BLAMING GOD

 

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."

KJ Bible, Genisus 2:17

I admit it may be unfair to blame 53 year old Boston Puritan, Increase Mather for the 4,000 deaths in Jamaica - unlike the 25 "witches he helped murder in Salem.   But he was so damn certain in his ignorance, that he lacked any compassion which might have honored those 4,000 lives.  

An Anglican minister and an Anglican preacher, "The Godly" Increase always pontificated from a pulpit standing on solid moral bedrock - even as the sand beneath his feet liquefied and swallowed his soul.  The Reverend Mather was certain, for example, that what Yehaweh said about the Port Royal earthquake of 1692 was "All of those people were sinners and deserved their fate!"  And that seems a little arrogant, doesn't it?  Considering he did not actually know any of those people.

"God is always invented to explain those things that you do not understand."

Richard Feynman Nobel winning American physicist

As the 17 million square miles of the South American Tectonic Plate drove west at just over an inch a year, it elbowed aside the 1 million square miles of the Caribbean plate, shoving it at half an inch a year into the southeastern edge of 29 million square miles of the North America plate. These large collisions accommodated the curvature of the earth by cracking like a plate of glass dropped onto a concrete slab. For example, Cuba rested firmly on the North American Plate. 

But just off its southern shore was the 25,000 foot deep and 250 mile long Cayman trench, which was consuming the 73,000 square miles of a conave micro-plate, driving north.  Ninety miles to the south the island of Jamaica is thus being shoved inexorably toward that trench, until, eventually, it will be consumed by it. But in the meantime Jamaica was also being pulled apart by the Walton fault, moving west at half an inch a year, connected by transverse faults to the Plantain Garden Fault, slipping west at a full inch a year and running 300 miles from the island of Hispaniola to the once volcanic Blue Mountains in Jamaica's interior. As the waxing quarter moon set on the evening of 6 June, 1693, the delicate balance of all this intricate geological machinery was on the verge of snapping. Again.

"Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah...Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities..."

KJ Genesis 19:24 - 25

Dawn of Wednesday, 7 June, 1692 greeted Port Royal - the second largest English city in the New World and "the richest and wickedest city in the world"- with the continued promise of unending wealth.

Approaching Jamaica from the Caribbean Passage any Spanish or French threat had to first navigate the mile wide entrance between the eastern heights of Salt Pan Hill, defended by a row of cannon called the 12 apostles, and the 14 guns in the star shaped brick edifice of Fort Charles, perched on western tip of the 18 mile long sand spit called the Palisadoes.

Protecting the 60 full rigged transports, slave ships, schooners and cutters anchored safely in Cagway Bay this morning were the additional 26 cannon in Fort James and Fort Carlisle.  

Blocking any land assault across the narrow neck of the Palisadoes was Fort Rupert with another 22 guns. And for good measure defending the south sea side of Port Royal were another 26 cannons of Fort Morgan, named to honor the 4 year deceased Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica and infamous privateer, Sir Henry Morgan.

"Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped."

William H. Bragg 20th century British Nobel physicist, chemist, and mathematician.

During the first 50 years of English occupation, Jamaica's income had come from stealing what the Spanish had stolen from the Aztecs and Incas - in other words, piracy. But within the last decade the economics had shifted. Jamaica's Royal Governor, the Earl of Inchiquin, was no longer the unquestioned lord, and the dominant arm of the British government was no longer the Royal Navy, Both of those powers had been superseded by  the corporate-like Board of Trade and Plantations. 

Civilian lawyer and businessman John White, the new Vice President of the Jamaica Council, was the regional head of operations, directly responsible for the 4,000 Europeans in Port Royal that June morning, men, women and children, who were all employees one way or another, of the Board of Trade. There were also 2,000 to 2,500 Africans - but  almost all of them were not people, but property

"Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."

KJ Bible Judges 1:7

Port Royal was a company town - a slice of London transplanted to the Caribbean, 2,000 Tudor brick and mortar multi-story homes and shops tightly packed into 51 sandy acres between the sea and Cagway Bay, where Puritans, Catholics, Episcopalians, Jews and Muslims labored with one purpose - to get rich. The venal sins of the sailors and pirates were tolerated since they were making so many so wealthy. 

