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Historical seismicity in oceans from sailors’ testimonies

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Abstract

Before seismological catalogs were routinely produced, seafarers experienced major seismic events at sea that were documented in their logs. This article analyzes some of these old records—mostly from eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—in the context of plate tectonics. Large shocks that were felt on ships are related either to earthquakes, sub-marine volcanic eruptions, or to sub-marine sliding of rocks and/or sediments. We analyze various related parameters such as the location and size of the shaking, the duration of the shock, and the associated noise. A total of 396 observations have been retained for this study, mostly located in the Atlantic Ocean, reflecting its intense maritime traffic during the period of interest. Some of the detailed accounts allow us to clearly identify the nature of the shocks, including a possible interpretation in terms of focal mechanism. Our results, when compared to historical catalogs, reveal many previously undetected large events. Macroseismic results for a few large historical events occurring near the coasts confirm the validity of our approach, but also reveal its limitations. The good locations of most of the events allow us to relate them to plate boundaries. The Romanche transform zone has deserved particular interest due to the large number of related testimonies. This study particularly illustrates that historical seismicity may be applied to oceans. The collected testimonies also show how impressive and dangerous these large earthquakes at sea are, despite the absence of S-waves.

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Acknowledgments

We benefited from the help of the staff in charge of the Archives in many institutions, the following in particular: the KIT-Bibliothek, Karlsruhe, the Bibliothèque of Lille, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Bibliothèque of the Académie des Sciences, Paris, the Centre Technique du Livre de l'Enseignement Supérieur, the Service Historique de la Marine, Paris, and the Stuttgart University Library. We thank Mrs Magali Pierrat from EOST for gathering copies of original works from various institutions, and Mrs Suzanne and Clémence Meyer for their precious help to translate and interpret Rudolph’s publications. The authors also thank their colleagues for helpful discussions. Many thanks to Susan Hough for her clever and informative review and for the documents she made available to us, and to the Editor in Chief Mariano Garcia-Fernandez. Figures have been drawn with the GMT software (Wessel and Smith 1991).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. EOST, Université de Strasbourg, 5, rue Descartes, F-67084, Strasbourg Cedex, France

    Daniel Rouland, Armando Cisternas & Daniel Streng

  2. UNAM, Instituto de Geofisica, Av. Universidad 3000, CP 04510, Mexico Districto Federal, Mexico

    Denis Legrand

  3. DGF, Departemento de Geofisica, Univ. de Chile, Blanco Encalada 2002, Santiago, Chile

    Armando Cisternas

  4. SCHLUMBERGER, 4903 Mayfair St, Bellaire, TX, 77401, USA

    Roopa Gir

  5. CNRS/IRAP, Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, 14 Av. Edouard Belin, 31400, Toulouse, France

    Annie Souriau

Authors
  1. Daniel Rouland
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  2. Denis Legrand
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  3. Armando Cisternas
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  4. Daniel Streng
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  5. Roopa Gir
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  6. Annie Souriau
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Correspondence to Daniel Rouland.

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Rouland, D., Legrand, D., Cisternas, A. et al. Historical seismicity in oceans from sailors’ testimonies. J Seismol 20, 251–264 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-015-9523-y

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