[5] According to Robert Renny in his An History of Jamaica (1807): "All the wharves sunk at once, and in the space of two minutes, nine-tenths of the city were covered with water, which was raised to such a height, that it entered the uppermost rooms of the few houses which were left standing.

"[8] Before the earthquake the town consisted of 6,500 inhabitants living in about 2,000 buildings, many constructed of brick and with more than one storey, and all built on loose sand.

Palisadoes cemetery, where the grave of the former pirate Sir Henry Morgan was located, was one of the parts of the city to fall into the sea; his body has never been found.

[5] The largest, the Judgement Cliff landslide, displaced the land surface by up to 800 metres (2,625 ft) and killed 19 people.

[13] A pocket watch, made in the Netherlands by the French maker Blondel in about 1686, was recovered during underwater archaeological investigations led by Edwin Link in 1959.

[9] In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, it was common to ascribe the destruction to divine retribution on the people of Port Royal for their sinful ways.

This view of the disaster was not confined to Jamaica; in Boston, the Reverend Cotton Mather said in a letter to his uncle: "Behold, an accident speaking to all our English America".

[15] The probable triggering of the Judgement Cliff landslide during the earthquake occurred along the line of the Plantain Garden fault.

[12] Estimates of current deformation of Jamaica suggest that sufficient strain has accumulated to generate a M=7.0–7.3 earthquake, similar in size to the 1692 event.

This may mean that a repeat of this event is imminent, although this estimate relies on many assumptions, such as that none of the motion on the Plantain Garden fault is accommodated by aseismic creep.