Mother Nature’s Cruel Tricks

My grandfather’s mother was not there for him!

While that sounds like an awful sentiment for a mother, I don’t mean that in the sense that she did not care about him or love him. I suspect he was the most precious thing in her life.

Grandfather James Pearson Shepheard was born on 12 March 1891. His mother, Mary Elizabeth (Pearson) Shepheard, died of phthisis (consumption or tuberculosis) on 4 October 1891, before he was seven months old. She was only 24. I wrote about her death in a blog post on my other blogsite, Discover Genealogy on 23 June 2015 (The Scourge of Phthisis).

Grandpa Shepheard never knew his mother and she never got to see him grow up. And because his father travelled a great deal in his job as a ship’s steward, his upbringing was left to relatives, first his maternal grandparents, but for most of his early life, his father’s brother and his wife.

Is there a crueler trick that Mother Nature can play than taking away a child’s mother before an infant can even understand what has happened? For my grandfather, losing his mother was a life-changing event, although he would not have known it at the time. It was to set up situations beyond his control, but that had wide-reaching impacts on his life.

Great-grandfather Charles Pearson died in 1892. Grandpa Shepheard was then in the care of his grandmother, Susanna Pearson, in Leamington Prior, Warwick. Following her death in 1895 he came to live with his aunt and uncle in Torquay, Devon. He would have begun school at about that time as well. They later relocated to Taunton, Dorset.

Grandpa Shepheard left England at a very young age. Perhaps, with absent parents, he had been conditioned to be self-reliant and wanted to strike out on his own. Always the optimist, he embarked with other young men on a ship to Canada at the age of 17. Grandpa worked his way across Canada, finally settling and marrying in Alberta in 1914. Jimmy, as he was known, was a respected and locally renowned horseman, also noted for becoming the master over any and all mean broncs. His father joined him to farm in Alberta in 1913.

Despite the distressing circumstances of his early life, my grandfather was known as a very happy child and man. He could often be heard singing in his clear tenor voice, whether in church, meeting halls or tending animals in the field. He was sociable and full of fun and we certainly always remember him with a smile.

It was not as unusual in previous centuries for people to die at a young age, with diseases such as tuberculosis rampant (see Discover Genealogy blog post 26 September 2017, Natural Disasters and Family Misfortunes 7: Disease). We have several examples in our families where one of the parents was stricken with what proved to be an untreatable or unbeatable illness. Many ancestors of my wife and me died of tuberculosis, often leaving small children behind. Women occasionally did not survive childbirth. Medical care throughout pregnancies and the birth process were not as advanced as they are today.

Other epidemics also struck people down in large numbers: cholera, dysentery, typhoid fever, typhus fever, yellow fever, puerperal fever, tuberculosis, pneumonia, influenza, scarlet fever, smallpox, measles, diphtheria and whooping cough. Their impacts were only alleviated with the move to better hygiene, improved practices of health care and the use of vaccines.

Sometimes tuberculosis was a result of the confinement of people for other reasons. My wife’s grandmother was institutionalized for mental problems in 1918, at the age of 33. The only hospitals for these types of ailments in Scotland at the time were where patients with tuberculosis were confined. The result was that many, physically healthy patients contracted the disease. Elizbeth (Walker) Cooper’s death record shows she died in the Woodilee Asylum of Pulmonary Tuberculosis and Organic Brain Disease in 1922.

Upon her commitment, she left her husband unprepared to care for six children ranging in age from one to ten. The loss of their mother was also traumatic for of them in many and different ways. The circumstances certainly impacted their entire lives, as well as their relationship with their father.

Disease shows up as one of Mother Nature’s most virulent traits, attacking at random and indiscriminately. Individuals and families can suffer both immediate and long-term effects. There are probably very few families that have not experienced loss or unhappiness from serious illnesses. Nor many that have not been subject, at one time or another, to such cruel tricks of nature.

The Impact of Coastline Changes on Families

In my last blog post I described how my cousin’s family came to live in and then move from Canada in the 1930s, following their new farm being hailed out in Alberta.          https://mothernaturestests.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-hail-with-it.html 

In my wife’s family there is also an instance of loss of livelihood due in part to natural causes. Her grandfather, Alexander MacKay, was a salmon fisherman for most of his adult life, living and working in a small village called Findhorn on the northern coast of Scotland. Over decades, the harbour in which the village was located gradually became filled with silt brought in both by the Findhorn River and by longshore currents from Burghead Bay. Fishing had been a major industry in the area as far back as the 13^th century with portions of the annual catch exported as far as the Baltic States and continental Europe.

