816 was a very bad year.
Across the entire Northern hemisphere, what would become known as The Year Without A Summer led to massive food shortages due to the overall drop in temperatures and the failure of food crops. Beginning in early spring, cool temperatures, fog, and heavy rains struck Europe, Asia, and North America leaving people mystified as to why this was happening.
The bizarre weather would extend into the following year with a bitterly cold winter in between. Famine broke out in many part of the world with food crises leading to massive strikes in numerous European cities. The price of many cereal crops rose to record highs as Europe would experience the last great famine of the 19th century. Temperatures were so cold that a massive ice dam formed in one region of Switzerland that would lead to massive flooding in 1818.
The Explosion of Mount Tambora
As for the cause of this strange change in the weather, that wouldn't become readily apparent until much later. While few people in the Northern hemisphere had even heard of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa in the Indonesian archipelago, the massive eruption that occurred there on April 5, 1815 would eventually transform their lives.
That first volcanic blast would be so loud that Thomas Stamford Raffles, the lieutenant-governor of Java, would hear it eight hundred miles away. Along with other British authorities on the island, Raffles assumed that the sound came from gunfire. While nobody knew where the gunfire was coming from, military garrisons across Java went on alert. The British soldiers first suspected that a volcano was responsible when a light rain of ash fell on Java though nobody would realize the full magnitude of what was happening until later.
Meanwhile, Europe was preoccupied with other things. Napoleon's spectacular escape from Elba in February of 1815 and his brief attempt at regaining power led to a tense military confrontation that would end with the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. A relatively minor volcanic eruption would have gone completely unnoticed.
That is, until a far greater explosion occurred on April 10.
Now recognized as one of the greatest volcanic eruptions in recorded history, the eruption of Mount Tambora and the tsunamis it generated would kill tens of thousands as the top of the mountain was completely obliterated. Villages close to the site of the eruption were buried in pumice and ships that were hundreds of kilometers away were struck by hurricane-force winds. Of the 12,000 natives living near Tambora itself, there were only 100 known survivors. Were it not for a heavy rainstorm which struck the area on April 17, the death toll from the fires spread by the eruption might have been much higher.
Within twenty-four hours of the eruption, the cloud of ash from Tambora had grown to the size of Australia. Air temperatures dropped rapidly and many of the affected areas were littered by dead fish and birds. It was later estimated that the eruption had released one hundred cubic kilometers of molten rock into the atmosphere.
According to modern geologists rating the Tambora eruption on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (equivalent to the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes), the eruption of Mount Tambora is rated as 7 making it ten times stronger than the eruption at Krakatoa in 1883 and a hundred times stronger than the Mount St. Helens eruption in 1980. Only four other eruptions of the last 10,000 years have reached this intensity.
Many ships sailing through the area reported finding themselves in "utter darkness" due to the amount of ash that had been dispersed. Blotting out all sunlight, the ash covered many of the nearby islands to a depth of a meter. Ships had to zigzag through the local waters to avoid the clumps of floating cinders that had become a hazard to navigation. It seemed fitting that the natives of many of the more distant islands assumed that the bizarre conditions they were experiencing were due to supernatural causes. Certainly a volcanic eruption of that magnitude had never occurred in living memory and Mount Tambora had been assumed to be extinct up to that time.
The Tambora Aftermath
But the worst was still to come. The conditions produced by the eruption led to a failure of that year's crop leading to widespread famine. Another seventy to eighty thousand would die of famine or disease in Indonesia alone leading to a total death toll of ninety thousand overall in that one country. And the Year Without a Summer was only just beginning.
Along with millions of tons of ash, the Tambora eruption threw 55 million tons of sulphur-dioxide gas more than twenty miles into the stratosphere. Mixing with hydroxide, more than 100 million tons of sulfuric acid formed. The resulting aerosol cloud covered the entire equator in a matter of weeks and slowly spread to the North and South Poles as well. Suspended in the relatively stable upper stratosphere, the ashy remains of the Mount Tambora eruption would linger for years before dispersing. Nobody suspected then about the devastating impact this would have on the world's weather.
By December 1815, parts of Europe were noticing unusually severe snowstorms. Even more frightening was the colour of the snow in many places, ranging from red to yellow. The snow was described as "brick red and left an earthy powder, very light and impalpable, unctuous to the touch" as well as an "astringent taste." In Italy, religious processions were organized because the strange weather was believed to have been caused by God's wrath. Massive falls of red snow in Hungary caused the deaths of thousands of farm animals and the same was happening in other places as well.
