Shiver Me Skid Plates: On the X-Trail of Pirate Jamaica, Part I

Within the archipelago that runs from Cuba's promontory to the Venezuela coast, Jamaica loomed over the Spanish Main like a watchful hawk. This wasn't lost on maritime England, which, after seizing the island from Spain in 1655, used its predatory perch to fall upon that country's gold-laden galleons as they sailed Caribbean sea lanes for Cadiz.

To relieve Spain of its New World gold, the British commissioned pirates* -- the rag-tag nomads and swarthy misfits who had long preyed on Isabella's ships. It was in the Jamaican city of Port Royal where such bandits as Blackbeard and the doubly fearsome Francis L'Ollonais were masters of the "Brethren of the Coast." After his sacking of Spain's Venezuelan stronghold of Portobelo in 1668, they and all Jamaica would be governed by the pirate-king-turned-privateer, Sir Henry Morgan.  

Set between Blue Mountains and an azure sea, Port Royal reigned among the New World's richest harbors. But “the wickedest city in Christendom” knew no rival in infamy. As its bloody warren of streets echoed with the work of thieves, murderers and whores, so did its pirates find refuge from all that man might do to stop them. How biblical then was the 1692 earthquake that sent two-thirds of this swashbuckling Sodom to Davy Jones -- and how unchanged from that ancient event does Port Royal now appear? What better place than this to embark upon a search for Jamaica's pirate past.

But first there was the matter of getting to the island -- something that, once accomplished, can land you within hailing distance of the old corsair capital. That's because Port Royal's surviving precincts lie at the tip of the Palisadeos, a nine-mile spit of land that encloses Kingston harbor while also serving the city's airport. It was there that I picked up the 2011 Nissan X-Trail in which I hoped to discover Jamaica's freebooter days. 

The X-Trail is a four-door SUV that shares a compact platform with the Nissan Sentra. It isn't sold in the U.S. -- and while not so oddly named as Nissan's Lafesta or Qashqai models, the right-hand driver is strange enough to have an exotic air about its doughty yet capable-looking flanks. Of course, there was the usual problem of Nissan taking a clean design beyond earthly limits. As a result, the 4x4 looks as if it, for one, would welcome our new insect overlords.

  

To Serve Man: 2011 Nissan X-Trail

Ah, but who was I to turn down a test vehicle -- even one with a headlight array resembling fish scoff. After all, dusk was upon me, and just as it once fell under the shadow of piracy, the road to Port Royal was now about to be darkened by nightfall. There was nothing for it but to be checked into the Morgan's Harbour Yacht Club that stood a ways down the Palisadeos beyond the rusted hulk of a freighter eerily back-lit by the moon.

Captain Morgan

Guarded by cannon dating “from Henry Morgan  days” according to innkeeper Kamar Anderson, Morgan’s Harbour's' beamed, seventeenth-century-style lobby was decorated with pirate murals and maps, including two portraits of the hotel’s eponymous privateer – a man whose sturdy visage appears throughout this part of Jamaica.

Despite his ubiquity, more than Capt. Morgan was on my mind once I was settled into my room and in receipt of an invitation to the Kingston opening of “Pirates of the Caribbean." Attendance meant venturing back past the Palisadeos’ ghost freighter and down its length of tropical scrub into the dodge-em-car roads of Kingston proper -- a dicey prospect at best.

The Nissan stood ready, its White Pearl paint more pearlescent in a light rain; its simple and neatly-trimmed dash visible though the beads of moisture filling its window. Now all that was needed was for me to clamber into the wrong side of this unfamiliar truck -- at night, on virtually no sleep, in a gathering tropical storm. Thereafter, I was to follow a complex set of directions down what would normally be lanes of oncoming traffic to get to Kingston’s Soweto-like neighborhoods -- their streets teeming with people who (despite the hour and what was now an ungodly downpour) followed the truck with bloodshot eyes while their children ran mad dashes before its bumper. Apparently this SUV and I were suspect novelties in these parts of this murder capital, and whether or not it was to escape all the unwelcome attention, I remember negotiating a series of back streets, any one of which might've brought me to a dead end.

I nearly reached for the Nissan's Bluetooth. Except that it's hands-free.

Then, after I'd actually hit a soccer ball that rolled out of nowhere and into the light of the X-Trail's Xenons, I came upon civilization in the form of Kingston’s downtown Cineplex. This appeared -- gaudy and tattered -- to a welcoming heart.

Soon after, while sitting amid the warmth Jamaicans generally exude, I was witness to yet another "Pirates" sequel. To quote Long John Silver, it brought a tear to me one good eye. The rain had stopped for the drive back the hotel where fevered visions of Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey (Syrena in the movie), sunken galleons, ska-blasting rum bars, and the Nissan's gutter-running five-spoke 17-inch alloy wheels, cut sleep short. Dawn found me out on a balcony watching a pack of feral dogs course though a neighboring field, while just beyond, Port Royal was emerging from the mist. 

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* Thereby brevetting them as “privateers.”