lesson25portroyal

lesson25portroyal内容摘要：

night .It was risky to walk in the filthy streets alone : sailors arriving with pockets full of money were found murdered the next morning . Every other house was a drinking place, and murder was frequent and familiar。 every other sailor was a pirate. Thieves who could not hope for mercy at home came to Port Royal .Anything was fiven there. A few British officers controlled the port ,but they were little interested in keeping order in the streets. They spent a quiet life with daily visits to each other , and did not try very hard to control the crime prevalent in the port .A few soldiers could not ,in fact, have controlled the pirates. On Tuesday, 7 th June, 1692, this unhappy city woke on a bright midsummer morning. It was unfortably hot . The sky was a hard ,bright, cloudless blue .The sea was smooth and shining like glass ,and there was not a breath of wind moving the air .Ships ready to sail had to remain in harbor, because there was no wind to fill their sails . This strange, breathless silence was the only unusual thing that morning .Sailors were returning to their ships after drinking and fighting all night. The wildest men were being taken to the port prisons . Markets were opening and the city housewives were walking to the shops. Lessons were starting in the schools. Street children were happily swimming in the harbor among the ships. Important members of the City Council were on their way to a meeting planned for that morning . Everyone was hoping for rain. The Council members never arrived at their meeting . The housewives never reached home again .The school children never finished their lessons .For between eleven o‘clock and twelve Port Royal seemed to shake itself like a dog after a swim . One earthquake shock quickly followed another without pause, and instantly the whole city was seized with fear . Everyone rushed into the streets where they saw a terrible scene. The whole city seemed to be turning upside down. Stones from falling buildings poured into the streets. Entire buildings were tumbling into huge cracks in the earth . As the earth opened up, the sea came rushing in .Men were thrown about like toys , sometimes falling into deep holes in the earth , whereupon the rushing sea would pick them up and throw them back into the street . Often they disappeared forever and the earth closed over them. The damage was all done in a few minutes. Three great shocks shook the city and a huge wave struck it at the same moment. The sound of crying and moaning filled the air , and over everything there hung a veil of dust. No one could help anyone else。 it was each man for himself. One moment men stood in the sun — the next moment they had disappeared. By evening most of port Royal was gone .More than two thousand people had died ,and more had disappeared. Two fortes had been destroyed. The prisons, containing all their prisoners, had gone. Most of the ships in the harbor had sunk. The only big British ship in the harbor had been thrown out of the water into the middle of the city , where it rested on top of the biggest church in the city, St.. Paul‘ s. For a short time two hundred people found protection in the ship .At last it ,too ,was washed back into the harbor — and the sea then closed over St. Paul‘s Church! Most of Port Royal disappeared in deep water. When news of this dreadful event reached other places there was only one opinion about it ： this was God ‘s punishment on an evil city ! Port Royal had sold itself to the devil and deserved its terrible fate ! Port Royal never recovered from this shock. The harbor continued in use, but a new city was never built. Perhaps people really believed that the city deserved its fate. Soon treasure–hunters came .Everyone knew that the sunken ships and the ruins of houses contained treasure. Many men tried digging among the ruins. Swimming under water was not easy in the seventeenth century, but eventually, in 1882, one lucky man found three million dollars in a sunken Spanish treasure ship. Others could see the roofs of houses under the water, and so they broke through and stole anything they could find. Slowly the scene changed. Under water buildings fell quickly into ruins .Sand and water covered the sunken city . The waves pushed the ruins about, and after a few years it was impossible to see where the city lay. However, stories were told about the bells of St . Paul‘s Church。 people said they could hear the bells ringing under the water during storms . Several people have tried to explore Port Royal . In 1965 Robert Marx , an underwater archaeologist, was invited t。