November 22, 1815 Tsunami: Bali Sea, Indonesia

Reference #414:

1815, November 22, 22:00-23:00 [Local time] there was an exceptionally strong earthquake at Buleleng on the north coast of Bali island. The tremors lasted almost an hour and were accompanied by a deafening rumble, which seemed to come from the coastal mountains. The coastal mountains "crumbled" with a monstrous roar and partly collapsed into the water; 10,253 people were buried under a mudflow. A sea wave arose, which flooded the land for a large distance, as a result of which another 1,200 people died.

The fracture which formed during the earthquake crossed Danau-Tamblingan Lake, situated between Buleleng and Tabanan. The lake partially flowed out, which aggravated the flooding.

Reference #40:

1815, November. Indonesia, the north coast of Bali (8.5 S, 115 E). A large wave inundated the land.

Reference #132:

1815, November. Dutch East Indies. Bali, east of Java, north coast. Great wave inundated land.

Reference #4659:

Lists 1816 November 27 at 21:15U, 8.0 S 115.2 E. 10253 dead

Reference #11528:

1815 November 22 at 10 p.m., MMI IX

Reference #14167:

According to Bloemen Waanders, after splitting, the two flows joined at the Pabean harbor settlement: “they rejoined with fearful violence at Pabéjan and did not plunge into the sea until after they had completely submerged that beautiful and large Muslim encampment”.

In reality, the Pabean District (harbor) destruction would not have been caused by the two flows joining together, but by a tsunami, as can be confirmed by the two newspaper contemporary descriptions: “On the fall of so large a mass, the water rose suddenly and overflowed the country to a considerable extent, and in retiring, which it did almost immediately swept everything before it. The fallen mountain forms a promontory projecting a considerable distance into the sea” (Java Government Gazette, 1815); “the sea, agitated by the plunging of the rocks into its waves, burst the bounds which nature had assigned it, and came pouring over the land in return” (Medhurst 1830).

The volume of sediment reaching the sea pushed the water northwards and along the coasts on either side of the debris flow, westwards and eastwards.

Although the earthquake was felt in Lombok, Surabaya (Java) and Bima (Sumbawa), no records of a tsunami occurring in November 1815 on the Java and Lombok coasts have been mentioned in any known tsunami-earthquake databases or written sources (Soloviev and Go 1974; Harris and Major 2017). The lack of any significant tsunami reaching the nearby coasts suggests that it was a local tsunami affecting mainly the Buleleng coast.

Soloviev & Go (1984) and Nguyen et al. (2015) associate the 1,200 victims mentioned in the Java Government Gazette with the tsunami alone, but there is nothing in the description to allow such a conclusion about the hazard involved. These authors assess the total death toll at approximately 11,453. While ten thousand deaths seem plausible, we remain cautious about the respective numbers attributable to the debris flow or the tsunami.