July 4, 1904 Tsunami: Banda Sea, Indonesia

Name: July 4, 1904 Tsunami: Banda Sea, Indonesia
Start: 1904-07-04
Location: Banda Sea, Indonesia

July 4, 1904 · Very doubtful tsunami

A tsunami caused by an earthquake began at Banda Sea, Indonesia on July 4, 1904. Its effects were recorded at 1 place.

Where the waves reached

The source (white) and every runup with a place, colored by the water height recorded there. A ring is a runup NCEI marks doubtful.

Under 1 m
1 to 3 m
3 to 10 m
10 to 30 m
30 m and more
Height not recorded

Tsunami warnings in force

Travel times

How long the first wave took to reach each part of the ocean, one line for each hour up to 24, estimated from the source and the depth of the sea.

The travel times are computed in your browser, which needs JavaScript.

1 to 4 hours
5 to 6 hours
7 to 14 hours
15 hours and more

Computed in your browser the way NOAA’s own travel time maps are: the wave travels at the square root of gravity times the depth, over NOAA’s ETOPO1 depths averaged to a 10 arc-minute grid. Checked against NOAA NCEI’s maps for 21 tsunamis over the first 24 hours, these lines fall within 10 minutes of NCEI’s at half the points compared and within 52 minutes at 9 in 10. They give when the first wave could arrive, not how high it is; bays, harbors and island chains finer than the grid can see it later. Not for use in a warning: see tsunami.gov.

The tsunami

Date: July 4, 1904
Source: Banda Sea, Indonesia
Cause: Earthquake
Earthquake: The earthquake
Runups recorded: 1
Tsunami intensity (Soloviev-Imamura): 1
Waters: Ocean
How certain: Very doubtful tsunami
Source location: 3.600° S, 128.700° E

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:

July 5, 1904, early morning. The sea was very stormy in Saparua Bay and outside of it, although there had been no storm there before. Part of the pier was smashed and washed off. At 2:00, a tidal wave fell on the coast at Sirisori; one proa, loaded with goods, ran aground and was smashed, but the passengers were saved. On other areas of the coast, as far as is known, nothing similar was observed. The cause of the waves is unclear. The last known earthquake had occurred on the 4th after 13:00 and was felt at Piru, Amahai and Wahai.

Reference #1188:

July 5,1904. Siri-Siri: West Sumatera - a part of the pier was destroyed and sailing boats on the coast of Siri-Siri sank as a result of the high waves.

Reference #3831:

July 5, 1904. The earthquake seemed to have a submarine origin. A part of the pier was destroyed and a sailing boat just off the Siri-Sori coast sank as a result of the high waves.

Reference #42:

July 4, 1904. Sumatra. Waves generated by a submarine shock off the Siri-Sori coast sank a sailing boat and damaged a pier,(Soetadi, 1962).

Note: reference #42, #12917 and #4659 lists this event in West Sumatra. However, location Siri-Sori (or Siri-Siri) only found in E. Indonesia. All sources point to reference #3831, which does not provide any details beyond "Siri-Sori". Reference #13384 lists an earthquake on 04 July 1904 07:00 (local) in South Maluku.

Every runup

Nearest the source first. Heights are above sea level at the time; a tide gauge reads half the wave’s full height.

Where	Country	Km from source	Water height, m	Inland, m	Measured by	First wave, UTC	Deaths
Siri-Sori, Saparua	Indonesia	16			Eyewitness observation of water height

Every tsunami in 1904 The 1900s Tsunamis of Indonesia The earthquake This day in weather history Alerts in force

Sources

Tsunami events and runups from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-09-24. NCEI tsunami event 1315.