January 8, 2005
Welsh tsunami
IT WAS around 9am on the "20th January 1607" (although in the modern calendar this is the January 30 1607) when the flood struck. The event is recorded on plaques in a number of churches, including those in Monmouthshire at Goldcliff, St Brides, Redwick and Peterstone.Read more here.The idea that the 1607 flood was due to a tsunami was first put forward by us in a scientific paper published in 2002 in the journal Archaeology in the Severn Estuary.
A number of historical documents exist that describe the event and its aftermath. An area from Barnstaple in north Devon, up the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary to Gloucester, then along the South Wales coast around to Cardigan was affected, some 570 km of coastline.
The coastal population was devastated with at least 2,000 fatalities according to one of the contemporary sources.
Posted by David on January 8, 2005 2:39 PM
Under the present calendar, Gregorian, the tidal wave or possibly the tsunami took place on 30 January 1607, however according to the calendar used at the time, the Julian,the date of the disaster was in fact 20 January 1606 not 1607 as mentioned in your report.
Posted by: Ron Higgins on July 18, 2008 5:56 AM
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