In the words of observer Edward Ward, Port Royal was “...as sickly as a hospital, as dangerous as the plague, as hot as Hell, and as wicked as the devil”.  Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck saw, "The parrots of Port Royal gather to drink...ale with just as much alacrity as the drunks that frequent the taverns that serve it."  

As Rector of St. Peter's Anglican Church near the junction of the High and Lime Streets, the Reverend Doctor Emmanuel Heath was God's official representative to this den of hypocrisy. Before ten this morning he walked the few yards south to the Merchants' Exchange, to have coffee with Vice President White. The Reverend would later credit Mr. White's lively conversation with delaying his luncheon date with the garrison's commander, Captain  Rudend,  and his family, on Queens Street along the harbor front - and thus saving Dr. Heath's life.

"I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but ignorance."

Christopher Marlowe, Elizabethan author

Some 20 minutes before noon, on 9 June, 1692, the rocks which restrained one of the faults to the north or west of the Jamaica snapped.  As it did the primary compressing wave of energy raced away from the epicenter of the break at 4 miles a second, like a giant hammer, slamming each successive molecule of rock into the next. Just behind it came the Secondary wave, "...perpendicular to the direction it is traveling" and moving at 3 miles a second. The combination of the 2 waves produced the shaking, which lasted for about 4 minutes - estimated as the equivalent of a magnitude 7.3 on the standard Richter scale. 

In that brief time the over 4 million square miles of Jamaica jerked a foot or more closer to Cuba, dropping parts of the southern shore of the island as much as thirty feet. A pocket watch found on the harbor bottom 260 years later recorded the time of doomsday as 11:43am.

"Let death steal over them...for evil is in their dwelling place and in their heart."

KJ Psalm 55:15

Seated in the tavern, Emmanuel Heath and Vice President White felt the earth begin to "heave and roll". "Said I, “Lord, Sir, what’s this?” He replied, very composedly, “It is an earthquake, be not afraid, it will soon be over.” But...(when) we heard the church and tower fall...we ran to save ourselves." In other words, they did the one thing you should never do in an earthquake - run outside where your head has no protection and all the heavy things are falling to the ground. 

Another survivor described the scene which greeted him. "The sand on the street rose like waves at sea, lifting up all persons that stood upon it....And at the same instant water rushed in...Some were seen catching hold of beams and rafters of houses."

"It is only our conception of time that makes us call the Last Judgment by this name. It is, in fact, a kind of martial law."

Franz Kafka, 20th century writer

It seems likely John White was hit by some of the falling debris, and in a panic the Reverend abandoned him, running south for the safety of Fort Morgan. But as he reached it, "...I saw the earth open and swallow up a multitude of people, and the sea mounting in upon us over the fortifications." The sea did not so much rush in as rise up from the sand." The vibrations released the water table bonded to the sand grains a few feet below the surface, which could no longer support weight. Forts, buildings, animals and people simply sank into the quicksand. 

A Frenchman, Lewis Galdy, was swallowed by it.  But as the street that swallowed him dropped thirty feet into the harbor, his buoyancy sent him bobbing to the surface of what was abruptly the enlarged bay. Half an hour later he was picked up by a rescue boat.

"For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain."

KJ Bible Isaiah 26:21

"Careened" at the docks - tilted so barnacles could be scrapped off her elm wood bottom - the HMS Swan, a 74 foot long fifth rate warship, snapped her lines and plowed into the sinking homes and shops along Queen street, perhaps killing Captain Rudend and his family.  In a primeval fit, the Reverend Heath chose now to run home. "The houses and walls fell on each side of me; some bricks came rolling over my shoes...When I came to my lodging, I found all things in the order I had left them." Emmanuel Heath was lucky. His home was one of the 10% of buildings not destroyed, in the one third of Port Royal not swallowed by the bay.  He lived. His breakfast companion, John White, would also survive the shaking, but die of his injuries a few hours later.

"Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things."

