1755 Lisbon earthquake

“ As allusion to the great Pombal and his period is constantly being made, whether one passes through Lisbon superficially or lingers to inquire into the history of things, interest is heightened by acquiring a certain knowledge of facts connected with the man and the terrible event.
Undoubtedly the earthquake of 1755 was the greatest catastrophe that Lisbon had experienced, not because it was more terrible than the earlier one of 1531, but because, say certain politicians, the capital was temporarily the most opulent and rich in all Europe. ”

“ Many churches, palaces and fifteen hundred houses were destroyed. The disasters caused by this great upheaval seem to have disappeared in an extraordinarily short time. Portugal has shown in many extremities an active power of recuperation and the possession of strong sons who appear when the hour of need demands them.
About half-past nine in the morning of November 1, 1755, a subterranean noise was audible throughout Lisbon. The sound increased with a terrifying continuity, and violent earthquake shocks shook the city to its most solid foundations. ”

“ The earthquake of the first of November, 1755, which is asserted, though upon doubtful evidence, to have been felt over a twelfth part of the earth's surface, was among the most violent of which we have any clear and distinct account, and it seems to have exerted its most destructive force at Lisbon. ”

“ Thus Pombal had not only to cope with the disastrous effects of the earthquake, but also with the venomous attacks of hypocritical bigots, in spite of whose clamours he interdicted all public processions and devotional exercises that were calculated still further to inflame the excited minds of the populace.
Though Lisbon was the chief sufferer from the great earthquake of 1755, the shocks which destroyed the capital of Portugal proved disastrous in many other places, and vibrated far and wide over a considerable portion of the globe. ”

“ They are often of such extent, during earthquakes, as to endanger life. During the great earthquake at Lisbon, in 1755, a fracture opened of sufficient width to swallow up the quay, and several thousands of persons who had fled there for safety. The chasm remained permanently open to the depth of six hundred feet. The earthquakes with which the valley of the Mississippi was visited in 1811 so often fissured the surface, that the inhabitants protected themselves by clinging to the trunks of trees, which they felled transversely to the direction of the fissures. ”

“ I have to deal with Marie Antoinette, Josephe-Jeanne de Lorraine, wife of Louis XVI, and who was born, you will remember, at Vienna, on the 2nd of November, 1755, the very day of that earthquake at Lisbon in the occurrence of which Dr. Johnson for a long time so resolutely refused to believe. Would the doctor, I wonder, had he lived in 1793, have declined to place credence in a newspaper report of what is now to be narrated—an upheaval more dreadful and disastrous than any physical convulsion of the earth’s crust? The tattered, muddy, gory panorama fades into a murky nothingness. ”

“ In the case of a very violent earthquake the waves travel long distances. Thus the great earthquake by which Lisbon was destroyed in the year 1755 disturbed the waters of Loch Lomond in Scotland. In this fearful catastrophe sixty thousand human beings perished. If the disturbance takes place near the sea, great sea waves are formed, which cause fearful destruction to life and property. ”

“ As regards the possible connection between volcanoes and earthquakes, it is known that a violent earthquake, whose shocks lasted several days, accompanied the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79, when Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed. In 1755 thousands upon thousands of people lost their lives in the memorable earthquake at Lisbon, in Portugal. ”

“ In some countries earthquakes are felt daily, and from what will be said in the chapter on earth pulsations it is not unlikely that every large earthquake might with proper instrumental appliances be recorded at any point on the land surfaces of our globe. The area over which any given earthquake extends is indeterminate. The area over which an earthquake is sensible is sometimes very great. The Lisbon shock of 1755 is estimated as having been sensible over an area of 3,300 miles long and 2,700 miles wide, but in the form of tremors and pulsations it may have shaken the whole globe. ”

