On this day back in 1755, Massachusetts was subjected to the wrath of Mother Nature the likes of which had never been recorded in history, nor has since. The Cape Ann Earthquake is considered the most violent of such natural disasters ever to strike the then-Massachusetts Bay Colony, registering upwards of a 6.0 on the Richter Scale.
Taking place offshore Cape Ann – also the location of the towns of Rockport and Gloucester – about 30 miles north of Boston, the quake was of such force and magnitude that according to Boston’s Back Bay: The Story of America’s Greatest Nineteenth-century Landfill Project sailors as far away as 200 miles at sea thought they had ran aground. Similarly, damage to buildings, as noted by the Massachusetts Historical Society, as far inland as Springfield, Mass. while reverberations were felt as far south as South Carolina, as far north as Nova Scotia, and as far west as Lake Champlain. No fatalities were reported.
Despite the fact that no deaths were incurred as a result of the tremor, many in religion-heavy Massachusetts considered it to be a sign of God, an expression of his discontent with sinners in the colony and beyond. The Massachusetts Historical Society recalls further that “no fewer than twenty-seven sermons, poems, and accounts of other earthquakes were published in New England.” Progressive lecturer at Harvard John Winthrop (not that John Winthrop), contrary to popular sentiment, credited the seismic activity to “heat and chemical vapors deep within the earth’s surface, all under God’s direction, of course.”
In Boston specifically, damage was held mostly to brick chimneys of which approximately 1500 crumbled. A 1981 seismic risk-analysis committee commissioned by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency and completed in 1990 determined that if a quake of similar size and scope were to hit contemporary Boston, damage would amount to roughly $5 billion and deaths in the hundreds of thousands.
As was the case with the Great Boston Fire of 1872 years later, the silver-lining here is that Boston recognized the need for updated building codes and zoning laws especially in areas of infill such as around Boston Harbor and the Back Bay later on.