Richard Dawkins, 20 century British evolutionary biologist

There were 2,000 dead in 4 minutes, and another 3,000 who would die over the following year of broken bodies, hearts and minds. The brick forts of James and Carlisle disappeared into Cagway Bay.  Fort Rupert flooded. The least damaged was Fort Morgan. More morbid, among the 33 acres dropped into the harbor was the graveyard, leaving the recently dead floating with their ancestors. Quaker John Pike later wrote his brother, “Great men who were so swallowed up with pride...now lie stinking upon the water, and are made meat for fish and fowls of the air” - and the target for human scavengers, “...their Pockets picked, their fingers cut off for their rings, their gold buttons taken out of their shirts."

“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.”

KJ Isaiah 66:24

The survivor Samuel Bernard dealt directly with the trauma. "We shall be unworthy of God’s mercies if we be not by His judgments taught to learn righteousness.” John White's survivors on the Council declared themselves "an instance of God Almighty's severe judgment." But distance made the ignorant more certain, and mercenary. Wrote one distant observer, "A God of limited patience had punished a wicked people." 

London Presbyterian minister John Shower used the deaths as pulp for his first publication: "Practical Reflections on the late Earthquakes in Jamaica”, blaming the disaster on "Atheism, and infidelity...and barefaced deism..." He denounced those who thought there must be a rational cause for such horrors, because, "...the Hand of God is not to be overlooked in such things", and warned his readers, "If you do not truly repent...your judgment is near, your destruction is at hand." 

And in the largest English city in the new world, Boston, the Reverend Cotton Mather wrote to his uncle John, in terms that were almost jubilant. "Behold, an accident speaking to all our English America." He was looking for a victory, as that summer his father had executed five "witches" in Salem, but those executions would only lead to more witch trials.

"For the belief in a single truth is the root cause for all evil in the world."

Max Born, Nobel physicist and mathematician

Increase Mather was busy that summer, and would not set down his reaction to the Port Royal Quake for a decade - by which time his reputation was suffering because of the witch hunts. But disaster tales are always popular, and time had moderated the old Puritan's views. He now acknowledged  "...many times, earthquakes proceed from natural causes."  

But then he asserted they were "...usually, a sign that men have sinned, and that God is angry.  Certain it is, that if men had never sinned, they had never been terrified with earthquakes...Whole towns...with all the people in them...(have) gone down alive into the pit.  Would such a thing be, if God were not infinitely displeased by the sins of men?"

"Early the next morning Abraham...looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah...and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace."

KJ Genisus 19: 27-28

But Increase, now over 60 years old, was just warming up, reminding his readers, "...Was it not so with the Sinners in Sodom? An earthquake swallowed up their houses, and all the bodies in them. But what became of their souls? Does not the scripture say, that they are suffering the Vengeance of eternal fire?...Shall we that call our selves Christians be worse than the heathen Romans, of whom it is said, that when they saw the earthquake they feared greatly...have we forgotten what God did in Jamaica ...  when two thousand people (whites and blacks) perished by the earthquakes there."

"Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

J.R.R. Tolkien writer

The people of Jamaica did not forget. Almost half a century after the earthquake, in solid ground across the bay in the new city of Kingston, they buried the mortal remains of Lewis Galdy. He had experience a religious rebirth after the earth spit him back up, but had used his time not to preach faith but live it, for better and for worse.  He remained a businessman, and in Jamaica. If he left little of value behind, that was not an act of God, it was an act of Galdy.  And when he died at 80 years of age - 16 years after and ten years older than Increase Mather when he died - Lewis's tombstone would read, "Beloved by all and much lamented at his Death".  If he was, he was more loved by his peers, than bitter old Increase Mather was.

"Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone."

KJ Bible John 8:7

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AN OLD STORY

 

I hate to tell you this, but America's midsection has an historic case of indigestion.  Said one fellow sufferer, “The roar I thought would leave us deaf...It was the worst thing that I have ever witnessed.” And considering what we swallowed, you would expect it could get worse..  And it will.

About a billion years ago the earth had cooled enough for surface rocks to be strong enough to support the first great mountain range. The worn down nubs of these ancient Himalayas (above, across the center of the landmass)  still stretch across Quebec and Northern New York State, now called the Laurentide mountains and giving their name to this particular toddler continent. 

