November 23, 1824 Tsunami: Dorset, England, United Kingdom

Reference #14268:

A storm on 23 November 1824 was marked by gale- or hurricane-force winds, according to some reports. One or more large waves with tsunami characteristics accompanied the storm and caused much damage and loss of life.

The Fleet is a lagoon sheltered behind the southwest- facing Chesil Beach gravel barrier (May 2003). During the 1824 storm a single giant wave overtopped, rather than breached, the gravel barrier from Chesil in the east, where it destroyed many fishermen’s cottages and apparently killed fifty to sixty people. In Abbotsbury, to the west, the wave inundated back-barrier meadows to a depth of approximately 6.9 meters. Commemorative information regarding this event is on display at these locations and at the nearby coastal town of Weymouth, where the event badly damaged the seafront.

Only the chancel remained of Fleet Church, which now contains a notice that states “in 1824 a great tidal wave washed over the ridge of the Chesil Beach and over the Fleet Water and passed onwards, the water reaching a depth of about 30 feet [approximately 9 meters] at this point.” With reference to a nearby Ordnance Survey benchmark we surveyed (using a Leica 400 Total Station), the church floor stands at 4.05 meters Ordnance Datum (OD Newlyn, approximately mean sea level), so the wave run-up must have been a minimum of approximately 13 meters above sea level at this point. According to West, “the original lower village of Fleet, normally sheltered by the Chesil Bank, was devastated by [a] wave resembling a tsunami. Just why there was a sudden appearance of [a] giant wave which came over the Chesil Beach and the Fleet Lagoon is not clear”.

A surge was clearly linked with the storm, because at Lyme Regis a customs officer reported that “the tide was flowing [coming in] at one a.m….though it ought not by the tide table, to have been low water until an hour after the time!”and that subsequently “it came up to high water mark during neap tides at three o’clock which was five hours before the time of high water [spring tide predicted at 739 a.m.]! Before four, the sea had risen to a great height[,] …which soon afterwards broke over the [sea) walls” (Le Pard 1999, 23); however, large, long-period waves may have superposed on the storm surge sometime after 7:00 a.m., when an initial inundation “made a clean breach” through the ground floor of an alehouse; then, ten minutes later, a second wave “broke in the roof” that had collapsed, followed by a “third wave [that] carried the whole away”

[…] at least three large waves superposed on elevated surge levels at approximately ten minute intervals.

Reference #14269:

On the 23 November 1824, a large storm in the English Channel stuck Chesil Beach. Le Pard (1999) and West (2019), report that a storm surge overtopped the cobble bank, which acts as a sea defence and, shortly afterward, a wave superimposed upon the swell flooded the coastline behind the bank. This is clearly a wintertime storm with a storm surge, storm waves and long period, swell waves. Waves breached the Chesil bank, but also a tidal surge could have come through the eastern entrance.