Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum
First read on Sussex Coast Talking News - Tuesday 17th September 2024.
1816
– The Year without a Summer.
“Bang!” – The
sound of a distant explosion and its aftershocks rumbled through the air over
Southern England late in the evening of the 10th April 1815. Two men are walking together. They stop, one says “Did you hear that?”
“Yes, probably cannon fire in France.”
Says the other. “No, it was too
long and rumbling for that …” And their
conversation moves to other topics.
But what
they really heard was the volcanic explosion of Mount Tambora on the
Indonesian island of Sumbawa. There had
been a number of preliminary explosions, particularly in 1809; but, the one at
7 pm on the 10th April 1815 was massive and is now recorded as the
largest volcanic explosion that has taken place in humanities’ existence. This was a magnitude of 7 (out of ten) on the
Volcanic Explosivity Index.
It was
said to have been ten times greater than the size of Mount Krakatoa.
That
eruption had measured a 6 on the VEI scale.
And much
larger than Mount Eyjafjallajökull (also known as Mount E15) in April 2010
which caused such disruption to airlines flying across the Atlantic.
And that
eruption was a 2 on the VEI scale.
The
Volcanic Explosivity Index was evaluated in the 1980s by Messrs Newhall and
Self of the US Geological Survey and the University of Hawaii to bring some
formality to categorising volcanic eruptions - in a similar way to monitoring
wind speeds and earthquakes. This is
done by factoring together the volume of magma produced and the height the ash
cloud reaches in the sky. There may be
other views and data available but this index covers most volcanic events. And Mount Tambora was estimated to have erupted
over 100 cubic kilometres of magma and 60 megatons of sulphur.
Incidentally,
the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which destroyed Pompeii was a
high level 5 almost a 6 on that Index.
The
following year, when the effects started to manifest themselves, was known in
Europe as: “1816 – The year without a summer” or “The Poverty Year”. And in North America it was: “Eighteen-hundred
and froze to death”.
The world
nowadays is fairly quick to respond to natural disasters but in those days,
there was nothing. Most of the
mass of the volcano Mount Tambora was destroyed and millions of tons
of ash, dust, débris, fire, pumice and sulphur were blasted into the
atmosphere.
The
immediate fire-storm killed and destroyed huge swathes of the population and
life on the island.
Lieutenant-Governor
Thomas Stamford Raffles (our man in Java) sent the British East India Company
military vessel Benares to investigate and report back. It was, of course, difficult to work out
where the problem really came from because the ash cloud and darkness covered
an enormous area over Indonesia. When,
eventually, the Benares reached Sumbawa the devastation was unprecedented. The sea for miles around was covered in
floating lumps of pumice. Clouds of
cinders and pumice were falling continually on all surfaces. All but a few members of the population were
dead and the rest were starving to death.
What aid
or help could the single ship, Benares, offer?
Precious little.
But what
they could do, they did and left water and medical supplies for the Sultan of
Sumbawa to use. When the ship got back
to report to Lieutenant-Governor Raffles, the crew were traumatised by the
experience. They did not recognise PTSD
in those days.
Raffles
was appalled by what he was told, but he had few resources to provide any
meaningful support; what he could do, he carried it out and sent a fact-finding
mission to Sumbawa along with medical supplies.
And this record – along with his recorded time for the eruption - is the
main basis for all that we know and have learnt since about this volcanic
eruption.
Recovery
was mainly up to the Sultan of Sumbawa.
He managed to organise re-population of the island by immigration of
Muslim peoples from other islands of Indonesia.
Many survivors had fled the island, even selling themselves into slavery
to get away. The newcomers buried the
dead and re-vitalised the island over the following years.
At the
time, elsewhere, nobody knew or could state what had happened. They could see that this was a terrible event
and it had considerable impacts.
It was
only later, when the science of vulcanology had developed, that trained people
could work out the full facts of what had happened. Taking core samples from the South and North
Poles gave the vulcanologists huge amounts of data - which is still in use. Amongst all the debris exploded by Mount
Tambora were immense quantities of sulphur.
Most of this was expelled straight up and into the stratosphere; the
outer layer of the Earth’s atmosphere right on the edge of Space. This was beyond the reach of all types of weather
except for high winds. There, the
sulphur formed tiny sulphuric acid particles which floated about in the
stratosphere eventually forming a large, flat cloud which predominantly covered
the Northern Hemisphere. This cloud
almost completely blocked light from the Sun.
The effects of this volcanic eruption were truly global, hardly anybody
on the planet was unaffected.
Vulcanologists
and Meteorologists also found that Landscape Artists could contribute to their
knowledge - in the times before photography.
They found that the balance of the colours in pictures painted in
different years could give them much useful background information. JMW Turner’s actual sketch-books for the year
1816 were often muddy and water-logged. He
could not carry out one painting of the inside of a cave in Yorkshire because
it was flooded for instance.