But as the mountains were worn down the ancient bedrock, the igneous granite and quartz  was first broken and cracked, and then buried under a few billion tons of sedimentary sandstone and limestone washed down from the same Laurentide mountains.

For most of the next three quarters of a billion years, Laurentia slowly drifted, her west flank adding new terrains in more collisions, until she reached adulthood as the North American tectonic plate. And then, like a Mexican omelet that brings up last night's sweet and sour pork, about a million years ago a lump of ice brought back up that lump of broken rock in our belly.

It was the glacier melt that realigned North America's rivers from north to south. The Mississippi now carried the weight of the Rocky Mountains to America's abdomen, depositing billions of tons silt at low water right on top of the ancient undigested meal. The piling weight caused the broken bedrock to occasionally shift. We know it shifted 2,500 years ago, again 1,800 years ago, and again 600 years ago. And then, one more time, 200 years ago. That last time, it happened to people who wrote the experience down.

In 1777, on the outer bank of a great westward bend of the half mile wide Mississippi river (above), 175 river miles south of St. Louis (and 70 air miles south of the mouth of the Ohio River) , the Spanish established a fort they named after their capital - New Madrid.  One year later Azor Rees, a farmer from Pennsylvania arrived with his wife and 3 year old daughter Eliza. The Rees willingly swore allegiance to King Charles III of Spain, and adopted Roman Catholicism as their religion. They were successful in the community, even after Azor died in 1796. Then in 1803, with the Louisiana Purchase, they became Americans again.

Seven years later, the town of New "MAD-rid" had 400 residents, including the now 31 year old Eliza Rees Bryan – married to a United States Army surgeon. Having a government job, Dr. Bryan received a regular paycheck, and Eliza's mother also operated a boarding house, making them a very important family in this small frontier town. So it was natural that Eliza, in a time and a place where an educated woman was still a rarity, would be asked by a visiting evangelist to record what she had experienced. This is what Eliza wrote.

“On the 16 of December, 1811, about two o'clock, A.M., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating...The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro....the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species - the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi - the current of which was retro-gade for a few minutes....formed a scene truly horrible.” The town's graveyard even disappeared into the river.

Fifteen miles to the south, and closer to the epicenter, stood the 27 houses of the river town of Little Prairie. Here 16 year old Ben Chartier and his mother were standing in the cabin doorway overlooking their orchards though the crisp 40 degree air. Abruptly, "The ground burst wide open and peach and apple trees were knocked down and then blowed up.” 

The leading citizen of Little Prairie was George Roddell. As swamps next to his property “rose up and became dry land”, he watched his home and grain mill swallowed by the collapsing earth. Within fifteen minutes the residents were waist deep in the cold roiling Mississippi river. Stumbling in the dark water, without lights, Roddell led his 100 neighbors in search of dry land. They did not find any until the village of Hayti, eight miles to the northwest.

As the riverbed below the New Madrid Bend rose up, the river was sent rushing backward, swamping 30 flatboats tied up for the night. Their crews were heard calling in terror as the darkness and the mad river swallowed them. 

On one of those boats that survived, Scotchman John Bradbury was awakened by “a most tremendous noise. All nature seemed running into chaos, as wild fowl fled, trees snapped and river banks tumbled into the water.”

Below the Bend another earthen block was thrown up, creating a waterfall that continued for days. Eliza observed that small shocks continued , “...until about sunrise...(when) one still more violent than the first took place... The inhabitants fled in every direction to the country...In one person, a female, the alarm was so great that she fainted, and could not be recovered. But because of the lack any structures  over one story, only four people died in New Madrid. 

In St. Louis, two hundred miles north of the epicenter, a reporter for the Louisiana Gazette noted he had been “roused from sleep by the clamor of windows, doors and furniture in tremulous motion, with a distant rumbling noise, resembling a number of carriages passing over pavement – in a few seconds the motion and subterranean thunder increased....The agitation...lasted about one and three fourth minutes....

