Significant earthquakes of 1629

August 1, 1629 Earthquake: Banda Sea, Indonesia

August 1, 1629 · 5 deaths

An earthquake struck Banda Sea, Indonesia on August 1, 1629. It killed 5 people, counting the tsunami it caused.

Map

Where it struck, with the other significant earthquakes within 200 km. Circles are sized and colored by magnitude; select one for its page.

The earthquake

Date
August 1, 1629
Place
Banda Sea, Indonesia
Epicenter
4.600° S, 129.900° E
Country
Indonesia
Region
Central and South Pacific

The toll

Deaths
5 with its tsunami and other effects
Damage
Moderate (about $1 to $5 million) with its tsunami and other effects
Houses destroyed
Some (about 51 to 100) with its tsunami and other effects

Where the literature gives no number, NCEI records a description on a scale of 1 to 4, printed here in its words. Damage is in millions of US dollars of the year of the event, not adjusted for inflation.

From Wikipedia

The 1629 Banda Sea earthquake struck the Banda Sea, Indonesia on August 1. Its epicentre is believed to have been in the Seram Trough. A megathrust earthquake caused a 15 m (49 ft) tsunami, which was recorded to have affected the Banda Islands about 30 minutes after the quake. The effects of the tsunami were reported as far as 230 kilometres (140 mi) away in Ambon. Many trees in the Banda Islands were reported to have been uprooted.

Text from Wikipedia, “1629 Banda Sea earthquake”, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Quoted as written; the full article has the rest.

What the record says

NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.

Reference #414:

1629, July 1, 21:30 local time. The Banda Islands felt a strong earthquake; the ground cracked. Half an hour later, a high mountain of water appeared in the strait between Lonthor and Neira Islands.

The earthquake was apparently felt at Ambon.

Reference #40:

Epicenter 04 deg 35 min South, 129 deg 55 min East.

Sources NCEI cites

The publications NCEI lists for this record. The numbers match the “reference #” notes in its account above.

  1. #40 Berninghausen, William H. (1969). Tsunamis and seismic seiches of Southeast Asia. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 59, no. 1, p. 289-297.
  2. #79 Iida, Kumizi, Doak C. Cox, and George Pararas-Carayannis (1967). Preliminary Catalog of Tsunamis Occurring in the Pacific Ocean, HIG-67-10, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 275 p. Bibliography to the Preliminary Catalog of Tsunamis Occurring in the Pacific Ocean, December 1967, 27 p.
  3. #414 Soloviev, S.L., and Ch.N. Go (1974). A catalogue of tsunamis on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean [dates include 173-1968. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Nauka Publishing House, Moscow, 439 p. [Canadian Translation of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences no. 5077, 1984, translation available from Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A OS2, 447 p.]

Other significant earthquakes nearby

Within 200 km, the deadliest first.

More

Significant earthquakes of 1629The 1600sRecent earthquakes near hereThis day in weather history

Sources

Significant earthquakes from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-10-01. NCEI earthquake 5965.