While reports about the Mount Tambora eruption had slowly made their way to Western countries, nobody made the connection with the unusual weather conditions that were occurring. All that anyone knew for certain was that something very strange was happening and it was the lack of a rational explanation that helped feed into the sense of panic that was slowly brewing across much of the world.
"Nuclear Winter"
While scientists have longed speculated on the "nuclear winter" scenario that might follow an all-out nuclear exchange, or possibly as the result of a large enough asteroid strike, what happened across much of the world in the years following the Mount Tambora eruption is a textbook example of how global cooling of even a few degrees can transform human life. Even though the cloud of ash and dust only reflected or scattered less than one percent of the sunlight that reaches the Earth, it still devastated agriculture worldwide. But it was a gradual process for the most part. Despite the immediate darkening over much of the Indonesian archipelago right after the eruption, it would take up to a year for the full effects to be felt elsewhere. Since soil and ocean water can retain heat for long periods in spite of the cooler air passing over it, few people were aware that anything unusual was happening at first.
That is, except for the spectacular sunsets seen across the world in the summer and fall of 1815. In London, for example, observers noted the "sky exhibited in places a fire" with red, purple, and orange colours seen on the horizon as the sun set. Although the science that would explain the optical effects of the Tambora aerosol cloud in the atmosphere was still in its infancy, many letters written by London residents during this period mentioned the unusual optical effects. Not until the eruption of Krakatoa would such spectacular sunsets be seen again.
But the glorious sunsets were little consolation as the full impact of The Year Without A Summer became apparent. And the psychological toll was just beginning.
The mood at the beginning of 1816 was actually quite positive despite the harsh winter that most of Europe experienced. In the United States, the end of the War of 1812 seemed like a good sign for the future while the European countries were equally upbeat about the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. But disturbing omens began intruding on the popular consciousness soon enough. On April 29, 1816, an enormous sunspot became clearly visible to anyone looking directly at the sun and persisted for nearly a week. Described by one contemporary source as looking like "a spider, having parts extended from the main body," the length was estimated at being more than 40,000 miles. Other sunspots also became visible to the casual observer, something nobody had ever seen before. While sunspot activity had been commonly observed by astronomers looking at the sun through telescopes, the rise in sunspot activity that was so easily seen by anyone looking upward made people nervous.
Despite various attempts at an explanation, nobody linked the sunspot activity to the optical effects of the fine aerosol cloud that Tambora had released into the stratosphere. All that anyone could say for certain was that something very strange was happening. It is probably not surprising that many people regarded the rise in sunspots as a sign from the heavens that a disaster was coming. Frightened sources began suggesting that the sunspots would eventually spread and blot out the sun entirely, thus plunging the Earth into "the unutterable darkness that characterized the primitive chaos.” While the editors of the North American Review denied that the end of the world was at hand, an editorial did acknowledge that ""We have remarked at different times during the present season, on days when the sky was perfectly clear, that there was a degree of feebleness and dimness in the Sun’s rays, not unlike the effect produced by a partial eclipse.”
The Year Without A Summer
If there was little real panic at first, it was likely because the winter of 1815-1816 was actually rather mild in many places. The aerosol cloud from Tambora disrupted weather patterns and shifted polar winds from their usual paths. This led to unseasonal warm temperatures in much of North America even as Europe was subjected to a bitterly cold winter. While the price of food had soared in the months following Waterloo, the United States was largely spared the food riots that had broken out in parts of Europe.
By the spring of 1816, things became far worse. New England began reporting snowstorms in May with frost covering the ground and ruining crops. From Maine to New York, thick ice formed over ponds and cattle were unable to graze in fields. Even shipping traffic in the Great Lakes became difficult due to the ice that blocked regular routes. A mild winter had led many farmers to hope for a good year for crops but the unseasonal weather changed that. Political tensions added to the general unease being felt on both sides of the Atlantic.
"Sinister and Dreadful Events"
For many religious people, the Year Without A Summer was only the latest in a series of "portents" that made them uneasy. The year 1811 had already been considered to be a "year of wonders" that included an extremely bright comet and a total eclipse of the sun (two traditional signs that something dire was about to happen). The year was capped off by a massive earthquake had struck northeast Arkansas and stretched down to Memphis Tennessee on December 16, 1811. The aftershocks continued well into 1812 with a second earthquake on February 7 which completely destroyed the town of New Madrid, Missouri.
With the memory of the damage that had been caused still being fresh in many memories, the unseasonal weather appeared to be part of a pattern of disasters suggesting that the end of the world was at hand. As Washington Irving later wrote, the numerous signs of disaster "filled the imagination with dreams of horror and apprehensions of sinister and dreadful events." Evangelistic preachers were openly proclaiming the apocalypse and warning anyone listening to them to repent.
