal, the capital of Acadia.

He notably made a providential arrival, with supply-laden prizes in tow, at the Acadian capital, Port Royal, not long after the first 1707 siege.

Port Royal

The Giddy House, an artillery storage room built c1880, was tilted by this earthquake and is today a minor tourist attraction.

Underwater archeology, some of which can be seen in the National Geographic Channel show Wicked Pirate City, reveals the foundations of building under water, showing there was subsidence, as do comparisons of post-earthquake maps and pre-earthquake maps.

Port Royal, Pennsylvania

From the PRR station during the Gettysburg Campaign of the Civil War, Union scout Stephen W. Pomeroy telegraphed the vital news to Governor Andrew Curtin that Robert E. Lee was concentrating the Army of Northern Virginia at Gettysburg.

Port Royal, South Carolina

Streets running north-south are named after the capitals of nations who have at one time or another settled in the Port Royal area (Paris, London, Madrid, Edinburgh, and Richmond).

Port Royal also hosts an annual soft shell crab festival in late April and a community oyster roast in late October.

Port Royal, Virginia

One of his accomplices in the murder who was with him and captured at the Garrett farm, David Herold, was tried, convicted and hanged on July 7, 1865, along with Lewis Powell (alias Payne or Paine), George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt.

Probably Port Royal's most notable claim to fame is that John Wilkes Booth was killed about two miles outside town by Sgt. Boston Corbett, part of a contingent of federal troops, at the now obsolete Garrett farmstead (look for prominent markers along northbound Rt. 301) on April 26, 1865 after Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on the night of April 14, 1865, in Ford's Theater in Washington, DC.

Robert A. Hardaway

Later in the year, serving near Fredericksburg, Virginia, Hardaway’s gunners, using a Whitworth gun (designed by Joseph Whitworth, drove federal gunboats away from Port Royal, Virginia on December 4, 1862.

Shepody, New Brunswick

By 1701, Pierre Thibaudeau and members of his family moved from Port Royal to Shepody, inaugurating another cluster of Acadian settlements here and on the Petitcodiac River.


Bartholomew Gedney

He was offered command of an expedition against Port Royal, Acadia in 1690, but refused.

Capture of the William

The Capture of the William refers to a small single ship action fought between Calico Jack's pirate ship and a British sloop-of-war from Port Royal, Jamaica.

Charles de Menou d'Aulnay

D'Aulnay went immediately to Port Royal, erected a new fort, moved the La Hève colonists, and sent to France for 20 additional families, making Port Royal the principal settlement in Acadia, which at that time embraced not only Nova Scotia, but a portion of New Brunswick, extending as far west as the Penobscot.

Chebogue, Nova Scotia

That would make Chebogue the third oldest European settlement in Canada after Sainte-Croix in 1604 and Port Royal, Nova Scotia in 1605.

Edward L. Pierce

In December 1861, the United States Secretary of the Treasury dispatched Pierce to Port Royal, South Carolina to examine into the condition of the negroes on the Sea Islands.

Henri Membertou

Henri Membertou (died 18 September 1611) was the sakmow (Grand Chief) of the Mi'kmaq First Nations tribe situated near Port Royal, site of the first French settlement in Acadia, present-day Nova Scotia, Canada.

Jamaica Constabulary Force

The history of law enforcement in Jamaica began in 1716 when night watchmen were appointed to serve the cities of Port Royal, Kingston, and the parishes of Saint Catherine and Saint Andrew.

John W. Browning

He enlisted in September 1861 in the 1st New York Engineers, and took part in the battles of Port Royal, Fort Pulaski, James Island and others in the Department of the South until December 1863 when he was discharged as a sergeant-major and brevet second lieutenant.

Port La Tour, Nova Scotia

By 1641, La Tour lost Cape Sable Island, Pentagouet (Castine, Maine), and Port Royal, Nova Scotia to Governor of Acadia Charles de Menou d'Aulnay de Charnisay.

Prinzessin Victoria Luise

On the night of December 16 the ship had tried to enter the harbor of Kingston but later her commander Captain Brunswig decided to anchor at Port Royal when he mistook the lighthouse at Plumb Point for that at the westernmost point of Port Royal.

Singeing the King of Spain's Beard

Further sightings revealed twenty French ships present in the bay, and other smaller vessels were seeking refuge in Port Royal and Port Saint Mary, which were protected by sand banks that the larger carracks could not cross.

South Carolina Highway 128

Also known locally as Savannah Highway, SC 128 serves as a principal arterial for the unincorporated Shell Point as well as providing a southern route serving Port Royal, Parris Island and the Sea Islands east of Beaufort.

Timothy H. O'Sullivan

When the Civil War began in early 1861, he was commissioned a first lieutenant in the Union Army (Joel Snyder, O'Sullivan's biographer could find no proof of this claim in Army records) and, over the next year, was present at Beaufort, Port Royal, Fort Walker, and Fort Pulaski.