With the shallowing of the bay from sand bar buildup, fishermen found navigation in and out of the estuary increasingly difficult. Gradually the village was replaced as a centre of commerce as boats began to deliver they catches more frequently to other ports. A severe decline in fishing activities was occurring about the time Alexander reached middle age. He is shown on the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses as a salmon fisherman, living in Findhorn. By 1920, though, he and his family resided in Dyke, a small farming village several miles to the southwest. The last twenty or so years of his life were spent working as a farm labourer, no longer being able to make a living in an occupation he had spent most of life doing.

As I explain in my book Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests, Long-shore currents along the northern Scottish coast have carried large quantities of sand and silt from rivers and estuaries and deposited the material in beaches and bars. The bars have always been in constant flux during the centuries since the end of the Ice Age, growing with the generally seasonal deposits and eroding when current conditions increased in strength or frequency. As river mouths became plugged with sedimentary material, they often shifted to areas of less resistance.        https://mothernaturestests.blogspot.com/p/surviving-mother-natures-tests.html

Such was the history of the Findhorn Estuary. Toward the end of the 17^th century, the main channel of the Findhorn River received an inordinate amount of silt, eventually plugging its mouth. Findhorn Bay became a lake. But with continuing water flow from inland, a breech was finally made in the shoreline barrier, somewhere between 1701 to 1704.

 

Shoreline around Findhorn Bay, north coast of Scotland about 1700 AD; also showing relative position of present-day shoreline (modified from Shepheard, 2018: Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests)

The break, as it happened, was right where the old village of Findhorn was located. The community was destroyed. The inhabitants, thought, has foreseen the danger and moved lock, stock, barrel and boat to a new site about a mile southeast. The bay was gradually flushed of much of the silt buildup and the re-created town became the centre for the salmon fishing industry. A new cycle was then established with silt continuing to invade the estuary and a longshore bar built up along the coastline.

These were two minor incidences – a hailstorm (my previous blog post) and a silt-invaded estuary – both in terms of the regions in which they occurred and in the history of our family. One event took less than one hour; the other developed over a generation. But both had profound effects on the people involved as well as impacting future generations. My cousin grew up and made his life in the USA, a country he was not born into. As a result of my wife’s grandfather changing his occupation, her father grew up in an inland, farm-centred village instead of in a coastal, fishing village. Lack of opportunity led him to seek a future in Canada, an ocean away from his place of birth and his heritage.

Reference

Shepheard, W. Wayne. (2018). Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests: The effects climate change and other natural phenomena have had on the lives of our ancestors. St. Agnes, South Australia: Unlock the Past.

The hail with it!

My cousin Donald told me the story of how his family came to live in, and then move from Canada in the 1930s. Our grandparents had immigrated from Oregon in 1928 and established a farm near the town of Irricana, Alberta. My Uncle Randall came along initially to help them get settled. He returned to Oregon but decided later to come back to Canada and farm on his own.

Randall leased land in the Crossfield area north of Calgary and set out to become fully Canadian. His son, Donald, was born in Irricana in 1932. Unfortunately, in the summer of the family’s first year, a hail storm, not uncommon in that region, destroyed Randall’s entire crop. He decided there and then that farming in Alberta was not for him and moved his family back to the United States.

This is, really, just a minor incident, both in terms of the region in which it occurred and in the history of our family, but it had a profound effect on the people involved as well as impacting future generations. Donald ended up being raised and making his life in a country he was not born into.

But it got me thinking about other people who migrated to far off places during their lifetimes. Were they forced away from their homes because of changes in natural conditions under which they lived and worked. In particular, did a major, or even minor storm disrupt families to the point that they had to change their way of life or move?

Big storms containing hail commonly occur on hot spring or summer days when the heat causes evaporation from the Earth’s surface and carries the moisture up into the cold stratosphere. There the water vapour freezes and starts to fall. The continuous updraft lifts the ice pellets again where they acquire another coat of freezing water. The sequence can repeat several times resulting in vary large “stones” before they can escape the rising air and fall to earth.