While scientists attempted to come up with more rational explanations for what was happening,, religious revivals became a common sight throughout 1816 and 1817. Congregations swelled with new members across the United States. In the meantime, predictions of impending doom became more common in Europe. An astronomer in Bologna reporting on the extraordinary rise in sunspots concluded that the sun would eventually be snuffed out leading to the world ending on July 18. The panic that this prediction caused led to the astronomer's arrest in the hope of silencing him. But other prophets of doom soon joined in as well. A priest in Naples announced that the city would be destroyed by a rain of fire and that "those who escaped the fire were to be devoured by serpents." He was arrested too.
As the July 18 date grew closer, the panic spread across many parts of Europe. The continued gloomy weather did nothing to reassure anybody and churches were filled to capacity. In the town of Liege, “an enormous mass of clouds appearing … in the shape of a huge mountain over the city” triggered mass panic that took time and military intervention to settle. And it was hardly the only town where troops needed to be called in to control the crowds. Even in a pre-Internet era, news of the Italian prophecy still spread across the Atlantic with muted panic occurring in the United States as well.
Even when July 18 came and went with no apocalypse, the continuing gloomy weather brought little relief. Hailstorms and overcast conditions added to the sense that the apocalypse was still on the way, if a little delayed. Massive crop failures occurred across much of Europe and agricultural regions were particularly hard hit. In the United States, many farmers lost their livelihood and were forced to travel west to try their luck elsewhere. The Second Great Awakening that had been triggered by New England's Dark Day in 1780 was already underway and the new religious movements that sprang up during this period found no shortage of new believers, especially since so many farm families found themselves dealing with ruined crops and bizarre weather that seemed like a sign from God.
And things were even worse in Europe. The price of wheat skyrocketed and farmers saw their crops drenched by flooding and unseasonal storms. Religious processions were held in France and other Catholic countries to pray for better weather but the public mood grew even uglier with no real relief in sight.
In the Villa Diodati
It was during the summer of 1816 and the gloom that had settled over much of the world was at its peak when a remarkable group of travelers arrived at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva for a writing retreat. Along with George Gordon Byron (better known as Lord Byron), the group also included Percy Bysshe Shelley and his mistress Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, their physician Dr. John William Polidori, and fellow writer Clare Claremont. Though they were all facing their own personal problems (particularly Shelley who had left his wife for Mary Godwin), the general pall of the Year Without A Summer certainly contributed to the gothic atmosphere of the villa where they were staying. As Mary Shelley would recall years afterwards, "It proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house."
After being inspired by reading a collection of ghost stories, it was Byron who made his famous challenge that each one of them present should write a ghost story. Based on that challenge, the various writers managed to produce some of the most memorable works in the English language. And the most influential.
Not only did Mary Shelley write the story that would later become Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, but John William Polidori would eventually write his own horror novel, The Vampyre, based on Byron's contribution. As for Byron and Percy Shelley, they wrote relatively conventional ghost stories though Byron would also be inspired to write one of his most memorable, and bleakest, works. The poem, Darkness, published that same year, is an apocalyptic vision of the last man on Earth describing "a dream, which was not all a dream" in which the sun had been extinguished and the moon was gone completely. Every possible source of warmth has been exhausted as even the forests had been burned for heat by the few remaining survivors. Mass starvation had wiped out most of the human race "and the pang of famine fed upon all entrails--men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured...". After the last survivors die fighting each other, nothing remains but darkness as the Earth is rendered "Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless."
But Byron and his fellow travelers were hardly the only ones affected by the gloomy weather. While Jane Austen was enjoying positive reviews Afrom her previous novel, Emma, her work on the new novel that would become Persuasion, was offset by the general pessimism resulting from what was happening in much of the world. "Oh! It rains again; it beats against the window," she wrote in a letter to her nephew. "Such weather gives one little temptation to be out. It is really too bad & has been for a long time, much worse than anyone could bear, & I begin to think it will never be fine again." Whether due to the depressed mood caused by the weather or her own awareness of her worsening health, Persuasion would turn out to show a somewhat different worldview than her previous novels. But the cultural impact of the various literary works inspired by the Year Without A Summer still lay in the future.
Surviving the Famine
For the millions of people affected by the bitterly cold weather, survival was more important. With unseasonal frost destroying crops well into August in many places, and drought striking many other regions, the prospect of starvation seemed increasingly likely. If the world failed to come to an end as predicted, things would become very dicey. Especially when early frost hit in September and ruined what few crops had managed to survive the cold summer. Economic refugees fleeing impending famine in many regions became a common sight. Though the United States had its own problems, the number of emigrants, especially from countries such as Ireland, rose substantially.