“ Five years afterwards Portugal was overtaken by the tremendous disaster of the Lisbon earthquake (see Lisbon) , which, as Oliveira Martins justly observes, was “more than a cataclysm of nature; it was a moral revolution.” It brought the Restoration period to an end (1755) . Throughout that period the monarchy had occupied a precarious position, dependent until 1668 for its very existence, and after 1668 for its stability, on foreign support. Its policy had been moulded to suit France or Great Britain, while its internal administration had normally been directed by the Church. ”

“ The general character of the phenomena appears to have been very similar to that which was produced at the same place by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; and the opinion of those who saw and wrote about their occurrence was that it was due to an earthquake disturbance. Such phenomena are not uncommon on the Wexford coast, where they are popularly known as ‘death waves,’ probably in consequence of the lives which have been lost by these sudden inundations. ”

“ Thousands, who in one moment are full of busy life, are, the next, swallowed up as if they had never existed, or crushed to death by fragments of falling buildings. In six minutes, by the great earthquake of Lisbon, in 1755, sixty thousand souls were launched into eternity; and though none in this city have equalled in destructiveness the great one at Lisbon, yet Guatemala has been several times nearly destroyed by earthquakes, combined with the eruptions of the neighboring volcanoes."
MR. BARRAUD. "The inhabitants are mostly of Spanish origin; consequently, mostly Roman Catholics ”

“ The great storm which devastated the princely estates of Earl Goodwin in Kent (circa anno 1098) , and now so well known to mariners as the Goodwin Sands, is also said to have laid waste the parish of Forvie, in Aberdeenshire. On the occasion of the great earthquake at Lisbon in 1755, a flock of sheep were drowned in their cot in the neighbourhood of Lossiemouth, near Elgin, by the overflowing of the tide, although far removed from ordinary high-water-mark. Assuming this mountain to have been a volcano, are there any others in Great Britain? ”

“ Lisbon, Santo Antão.
After São Roque the first church begun by Terzi was Santo Antão, now attached to the hospital of São José. Begun in 1579 it was not finished till 1652, only to be destroyed by248 the earthquake in 1755. As at São Vicente, the west front has a lower order of huge Doric pilasters nearly fifty feet high. There is no porch, but three doors with poor windows above which look as if they had been built after the earthquake. ”

“ The southern part of Spain also, and Portugal, have generally been exposed to the same scourge simultaneously with Northern Africa. The provinces of Malaga, Murcia, and Granada, and in Portugal the country round Lisbon, are recorded at several periods to have been devastated by great earthquakes. It will be seen, from Michell's account of the great Lisbon shock, in 1755, that the first movement proceeded from the bed of the ocean ten or fifteen leagues from the coast. So late as February 2, 1816, when Lisbon was vehemently shaken, two ships felt a shock in the ocean west from Lisbon ”

“ When it is remembered that not one of the bodies of the people on that quay was ever again seen, it is possible, as Lyell suggests, that a deep fissure or chasm opened immediately on the ground on which the quay stood, so that it, together with all on it, were dropped into the chasm, which, closing, buried them deep in the earth.
The Lisbon earthquake was especially noted for the extent of country affected by it. Humboldt estimated this area as being more than four times the size of Europe. In parts of this area immense mountain ranges, such as the Pyrenees, Alps, etc., were violently shaken. ”

“ Yet for those who hold that the progress of science and education will ultimately remove that doubt, it is a consoling reflection that the greatest of all earthly evils are avoidable ones. The earthquake of Lisbon [2] killed sixty thousand persons who could not possibly have foreseen their fate. ”

“ The destructive earthquake at Lisbon, was a central one, the concentric waves gradually diminishing in intensity with increasing distance from the place of origin.
The vertical motion acts from beneath like the explosion of a mine, and when violent nothing can resist its force. The earthquake at Calcutta, in September, 1828, owed its great destructiveness to the fact that the main shock was vertical; and one in Murcia, Spain, in 1829, destroyed or injured more than three thousand five hundred houses. ”

