It was called the most wicked and sinful city in the world, and now it's gone.

Port Royal Jamaica isn't quite a household name today, but in the late 17th century,

it was one of the largest European cities in the New World, second only to Boston. This place

was hopping, and that's putting it mildly. Back in its heyday, Port Royal was the epicenter

for trade in the Caribbean. Under British control, it raked in absurd amounts

of wealth for the crown, and the majority of that money came from the slave trade. In fact,

Jamaica was one of the major gateways into the Americas for human traffickers. But in June of

1692, the levy finally broke. Port Royal experienced an earthquake and the ensuing tsunami sunk two-thirds of the city beneath

the sea.

Out of the 5,000 people who died, an estimated 2,000 of them were lost to the depths of the ocean.

Once word got out about the city's fate, everyone had the same takeaway.

That natural disaster wasn't natural at all.

It was divine punishment, they said, God's retribution against Port Royal.

Everyone had it coming, and now their corpses were trapped 40 feet underwater, decomposing

on the ocean floor.

Today, few people remember Port Royal as a hotbed of vice and slavery.

Instead, it's famous for how it fell apart.

In fact, some archaeologists have even compared it to Pompeii in terms of how many artifacts there are to uncover from those water-logged buildings.

And it highlights a fascinating dichotomy that we rarely stop to think about.

Some graves are simply known for what they can teach us about the dead,

while others provide a deeper glimpse into the lives they lived.

And sometimes, very rarely, a handful of graves,

...