Diplomatic Week 2025 envoys join school groups for Port Royal harbour and Fort Charles tour

Overseas diplomats taking part in Diplomatic Week 2025, hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, shared Fort Charles with schoolchildren during a Port Authority of Jamaica outing across Kingston Harbour and the old naval yard at Port Royal.

From the authority’s base, the party moved through a heritage-focused waterfront scheme that blends history, culture, dining, and recreation for visitors and residents. Guides also sketched the Port Royal Cays, an uninhabited ring of eight named islets off the town, among them South Cay Rock, Gun Cay about four hundred metres from the mainland on the northern arc, and Lime Cay on the north-eastern rim, roughly three hundred and eighty metres along its long axis, up to eighty metres across, and about two hectares in all.

Commentary on shore recalled that Port Royal once covered fifty-one acres before a major tremor swallowed more than thirty-three acres of built-up ground, leaving Fort Charles as the principal surviving fortification. Inside the ramparts, attention fell on a heavy nineteenth-century disappearing gun of solid cast iron dated to 1883, weighing in the region of twenty-two tonnes, one of a small batch the British supplied for island defence as doctrine shifted from high-walled forts to low coastal batteries and magazines.

The largest such battery mentioned, Victoria Battery, was finished in 1888 together with an artillery store for ammunition, lubricants, and spares. Participants described the circuit as instructive on Jamaica’s maritime infrastructure and the town’s layered history, including threads that fed Port Royal’s world-heritage candidacy, and several said repeat visits still yield fresh detail.

A guide identified in the programme as Charmaine outlined port operations before the walking segment through the historic complex.