In searching historical records, you may find events like the 30 April 1888 storm that devastated the town of Moradabad in India. It struck at midday. Hail stones the size of oranges killed 246 people as well as thousands of farm animals that could not find protection. Strong winds accompanying the storm toppled many buildings. This storm had the highest mortality associated with hail.

As I wrote in my book, Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests (2018, p. 111), “A single storm might produce unexpected results that can affect the outcome of a nation’s history. For example, on 13 April 1360, the army of King Edward III of England were marching against the French at Chartres when a violent hailstorm was unleashed on them. Hundreds of ill-protected men and horses died in the onslaught of hailstones reported to be as large as pigeon’s eggs. Lightning apparently also struck and killed knights in full battle armour. After this onslaught from Mother Nature, with his army in tatters after the onslaught from nature, Edward agreed to a truce under which he got a major portion of the country but was denied the French crown.”

Golf ball and baseball size hail stones are not uncommon. Many readers may have seen such projectiles from the sky. The largest hail storm found so far measured 7 inches in diameter and fell during a storm on 22 June 2003 in Vivian, South Dakota.

Most storms have only been inconveniences. Throughout history some have been deadly. Perhaps more than a few, such as the one that took out my uncle’s crop in 1932, resulted in major changes to a family’s livelihood and history.

The Madness of Mother Nature: Wreck of the Irish Immigrant Ship, the Carrick

Recently there have been several news reports about bodies found on a beach in Gaspé that were buried in 1847. 

In 2011 the bones of three children were found washed up on the beach after a violent storm. Five years later an exhaustive survey of the area unearthed the remains of 18 others. It has been determined that all of them were likely buried together is a shallow trench, creating a makeshift cemetery for the victims. Stories from the survivors, along with analyses of the remains concluded that these bodies were from the ship wrecked in 1847.

Due to poor preservation, only small parts of the skeletons of the deceased were recoverable. Following analyses of the bones, to help determine where the individuals originated and their physical condition at the time of death, the remains were to be reburied in a cemetery near the Irish Memorial on Cap-des-Rosiers Beach. Tests showed the individuals were from an area in which the main diet was potatoes and that they were suffering from diseases related to malnutrition.

Those buried were from the ship, Carricks, which was wrecked during a storm near Cap de Rosier, Quebec, Canada. She sailed from Sligo, Ireland, in March 1847, with 173 passengers, all desperate survivors of the Potato Famine in search of a better life in Canada. Only 48 survived. The passengers were from 27 families originating in or near County Sligo. Descendants of the survivors still reside in the area.

 

The scene at Skibbereen, west Cork, in 1847. From a series of illustrations by Cork artist James Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by Illustrated London News 1847. (in public domain; retrieved 20 June 2019 from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Skibbereen_by_James_Mahony,_1847.JPG)

After a rough passage of 23 days, the ship was caught in a blinding snowstorm in the middle of the night and was driven by winds on to the rocky coast of the Gaspé Peninsula. I won’t recount the entire story here. You can read about it in many articles and news reports and in a book a book published in 1919, titled Treasure Trove in Gaspé and The Baie des Chaleurs. A documentary was filmed

This lone ship was part of a much larger exodus from Ireland that arrived in the St. Laurence River area of Canada. The river was a conduit for refugees escaping the famine in Ireland between 1845 and 1849. Most arrived in the New World sicker than they were when they left, due to poor hygiene, limited food and water supplies, bad weather and the very close confines in the bellies of the ships that carried them. Upon their arrival in Canadian waters, ships were quarantined until authorities could determine whether they posed health-risks to any community in which they settled.

 

Map of Gaspé, Quebec region showing locations of Cap-des-Rosiers and Grosse Isle

Treatment by Canadian immigration personnel was harsh and, in many cases, inhumane. People were trapped on arriving ships, including those already sick and dead. Medical assistance was lacking in any substantive way. By 1847, even the limited resources were overwhelmed by the large numbers of immigrants.

At Gross Isle, Quebec, a central depot had been established in 1832 for receiving, housing and treating people coming to Canada to contain a cholera epidemic. It was reopened and expanded to accommodate Irish immigrants in the 1840s. Notwithstanding attempts to aid passengers, thousands died on the trip across the ocean and while trapped at Gross Isle. Over 5,000 people are buried on the island. From 1832 to 1932, nearly 500,000 Irish immigrants to Canada passed through Grosse Isle.

