November 30, 1824 Tsunami: Saint Pierre, Martinique

A severe shock was reported at St. Pierre, Martinique. Mallet (Reference #497) reported "A very high tide threw many ships upon the strand. It was accompanied by subterranean noise that appeared at first to proceed from the atmosphere. The earthquake was preceded by great heat, which ceased after the shock, and heavy rain began, which lasted for 10 days." Mallet reported similar information for the event that happened one year earlier, in 1822. Heck (Reference #132) cited the 1824 information from Mallet, but gave it a date of 1823. This may actually be a duplicate record of the November 30, 1823 event.

Reference #8688:

Archived exactly one year apart, respectively on 30 November 1823 and 30 November 1824, both of these events purportedly caused ‘damages in the harbour’ on those two dates - seemingly the Saint-Pierre harbour. Moreover, both events appear to have occurred following periods of high temperatures that were accompanied by torrential rains (Mallet, 1852, 1853, 1854). These similarities lead to two distinct hypotheses. It is entirely possible that these two purported tsunamis were in fact one single event, wrongly reported as separate events due to transcription of calendar mistakes. Alternatively, it is somewhat possible that the two events resulted from earthquakes that occurred exactly one-year apart. However it is highly unlikely that such coincidence in the day and month actually occurred. Finally, it is also entirely possible that the reported tsunamis were storm surges generated by hurricanes.