Old Naval Hospital

The Old Naval Hospital is the oldest prefabricated cast-iron structure in the Western Hemisphere. The hospital was built in 1818 on the foundation of another hospital destroyed by fire a few years prior, using slave labor under the direction of the Royal Engineers of the British Army. The hospital went out of use in 1905 before getting a new lease on life as the Port Royal Centre for Archaeological and Conservation Research in 1968. Seventeen hurricanes have not fazed the structure, nor did the earthquake of 1907 do it any harm.