The buccaneers found Port Royal appealing for several reasons. Its proximity to trade routes allowed them easy access to prey. The harbor was large enough to accommodate their ships and provided them a place to careen and repair these vessels. It was also ideally situated for launching raids on Spanish settlements. From Port Royal Henry Morgan attacked Panama, Portobello, and Maracaibo. Bartholomew Roberts, Roche Brasiliano, John Davis, and Edward Mansveldt (Mansfield) also came to Port Royal.
By the 1660's, the city had gained a reputation as "the Sodom of the New World" where most residents were "pirates, cutthroats, whores and some of the vilest persons in the whole world." When Charles Leslie wrote his history of Jamaica, he included a description of the pirates of Port Royal. "Wine and women drained their wealth to such a degree that...some of them became reduced to beggary. They have been known to spend 2 or 3,000 pieces of eight in one night; and one gave a strumpet 500 to see her naked. They used to buy a pipe of wine, place it in the street, and oblige everyone that passed to drink."
Port Royal grew to be one of the two largest towns and the most economically important port in the English colonies. At the height of its popularity, the city had one drinking house for every ten residents. In July 1661 alone, forty new licenses were granted to taverns. During a twenty-year period that ended in 1692, nearly 6,500 people lived in Port Royal. In addition to prostitutes and buccaneers, there were four goldsmiths, forty-four tavern keepers, and a variety of artisans and merchants who lived in two hundred buildings crammed into fifty-one acres of real estate. Two hundred thirteen ships visited the seaport in 1688. The city's wealth was so great that coins were preferred for payment rather than the more common system of bartering goods for services.
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