This article is a summary of a talk presented by Rose Hewlett on Tuesday 4 October 2016 as part of our Tuesday Talks series. Rose was researching the 1607 flood for her PhD at the University of Bristol. Emma Carroll brings her own Somerset countryside vividly to life in this enthralling tale and you can even detect the West Country tones of her spirited young heroine, Fortune Spicer, as you read. Fair Maidens Lane, where she lives, is a successful hamlet running well, despite an absence of men. But as the story opens a matriarch is arrested. An atmosphere of suspicion is spreading across the land from King James’ obsession with witches and unscrupulous men are using this as a weapon for financial gain. Sent away by her mother, disguised as a boy for her own protection, Fortune ends up as a servant at Barrow Hall only to find a master even more against witches than the king, but also happy to exploit the opportunity to raise funds for a terrible new trade in human beings. When the natural disaster overtakes them all, Fortune survives, but must fight torture and a trial for witchcraft to prove she is not to blame for the flood. The claustrophobic atmosphere of male oppression, corruption and real menace is wonderfully well done, and Fortune is a redoubtable heroine learning to have faith in herself and to seek her own destiny. As with all her novels this author wears her research lightly but provides a genuine learning experience and a genuine feeling for the period and for the characters she brings so memorably to life. Tsunami height– In the open sea area between north Devon and Pembrokeshire, the wave was just under 4m (13ft) high, but as it entered the constricting funnel-shaped Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary, the wave increased in height to 5m (16ft) along the Glamorgan coast, 5.5m (18ft) along the Somerset coast, and over 7.5m (25ft) high, by the time it reached the Monmouthshire coast. This increase in wave height due to the funnel-shape of the estuary is exactly the same as the process that creates the famous Severn Bore.

Carroll shows how ignorance (of science), fear and greed led to blaming people who acted or looked a little different for everything that was wrong in this society. By accusing those less fortunate or less powerful and creating public spectacles, many influential men were able to turn the public gaze away from their dubious land-grabbing, economic and expansionist tendencies. In fact, researchers and historians have settled on January 30 - around noon, in fact. What happened in the Bristol Channel? The deposition of layers of sand over wide areas at the time, discovered in boreholes in the ground from north Devon to Gloucestershire to the Gower; In 1823, Rev Samuel Seyer wrote what was, at that stage, the most detailed history of Bristol yet, and he put the event as happening on January 20, albeit later admits other sources he’d seen put it on January 27. The village of Brean was washed away, as were many others all along the coast of North Somerset. Anywhere low-lying was inundated with sea water, and hundreds - probably thousands of people died on both sides of the Channel.His words give a fascinating insight into the flood and how it impacted the city. What was Bristol like in 1607? Details of the event are recorded in contemporary news pamphlets, called ‘chapbooks’, which were often illustrated with dramatic pictures of the devastation. The picture shown here was first published in a pamphlet about Somerset before being reused in another which told of the floods in Monmouthshire. As there were no newspapers at the time, the only remaining accounts of the devastation were in the form of letters and pamphlets. Some lost their lives, and many saved themselves by climbing up on the roofs of their houses, and others on trees and mows. Read More Related Articles

Tsunami speed – The speed (velocity) of a tsunami is related to its height, so as it moved up estuary and got squeezed between the opposing shores of England and Wales, it got faster, striking the coast at just over 12 m/sec (27mph) in north Devon and southwest Wales, to just under 14 m/sec (31mph) along the Glamorgan coast, to 14.5 m/sec (32mph) in Somerset, and over 17 m/sec (38mph) in Monmouthshire. This agrees well with the contemporary observations regarding the speed of the wave. The biggest submarine earthquakes can shift the ocean bed up or down by around 10 metres and that produces tsunamis on that sort of scale, but not very much bigger. Normal tsunamis created by an earthquake on the ocean floor have only small wave heights while offshore. But there are buildings, churches mainly, that remain from that time, so we can get a good idea of just how incredibly high the sea rose. Read More Related Articles Former Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK government, Sir David King, has said that a massive wall of water could be sent crashing into the UK, likely triggered by a landslide in the Canary Islands. He adds that a tsunami, several metres high, would be sent our way, putting many cities in and beyond the coastline in its path. The flood reached a speed of 30mph and a height of 25ft. It swept up to four miles inland in the Bristol area, north Devon, Pembrokeshire, Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and Cardiff - and up to 14 miles inland in low-lying parts of Somerset.