Turner’s
painting of “Lancaster Sands” really demonstrates the power of the
climate. This is a bleak vision of
travellers desperate to get across that bay before the tide comes in, the
ground and the horizon are already water-logged and the sky is red with menace. This area is still today recognised as a
treacherous flood-plain for foot travellers.
Also, John
Constable, who was supposed to be enjoying his honeymoon at the time, painted
landscapes that summer filled with incredibly threatening clouds.
As another
example, the accurate paintings of Venice by Canaletto have demonstrated to Climate
Scientists how much Venice’s buildings have sunk into the lagoon in the last
two hundred & fifty years or so.
Most of
the sulphuric acid particles started to fall to Earth in the next year or so,
but it took about five or more years for the effects to clear completely.
Returning
now to 1815 and 1816, there were many people who watched the weather daily and
kept copious records of what was happening over the country. But to get a better picture we can go to
another source: Lord George Byron.
In the
summer of 1816, he invited a group of guests to stay at his villa – Diodati –
in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva.
His guests were: Dr JW Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley (the poet), Mary Wollstonecraft
Godwin (later to become Percy’s wife) and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s step-sister.
The aim of
the party – was to have a wonderful time, it was after all mid-summer in
Switzerland. They would stroll through
meadows filled with grasses, wild-flowers and meadow-flowers all dancing in the
breeze. They would sail across the
gentle Lake Geneva and sun-bathe on deck.
Well,
NO. It was not like that at all. This was mid-July and when it snowed, the
banks were not fluffy white – they were murky from the residue of the ashes and
cinders of Mount Tambora. When it was
not snowing, it was raining, more and more heavily. There were frequent land-slips and the area
filled with mud.
The lake
water was treacherous, constant waves and flows. Gentle sailing was not possible.
The
party’s only outdoor excursions were to watch the thunderstorms, and they
frequently got soaked to the skin doing that.
But the effects of the lightning impressed the young poets and writers
immensely. It is from the sky that gods
in many forms exert power over mankind in the form of lightning strikes.
Indoors,
the group read ghost stories to each other and some took high quantities of
laudanum (brandy laced with opium). There
was not much food to eat either as shortages of all types of produce were now
beginning to take hold.
In the
end, they were completely fed up with each other and Byron suggested writing
their own stories to improve their entertainments.
Only two
were of merit: John Polidori wrote “The Vampyre” (with a Y). This story was distinguished by being the
first ever story of a vampire that treated him as a rational, intelligent,
renaissance figure. All vampire stories
before then were of foul ghoulish beings, but John Polidori started a trend,
probably influencing Bram Stoker in particular.
Mary also
had a story to create. She thought and
dreamt deeply to come up with the “Frankenstein” legend. The being was made with stitched together, purloined
body parts by Victor Frankenstein and galvanised into existence by the
life-giving force of pure lightning.
Interestingly,
she refers to the being as “Frankenstein’s Creature” whereas Hollywood
preferred “Frankenstein’s Monster”.
These two
stories – “The Vampyre” and “Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus” - were the
ones that resonated and have since been widely remembered.
Separately,
doomsayers were calling out and there were prophecies going around foretelling
that this was truly the end of the world.
Many people were also transfixed by such images as the 8th
and 9th Chapters of the Book of Revelations which dealt with the
angels wreaking havoc with our Earth.
These were
all taken very seriously and Lord Byron created his poem “Darkness”. This was a truly apocalyptic vision. It could be described as a prayer for
light.
It starts:
“I had a dream which was not all a dream
The bright
sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander
darkling in the eternal space
Rayless,
and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung
blind and blackening in the moonless air.”
Somehow,
this reminds me of Dame Edith Sitwell’s poetry, but that is for another
day. And, we still read Byron’s poetry
and the visions he creates. But we are
still here and the world is still going round.
The poets
of the day: Byron, Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge, Shelley and others described
the threatening landscape and cloudscape in their works giving us a reliable
picture of the world that they suffered in.
When the
party broke up, Claire Clairmont went to live in Bath and there prepared to
give birth to her first (Lord Byron’s) child.
Mary, as her step-sister, moved nearby with Percy to care for Claire. Whilst there, with Percy’s help, she
completed her work on “Frankenstein” and had it published - anonymously at
first and later in her own name, to great acclaim. She was barely nineteen years old at the
time.
In musical
terms, Franz Schubert, for one, living in Vienna, did not mention the sun once
in all the songs that he wrote in 1816 and a few years after.
But, what
of the general population in Great Britain and Continental Europe at the
time? It was generally a terrible economic
situation. Most members of the Armies
and Navies being redundant had simply been kicked out of their posts when
Napoleon was captured and neutralised after the Battle of Waterloo. There was a great deal of unrest and crops
were failing just about everywhere.
Death by starvation was a reality to most people.