At forty seven minutes past two, another shock was felt...much less violent than the first...At thirty four minutes past three, a third shock...(lasted) about fifty seconds...About 8 o'clock, a fifth shock was felt; this was almost as violent as the first, accompanied with the usual noise, it lasted about half a minute...”.

In South Carolina wells went dry and people were awakened from their sleep. In Washington, D.C., chairs slid about wooden floors and chandeliers were sent vibrating. Church bells were sent swinging and rang in Philadelphia and as far north as Boston. 

Two hundred thirty miles from the epicenter, at the falls of the Ohio River, in Louisville, Kentucky, future president Zachary Taylor recorded, “The sight was truly awful: houses cracking, chimneys falling, men, women and children running in all directions in their shirts for safety, and a friend of mine was so much alarmed as to jump off a window and was very much hurt.”

By current scientific figuring it was at least a seven on the Mercalli scale, and maybe an eight. If the later, that meant at least two aftershocks in the seven range, four above six and at least eight above five. But superimposed over this residents suspected there was a pattern, 

On January 13, 1812, in St Louis, the Governor of Louisiana Territory, sent an urgent request to Washington, arguing “provisions ought to be made by law for or cashiered to the said inhabitants relief, either out of the public fund or in some other way”. But “the Supreme Being of the Universe” as Governor Clark called him, was not yet finished with the residents of New Madrid.

On 23 January, 1812, there was a second major quake measuring between a seven and an eight, this time centered even closer to New Madrid. Artist James Audubon, on a boat trip to paint the new country, wrote in his journal, “ I heard what I imagined to be the distant rumbling of a violent tornado…at that instant all the shrubs and trees began to move...The ground rose and fell in successive furrows like the ruffled waters of a lake.” 

Godfrey Lessieur saw the ground, “rolling in waves of a few feet in height... These swells burst, throwing up large volumes of water (and) sand...(Leaving) large, wide and long fissures...I have seen some four or five miles in length, four and one-half feet deep on an average about ten feet wide.” 

George Crist, a farmer in Kentucky, confided to his diary, “We lost our Amandy Jane in this one – a log fell on her...A lot of people thinks that the devil has come here. Some thinks that this is the beginning of the world coming to an end.”

Then, as Eliza Rees Bryan noted, on 7 February, “..about 4 o'clock A.M., a concussion took place so much more violent...At first the Mississippi seemed to recede...leaving for the moment many boats, ...on bare sand...It then rising fifteen to twenty feet....the banks were overflowed with the retro-gade current, rapid as a torrent - the boats....were now torn from their moorings, and suddenly driven up a little creek...nearly a quarter of a mile. 

"The river falling immediately...with such violence, that...whole groves of young cotton-wood trees...were broken off....A great many fish were left on the banks...The river was literally covered with the wrecks of boats, and 'tis said that one was wrecked in which there was a lady and six children, all of whom were lost.” There was now not a house undamaged nor a chimney standing within 250 miles of New Madrid.

At the headwaters of the Tennessee River, in the village of Knoxville, “the river rose several feet, the trees on the shore shook...hundreds of old trees that had lain perhaps half a century at the bottom of the river, appeared...” 

Six hundred miles from the epicenter, in Charleston, South Carolina there was, “Another severe shock....Books and other articles were thrown from shelves, and chairs and other furniture standing against walls, made a rattling noise...”.

Back in New Madrid, membership in the Methodist Church went from 17 in 1811 to 165 in 1812. Eliza Rees Bryan noted, “The site of this town...(has) settled down at least fifteen feet, and not more than a half a mile below the town...numerous large ponds or lakes....are elevated...fifteen to twenty feet....And lately it has been discovered that a lake was formed on the opposite side of the Mississippi (above)...upwards of one hundred miles in length, and from one to six miles in width,.” This came to be called Reelfoot Lake, and it is now, inj the 21st century,  a Tennessee Recreation Area

Responding with typical government efficiency, in 1815 congress voted to offer the December 1811 survivors of New Madrid, 640 free acres each, anywhere else in Missouri they wanted. Land speculators beat the government communications to the riverfront town, and bought up most of the claims for $40 to $60 each. Like earthquakes, mountains and continents, human greed is a repetitive story.

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