When Calabria’s Ground Would Not Rest

Transcript

In 1783, a series of powerful earthquakes shook Sicily and the two Calabrias, beginning on the fifth of February and continuing into late May, as Jane Loudon recounts. During the first month, she says, the ground seemed almost constantly to tremble. At times it moved horizontally; at others, it rose and fell in pulses, like repeated beatings. Loudon also describes cracks opening and parts of the landscape shifting, but it is the movement itself that gives her account its unsettling force. Loudon draws on Sir William Hamilton for a closer observation. He reported that each shock was preceded by a rumbling noise from the west. He said the movement began horizontally, then ended in a violent whirling motion, so that the tops of large trees nearly touched the ground as they swung from side to side. Hamilton also observed oxen and horses spreading their legs wide, as if bracing themselves against each shock and trying not to be thrown down. Loudon presents a volcanic connection as an explanation of the period. Hamilton believed the shocks came from a great volcanic operation, but this was his proposed cause, not a settled conclusion. Her account leaves us with the scale of the disturbance, and with the careful observations people made as the earth moved beneath them.