The experience for those on board the ship, Carricks, was like the trifecta of Mother Nature’s madness: famine, disease and storms. In biblical terms, it was as if three of the Four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Famine, Pestilence and Death) had descended on this helpless group.

References:

MacWhirter, Margaret Grant. (1919). Treasure Trove in Gaspé and The Baie des Chaleurs. Quebec: The Telegraph Printing Co. 217 pp. 

Selected online blogs, articles and news summaries:

·         Memorials to the Carricks of Whtehavem https://ghostofthecarricks.wordpress.com/monument/

·         Bones found on beach in Quebec’s Gaspé are from 1847 Irish shipwreck (CP) 9 June 2019 https://globalnews.ca/news/5371235/bones-gaspe-irish-shipwreck-parks-canada/

·         Genealogy a la Carte (Gail Dever) 13 June 2019 http://genealogyalacarte.ca/?p=28479

·         Human remains found in Gaspé are from 1847 Irish shipwreck, Parks Canada confirms (spencer Van Dyk) 7 June 2019  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/carricks-shipwreck-remains-1.5166478?

·         Bones found in Gaspé confirmed to be from 1847 shipwreck victims fleeing Irish potato famine (Morgan Lowrie) 10 June 2019 https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/bones-found-in-gaspe-confirmed-to-be-from-1847-shipwreck-victims-fleeing-irish-potato-famine-1.4459202

·         Lost Children of the Carricks Documentary, Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/carricksofwhitehaven/videos/191785188402448/

·         Grosse Isle, Quebec – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Isle,_Quebec

·         The Irish Exodus – https://www.libraryireland.com/irishamerica/irish-exodus.php

Mother Nature’s Best

Having dealt last month with some of the worst tricks Mother Nature has played on people, perhaps we should look at what positive events she has directed our way.

Humans have always been at the mercy of natural forces and faced the brunt of disasters that killed many, but our development and progress as a species and civilization have also been aided by benevolent and timely changes to our environment.

Earth, Air, Water & Fire

These were the classical, and simple, elements of our world originally defined by the ancient Greeks but referred to by almost all pre-existing civilizations as well. They are, individually and in combination, part of what we refer to as Nature:

·         The earth offers us the means to grow our food and minerals to use in our daily lives.  

·         Water sustains life in all forms.

·         Air is necessary for life but is also part of the atmosphere which regulates the Earth’s temperature.

·         Fire was the energy that drove both the Sun, Earth’s systems and human assertiveness and passion.

Humans have learned to use all of the elements Mother Nature has provided.

Rivers

For most of civilized human existence, farming – of necessity – has been the major occupation. And, in order to achieve the highest productivity, fresh water is required. It is no surprise that people have chosen to live alongside rivers, in areas of fertile soils. These areas are located mostly in the floodplains of large rivers. Annually, springtime floods bring not only needed moisture but also nutrients in the form of organic matter and new soil to be deposited across broad parts of the valley floors. Year after year, farmers come to depend on the bounty brought by rivers.

 

Aerial photo of the Cauto River near Guamo Embarcadero, council of the municipality of Río Cauto, Cuba (downloaded from Wikimedia Commons) 

The water of rivers and oceans was also integral to transportation, allowing people to voyage in search of new trade opportunities and new lives. Both also had their own bounty in the form of food stuffs.

Warm is Good

The Sun provides life-sustaining warmth. Light (from the sun), in combination with water (from the ground) and carbon dioxide (from the air), is part of the natural process of photosynthesis which allows plants to respire, grow and reproduce. Plant material, of course, is a dominant part of the diets of almost all animals on Earth, including humans.

Over the centuries, the best farming conditions have been experienced during the warm climatic periods. During these times, extreme weather conditions were rare, rainfall fell in abundance during the growing seasons, summers were warm.

In each of the warm periods of the last 10,000 years – the Holocene period – living conditions were favourable, civilization prospered, and population grew.

 

Average near-surface temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere during the last 11,000 years based on analyses of the changes in 18O isotopes from Greenland ice cores. The diagram demonstrates the alternating periods of warm and cold that occurred throughout the Holocene Epoch. (reproduced from Shepheard: Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests)

Landscape Beauty

Over the centuries, the natural beauty of landscapes has inspired artists, musicians and philosophers. Social interaction expanded as sunny days, not always during summer months, allowed people to get outside and enjoy the benefits of nature as well as the company of each other.