Emma Carroll Press Reviews

The evidence they pointed to was three-fold. Firstly, they found eye witness accounts which suggested that the weather wasn’t actually stormy that day. The focus of researchers looking into the Great Bristol Channel Flood of 1607 have focused on the accounts written at the time, piecing together the histories of the event that continued to be written in the weeks, months and years afterwards. Professor Simon Haslett from Bath Spa University said there was currently no tsunami warning system in place. Although, experts from Bath and Australia put forward a tsunami theory in 2004, according to the BBC. Gods warning to his people of England By the great over-flowing of the waters..." by William Jones, 1607 Cause [ edit ]

In our ever-warming, ever-changing planet it’s probable flooding will become more frequent. And if there’s one thing the tropes of ancient stories can teach us,it’s that the responsibility is on us all. These signatures of tsunami enable Haslett and Bryant to estimate the scale of the proposed tsunami wave and its affects. Height and speed of the 1607 tsunamiDr Kevin Horsburgh, from the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool, said the disaster was caused by a massive storm surge, formed by a combination of high tides and hurricane winds.

Contemporary accounts of the flood were written by people such as the Puritan pamphleteer, William Jones: Dr Roger Musson, head of seismic hazards at the British Geological Survey, confirms the theory is feasible, saying there are other examples of earthquakes in the area caused by an ancient fault off south-west Ireland - but adds that he believes a storm surge was more likely the cause. Thirty villages in Somerset were affected, including Brean which was "swallowed up" and where seven out of the nine houses were destroyed with 26 of the inhabitants dying. For ten days the Church of All Saints at Kingston Seymour, near Weston-super-Mare, was filled with water to a depth of 5 feet (1.5m). A chiselled mark remains showing that the maximum height of the water was 7.74 metres (25 feet 5 inches) above sea level. [3] [4] Bryant, Edward; Haslett, Simon (2002). "Was the AD 1607 Coastal Flooding Event in the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel (UK) Due to a Tsunami". Archaeology in the Severn Estuary (13): 163–167. ISSN 1354-7089. It saw a loss of life on a single day that probably outstripped the worst of the Bubonic Plague, and on a scale not seen until the Nazis began the Bristol Blitz.Yet in the aftermath of so much damage and chaos, a future was possible – one with different opportunities and expectations. Evidence of flood stories have been found in Aztec, Indian and Middle Eastern creation myths, where a Great Flood acts as a test of faith, a challenge, a new beginning. All pre-date the Noah’s Ark story, which suggests writers of the Old Testament were influenced by older cultures and texts. Experts have warned that a mega-tsunami could put coastal towns across the UK at risk in the future. The event could happen at any time with as little as just six hours' warning, an expert has said, however chances of one happening in the near future seem pretty slim. The tide heights, probable weather, extent and depth of flooding, and coastal flooding elsewhere in the UK on the same day all point towards a storm surge. Fortune Sharpe isn’t one for fitting in yet now is not the time for a young girl to be standing out. So when she gets herself noticed for the wrong reasons she is hastily sent away to the hiring fair to find work disguised as a boy. Fortunately, the owner of a well-to-do manor house is hiring. But all is not well at Berrow Hall - everyone is hiding secrets and rather than escaping the witch-hunting villains Fortune finds herself working for a man who blames witchcraft for the death of his wife and if she isn’t careful she might find herself in the clutches of the very people she has been sent away to avoid. From Chepstow to the further end of Carmarthenshire it came on so fast, that it was supposed 500 persons, on a moderate computation, lost their lives, beside many thousand cattle, and other substance perish, and sometimes their wives and children, without being able to afford them any assistance,” wrote one commentator, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, in 1762. Read More Related Articles