Significant earthquakes of 1673

July 12, 1673 Earthquake: Banda Sea, Indonesia

July 12, 1673

An earthquake struck Banda Sea, Indonesia on July 12, 1673. It caused a tsunami.

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
July 12, 1673
Place
Banda Sea, Indonesia
Epicenter
3.000° S, 128.000° E
Country
Indonesia
Region
Central and South Pacific

The toll

Damage
Limited (under about $1 million)

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.

What the record says

NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.

Reference #414:

There was a strong earthquake at Ambon; the ground cracked; avalanches buried the villages; there was a tsunami and many aftershocks. The fact of a tsunami is dubious.

Reference #79:

Possibly same as August 12, 1673, but location is different as well as date.

Sources NCEI cites

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

  1. #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.
  2. #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 1673The 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 5981.