 

Valley of the Ten Peaks and Moraine Lake, Banff National Park, Canada. (downloaded from Wikimedia Commons) 

Poets throughout history wrote of their experiences with Nature, contributions that brought joy and fascination to all those who read them. Many of these poems were written during the dark times of the Little Ice Age and Industrial Revolution when both cold conditions and dingy cities combined to produce dismal living conditions:

·         Frost – Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening

·         Kipling – The Glory of the Garden

·         Masefield – Sea Fever

·         Nash – Winter Morning Poem

·         Tennyson – The Brook

·         Wordsworth – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

Even the symbol we use in genealogical studies is from Mother Nature, with all of its beauty and imperfections: a Tree!

 

The Angel Ok Tree in South Carolina (downloaded from Wikimedia Commons) 

References

Shepheard, Wayne (2018). Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests: The effects climate change and other natural phenomena have had on the lives of our ancestors (with examples from the British Isles). St. Agnes, South Australia: Unlock the Past.

Article in Going In-Depth: New Madrid Earthquakes

Read my latest article, Families in Peril: The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12, in Going In-Depth magazine, published by The In-Depth Genealogist.

In the article I discuss the disaster that impacted people and communities in Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri between December 1811 and February 1812. Property damage was severe. Many families were forced to abandon their homes which were inundated by the Mississippi River waters as channels were shifted and flood-waters inundated farms and towns.

You can subscribe to Going In-Depth or purchase back-issues here.

Changing Landscapes

Read my recent article about natural phenomena and family history, in this case coastal margins, in the latest, April 2019 issue of Discover Your Ancestors periodical. In it you will learn about new lands were created along an major estuary in East Yorkshire, England, on which several families established farms.

The title of the article is Changing landscapes.

You can subscribe to the publication directly here.

Mother Nature at her Worst

We hear a lot these days, thanks to TV and the Internet, about major natural disasters. Each one is portrayed as the “worst” or “biggest” or “most deadly” event ever to have been experienced. Most often the comments come from those who were closest to where the events occurred. The sentiments are, of course, subjective, based on a limited level of knowledge of natural history and a result of the anxiety of how people are so negatively impacted.

Having said that, there have indeed been many events in recorded history that were decidedly deadly and widely damaging. Following are just a few of the worst. I will follow up, in a later post, with a summary of the most positive natural developments and changes, so readers may realize that Mother Nature is not always malicious.

The worst and, to humans, deadliest natural events span history. Contrary to modern news reports, they are not confined to recent years or decades or to any particular region. There have been some notable ones in the 21^st century, but then those are the ones we are most familiar with and that have been imprinted on our collective memories through detailed news reports. Incomplete records mean that we cannot measure the effects of those that happened more than a few hundred years ago. In geologic time, we can only look at the sedimentary strata to see what devastation might have occurred, during times of early man or before humans walked the Earth.

Following are some examples we know about from actual records:

Flooding

The deadliest flood occurred in China in 1931. Drought conditions had persisted between 1928 to 1930. Substantial snowfall arrived during the harsh winter of 1931-31. The spring melt was accompanied by torrential rain storms resulted in widespread flooding of the Yangtze River valley. Extreme cyclonic activity (nine separate storms) occurred during the summer season, offering no respite from the exceptional inundation.

Up to 50 million people were affected; crop loss was significant; homes and farms were destroyed. Following on the physical devastation was the spread of diseases including: cholera, measles, malaria, dysentery and schistosomiasis (caused by parasitic flatworms). Estimates of deaths, realizing that records were sparse and government reports were probably intentionally conservative, range from one to four million people.

Earthquakes

Earthquakes are the most dangerous and deadly of Mother Nature’s tricks. Commonly thousands of people are affected and killed by such events around the world.

China was also the site of what is believed to be the greatest earthquake death toll. It has been estimated that over 830,000 people were killed in a tremor near Shaanzi in 1556. What makes these kinds of events particularly deadly is when they occur in densely-populated areas. Tectonic shifts of the Earth’s crust are part of the planet’s entire geologic record. They are considered disasters only if people are impacted.

The epicentre was near the cities of Huaxian, Weinan and Huayin where almost every building was destroyed and tens of thousands died. Damage and death were experienced over 300 miles away.