With the prospect of famine in so many places, export of grain and other agricultural products dropped to an all-time low. Not only did the price of grain skyrocket, but politicians were pressured against allowing food to be sold to other countries when it was needed locally. Ironically, the cost of meat dropped as farmers, with no grain available to feed their animals, decided to butcher them instead. Many of those same farmers decided to pack up all their possessions and head west to try their luck in the less developed territories..
While they were all driven by economic hardship, some farmers traveled with the hope of establishing religious communities where they could presumably ride out the End Times in which they found themselves. Among these refugees was Joseph Smith Senior, who took his entire family with him to western New York where his son, Joseph Smith Junior, would reportedly experience the visions that led to his founding the Church of the Latter Day Saints. Another group known only as Pilgrims followed their leader, the bizarre Isaac Bullard, into Arkansas and oblivion.
As 1816 drew to a close, various attempts at a scientific explanation for what was happening did little to reassure people that things would get better in future. Revivalism movements continued gathering new converts with numerous new missionary groups being formed. The bitterly cold winter of 1816-1817 meant sub-zero temperatures even in places where winter was usually mild. The price of food continued to rise and many farmers who had refused to quit during the previous year simply gave up and sold their farms. While Maine and other states along the Eastern seaboard had a sharp population decrease, territories in Ohio, Illinois, and the rest of what would be called America's heartland exploded with new settlements. Despite the tension between old and new settlers and the hardship of life on the frontier, most of these economic refugees decided to stay.
After the Summer Returned
In the meantime, things were slowly improving. The price of wheat eventually stabilized and declined and the harvest of 1817 actually looked hopeful. In Europe, the massive suffering caused by the Year Without A Summer slowly receded as weather patterns returned to normal. Though there were still food riots in the first half of 1817, the grumbling subsided as food became affordable again. Despite a massive typhus epidemic in Ireland that would claim thousands of lives, London became better able to provide aid. The apocalyptic predictions subsided as well when people began to realize that life would go on the way it always had.
Not that there weren't still countries particularly hard hit by famine. Switzerland's population declined as thousands emigrated to other countries and the prospect of famine for the ones who remained was enough to inspire the birth of a new revivalism movement there. Still known as the Hungerjahre, 1817 was one of the few years in Switzerland's history with more deaths than births. Other countries reported similar hardships as the worldwide aerosol cloud from Tambora slowly worked its way through the stratosphere. Still, weather patterns were slowly recovering and, by the summer of 1818, the temperatures on both sides of the Atlantic had more or less returned to normal. But the legacy of hardship left by the Year Without a Summer would last far longer.
Not until the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 would scientists finally be able to piece together the link between large volcanic eruptions and weather patterns. Based on weather data taken following the Krakatoa eruption, along with two other major eruptions that occurred over the next two decades, American meteorologist William Jackson Humphreys published a seminal paper on the link between volcanic eruptions and weather changes. In his paper, Humphreys established that major eruptions such as Krakatoa could lead to global cooling and possibly even trigger ice ages depending on the amount of dust and ash released into the atmosphere. While other meteorologists were reluctant to support Humphreys' conclusion at first, long-term reliable observations established that large volcanic eruptions did lead to rapid cooling and widespread weather disruptions. By linking modern meteorology to the known information on the Mount Tambora eruption, the mystery of the Year Without A Summer was finally solved.
The Tambora Legacy
And the disastrous consequences of Tambora are still with us in surprising ways. Mary Shelley's book, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, became an unlikely bestseller, not to mention launching the science fiction genre. For that matter, John Polidori's work, The Vampyre, has inspired countless vampire novels and movies. Joseph Smith Junior, whose family had been uprooted by Tambora and who grew up in a community stirred up by the revivalism it generated, would found his own church based on his own religious visions. Would any of these remarkable events have come to pass were it not for Tambora's eruption? You be the judge.
What would happen if another massive eruption caused a new Year Without A Summer? While Tambora is still active with regular eruptions every few decades (the last eruption was in 1967), the likelihood of another eruption approaching the magnitude of the 1815 eruption seems comparatively small. Still, there are other volcanoes and the potential of massive eruptions occurring elsewhere is very real. With a world population already at seven billion and agriculture that is hard-pressed to prevent famine even now, the devastation resulting from the kind of weather seen in 1816 and 1817 is a nightmare scenario that we seem unwilling to face.
So spare a thought for how a volcanic eruption in a remote part of the world could transform life on a global scale. And hope that we are better prepared the next time it occurs.
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