Not just
crops, but farm animals suffered too: shepherds sheared their sheep at the
usual times. Then, a day or two later
when the air temperature started to plummet, they resorted to the desperate
measure of tying fleeces back onto their sheep to keep them warm during the
ongoing freeze.
Because of
these tragedies, many people across England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland and
Continental Europe emigrated to North America.
The year 1816 probably saw more people migrate to America than at any
other time.
And what had
been happening in the United States and in Canada?
Well, until
then, most of the immigrant population to the United States and Canada had
stayed close to the Eastern Seaboard; but, the year “Eighteen Hundred and Froze
to Death” saw crops fail at practically all of the farms that were there. What were they to do? Well, almost all the farmers packed up their belongings
and moved inland to find new and more fertile territories, this becoming one of
the biggest population movements in that Continent’s history. Also, following on from the locals, the huge
numbers of immigrants arriving from Britain and the Continent moved inland to
find new places to live, work and feed themselves.
In Asia
also, there were similar indications of the volcano’s activity.
In India,
the monsoons for a number of years were far heavier and of longer
duration. This resulted in a rise in
infectious diseases and, in particular, a strain of cholera that had an impact
around the world.
And in
Southern China, many rice-growing farms saw all their crops fail. Rice-growing is a water-intensive activity,
but it was the cold and the frozen ground that killed the crops. When the weather settled and became warmer
again, the farmers almost unanimously changed their crop to opium. Opium is and was a hugely cash-generating
crop; much more so than rice. The farmers would sell off most of their crop of
opium each year. They would keep a small
amount for personal consumption, after all, television had not yet been
invented, and they did not have endless repeats of “The Two Ronnies” to look
forward to on Saturday evenings.
Farming
and selling opium would give the farmers quite a good income, they would buy
all the food and supplies they needed, and still have a good surplus at the
end. Everybody was happy. Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge would
also be happy as they had a good, continuing supply of opium for years to come.
But this
situation would cause many problems for the Chinese Government some years in
the future.
Do we have
any direct evidence nowadays of what happened after Mt. Tambora’s eruption?
Well, if
you speak to a Volcano expert, they might well detail some of the long-lasting
impacts, but I might have an example closer to home for you.
If you happen
to be a few miles to the North-West of the town of Worthing, I suggest that you
join Long Furlong (the A280) then turn off that road to the village of
Clapham. Now go into St Mary the Virgin
Church, the local parish church.
Inside, on
the South wall is a white memorial tablet with just one name on it, although
there is room for more names to be recorded here.
This
memorial commemorates Thomas Parsons of Holt Farm who died on the 28th
February 1816 aged 47 years.
Now, the
Parsons family were widely recognised as yeomen who had lived in the Parish for
about two hundred years.
That much
is known, now I must conjecture what might have happened next.
After
Thomas died, his widow (or relict as she would have been called in those days)
tried to continue running the farm with their children. Despite their best efforts, the farm probably
failed that year. Having no money to pay
the rent, I think that Mrs Parsons will have been forced to relinquish the
lease. She, and the children, probably
moved away to join her parents and so were lost to the parish. And it is very sad that there were probably
no more Parsons family members in the parish to go onto that tablet. Well, I might be right or wrong about what I
have conjectured, but at least it seems to fit with the facts that are
available. Holt Farm is, by the way,
just to the North of the current route of the A27.
Coincidentally,
the Shelley family lived nearby and some of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s family are also
recorded in this church in stone or brass.
Along with, at the back of the church, a family tree showing Percy and
both of his wives. Harriet was his first
wife and Mary Shelley, whom we know well, was his second wife.
It is a
beautiful place of worship, so, please, pop a couple of coins into the
collection box at the back of the church to show your appreciation and help in
its upkeep.
So many
people suffered at this time, many are known and remembered, but many are
forgotten. One who is well known was
Jane Austen, she died in July 1817 and it is sad to realise that she barely saw
the Sun for the last year and a half to two years of her life. Oddly enough, in one of her last letters to
her niece she laughingly joked that this awful weather seemed to be going on
for all of time.
To show when
this awful weather had finally ended, John Keats wrote his “Ode to Autumn” in
the late summer of 1819. He was the
first of the poets I mentioned earlier to write (and publish) about the sun - and
this meant that our time with no summers was finally at an end. I shall never be able to read this poem again
without thinking of its full meaning in that it signalled the end of the
influence of Mount Tambora on our seasons.
I hope
that you enjoyed my miscellany about the Napoleonic-era volcanic eruption of
Mount Tambora and can shake off the cold in your bones - then go out into the
sunlight to warm up a bit or at least, turn up your thermostat a notch or two.
My Primary
source of inspiration for this reading was
the BBC
Radio Three Sunday Feature: “1816 – The Year without a Summer”. First broadcast in April 2016.
Thank you
once again and I hope you have enjoyed this article.
Thank you
again and good-bye for now.
