Slide showing a photograph of the view from the arsenal at Port Royal. Port Royal was a city located at the end of the Palisadoes at the mouth of the Kingston Harbour, in south-eastern Jamaica. Founded in 1518, it was the centre of shipping commerce in the Caribbean Sea during the latter half of the 17th century. It was destroyed by an earthquake in 1692 and subsequent fires, hurricanes, flooding, and another earthquake in 1907.. Part of Box 108. Boswell Collection. Slide number 49. Jamaica, officially the Commonwealth of Jamaica, is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, situated in the Caribbean Sea. Jamaica is south of Cuba and west of Hispaniola, the island containing the nation-states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in the West Indies.