The area of the 1556 and other events is under extensional stress, bounded by major normal faults. When activated (often), large blocks are vertically-displaced with accompanying opening of fissures and production of landslides in surrounding highlands.

Storms

Major storms are frequent and can be devastating when they come ashore near populated areas. They have not increased in number or intensity over the centuries during which they have been reported, but as people and communities have grown in number so have the destruction and death tolls. Invariably, undeveloped regions with large numbers of poor neighbourhoods suffer the greatest.

On 7 October 1737, one of the deadliest cyclones struck Calcutta, India, killing an estimated, though unconfirmed, 300,000 people. A representative of the British East India Company, stationed there, reported on the damage in that city. Others wrote that storm surges destroyed 20,000 ships in the harbor.

In another time, and in another part of the world, a 1703 storm crossed southern England, causing significant damage. Daniel Dafoe, in his definitive book, The Storm, described the effects thusly:

·         wind gusts possibly topping 120 mph at the peak of the storm, levelling almost everything in its path

·         over 700 ships wrecked while docked or at anchor in harbours around southern England and while still at sea, with an estimated death toll of up to 10,000 sailors

·         thirteen Royal Navy warships sunk, with the loss of over 1,500 lives; many others severely damaged

·         over 120 lives lost, and hundreds more injured on land across England and Wales

·         significant damage in towns and cities – in London over 2,000 chimney stacks blown down, demolishing parts of the houses to which they had been attached

·         tens of thousands of head of cattle and sheep lost on farms along the storm’s path

·         major parts of forests levelled

·         areas around major estuaries impacted by floods from storm surges, in many cases more dangerous than the accompanying winds

·         severe disruption to local economies just emerging from decades of recession, the effects of which felt for years afterward

·         mercantile shipping, involving fleets serving major cities like London and the export markets, disrupted for many years until replacement ships could be put to sea

·         immediate inflation of prices in foodstuffs and other goods – building materials in particular

This event was singularly important as it hit a populated and advanced (for the time) economic centre of Europe. Dafoe’s report lists the many communities and people affected by the disaster.

Disease and Epidemics

We understand how diseases can decimate communities. Epidemics have raged in regions around the world, many spread by Europeans to unsuspecting and ill-prepared indigenous groups during the age of explorations and colonization during the 16^th to 19^th centuries.

No example is more illustrative of the potential for death, though, that the Black Death that spread over Europe in the 14^th century. Between 1346 and 1352, the plague moved from the central Asia, to the Mediterranean trading ports and then across the continent to Scandinavia and the British Isles.

An estimated 75 to 200 million people died, representing from 30% to 60% of Europe’s population.

Other diseases have made their way through the human population over the centuries, some of which we have better information as to their consequences:

·         Since its recognition in the 17^th century (it is believed to have originated several thousand years earlier), small pox has killed hundreds of millions of people around the world.

·         Measles has resulted in the deaths of at least 200 million people just during the last 150 years

·         Malaria has taken the lives of probably 250 million since the beginning of the 20^th century.

·         The Spanish Flu arrived in 1918 in America and Europe, killing from 50 to 100 million worldwide.

·         Tuberculosis, also known as consumption or phthisis, killed over 1 billion people in the 19^th and 20^th centuries

Until the advent of vaccines, and better health care techniques, many of these and other diseases continued their relentless attack on communities everywhere.

Volcanoes

While not common as direct killers, other than adjacent to locations of eruptions, volcanoes have had an effect of health, weather, agriculture and general climate. Some of the most violent and deadly eruptions were:

·         Mt. Tambora in 1815 which killed up to 120,000 people and affected weather and climate around the world for several years.

·         Krakatau, in 1883, had similar effects on global climate, and killed over 30,000 people in nearby areas to the eruption.

·         Laki fissure, in Iceland, erupted in 1783, sending a pall of ash and gas over most of Europe, causing crops losses, illness and death.

·         Mt. Pelee, in the Caribbean, exploded in 1902, destroying the city of St. Pierre, killing all but two of the 28,000 inhabitants.

Eruptions continue to occur with regularity along the active tectonic plate margins of the Earth’s crust. Accompanying them are devastating earthquakes and the spread of ash and gas high into the atmosphere. Mother Nature never rests in her quest to alter the surface of the globe and spread fear and death.