“ In certain tempests, which characterise the equinoxes and the return to equilibrium of the prolific power of nature, vessels breasting the foam seem to give out a kind of fire, phosphoric lights chase each other along the rigging, so close sometimes to the sailors at their work that the latter stretch forth their hands and try to catch, as they fly, these birds of flame. After the great earthquake of Lisbon, a blast of hot air, as from a furnace, drove before it towards the city a wave sixty feet high. The oscillation of the ocean is closely related to the convulsions of the earth. ”

“ In other countries the sermons which have been preached to show that the tremblings of the world were visitations consequent on impiety, and the prayers which have been formulated to ward off disasters in the future, far exceed in number the earthquakes which gave rise to them. In 1755 many of the English clergy held the view that Lisbon was destroyed because its inhabitants were Catholics, whilst the survivors from that disaster attributed their misfortune to the fact that they had tolerated a few Protestant heretics in their midst. ”

“ The Lisbon earthquake moved about 20 miles in a minute; that which occurred in 1819, in the delta of the Indus, appears to have moved at the rate of 53 miles in a minute, or nearly 5,000 feet in a second. Other observations show that the movement may be from 1,000 to 5,000 feet per second. It has been ascertained that in blasting rocks the vibrations move in a second from 1,000 to 1,700 feet. The sound-waves move more rapidly, and, for this reason, shocks are usually preceded by subterranean rumbling. ”

“ How the Portuguese Made a Superb Auto-da-Fé to Prevent Any Future Earthquakes, and How Candide Underwent Public Flagellation
After the earthquake which had destroyed three-quarters of the city of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to preserve the kingdom from utter ruin, than to entertain the people with an auto-da-fé, it having been decided by the University of Coimbra that burning a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to prevent earthquakes. ”

“ But I do not believe popery has ventured at these diabolical tricks since the earthquake at Lisbon, so that a bucket of real water, carried to the real fire at Jenkins's cottage, would have done more good than a wild plan to put out an imaginary flame which no longer burns. And let me tell you, sir, dreadful as that evil was, God can send his judgments on other sins besides superstition; so it behoves us to take heed of the other extreme [Pg 264] or we may have our earthquakes too." "The hand of God is not shortened, sir, that it can not destroy, any more than it can not save. ”

“ Lisbon houses, built even now with certain modifications and improvements upon similar methods, have the reputation of being earthquake proof. It is certainly true that at various intervals they have successfully weathered many severe shocks.
The story of the great earthquake and the reconstruction period throws a new light on the Praça do Commercio and the lay-out of the lower town. The general style of architecture seen in the square, and in the high houses with dormer wdndows of the streets beyond, is known as the Pombaline. ”

“ It can hardly be doubted but that heaven and earth were combined in compleating our destruction. One element alone has been hardly ever known to occasion so extensive a devastation; are the sudden swelling and raging of the sea, we mmost reasonably attribute to the heavings of the earthquake; to which likewise the general ruin of our houses may be in some measure attributed.
I have seen the ruins of Lisbon ”

“ Among the ruins of a house, right in the face of the fire, squatted a dozen persons, men and women, all dazed by terror. The women had opened their parasols—possibly to screen their faces from the heat—albeit they might have escaped this quite easily by shifting their positions a few paces. None of these folk betrayed the smallest interest in Ruth or in Langton. Indeed, they scarcely lifted their eyes.
The suburbs were deserted, for the earthquake had surprised all Lisbon in a pack, crowded within its churches, or in its central streets and squares. ”

“ People who had fled to the shore ran back to the city and to the suburbs. The abandoning of their houses by wailing, despairing multitudes, gave rise to the outbreak of fire which began three hours after the earthquake, and lasted for four days. The fruit of many centuries of industry disappeared in a few hours. Immense riches and innumerable articles of value were lost in the churches, the houses of the fidalgos, and the dwellings of the merchants; millions in money, and precious stones of great value, the rarest in the world.
No human help could lighten the great disaster at all. ”