Owing partly to contrary winds and partly to the impression that there
was “no gold in it, or any other metal, although the island was
otherwise a paradise and worth more than gold,” Columbus now left
Jamaica and returned to Cuba.
The historians of Jamaica and the West Indies generally have thrown but
little light on the subject of the Jamaica landing. For a time the
honour was about equally divided between St. Ann’s Bay and Port Maria.
So far, however, as the somewhat scanty information warrants one in
coming to a conclusion, it may be assumed that Columbus’s Santa Gloria
was probably St. Ann’s Bay and that his Puerto Bueno was what is now
known as Dry Harbour, for it is said that he called the first port he
touched at Santa Gloria; that he stayed at Santa Gloria in 1504; that
Sevilla arose near Santa Gloria, and Sevilla, we are told, was near St.
Ann’s Bay. The horseshoe shape of Puerto Bueno, as well as other
evidence, points to Dry Harbour as the place of Columbus’s first landing
in Jamaica. It may be mentioned that the identification of Puerto Bueno
with Dry Harbour was dealt with by the present writer at greater length
than is possible here in “The Story of the Life of Columbus and the
Discovery of Jamaica” (Kingston, 1894). There was a Fort Columbus at Dry
Harbour in and about 1783.
It is not here necessary to follow Columbus in his further
voyaging—through “The Queen’s Garden,” as he named the islands off the
southern coast of Cuba, back to Jamaica, where on the south side he had,
as we have seen in the account of St. Catherine, an interview at Old
Harbour with an important cacique, thence to Isabella, on the north
coast of Hispaniola, and so home. But Dry Harbour was once again visited
by the admiral on his fourth and last voyage.
On his way back from the continent of America, which he saw for the last
time on May 1, 1503, while making for Hispaniola for succour, as his two
worm-eaten caravels the _Capitana_ and the _Santiago de Palos_ were in
no fit state to cross the Atlantic, after passing the Cayman Islands,
which he named Las Tortugas, and encountering a storm at the west end of
Cuba, he ran for Jamaica and reached Dry Harbour on June 23, 1503; when,
finding no water there, he went on to Puerto Santa Gloria (St. Ann’s
Bay) and ran his caravels on the beach in a cove, possibly in that which
is still called =Don Christopher’s Cove=. Why another cove in St. Mary
received the same name is not evident.
Being unable to keep the ships afloat any longer he stranded them as
best he could, one near the other, and propped them up on both sides so
that they could not move.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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