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.

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 Many low lying villages an towns on the Somerset levels were also destroyed, with flood waters being reported at Glastonbury Tor. Emma Carroll talks about the real-life floods that inspired her book The Somerset Tsunami, and why we'll always keep sharing flood myths and stories to make sense of what's happening. The story is centred around the real life flooding event that occurred in 1607 that swamped the coastline counties of Somerset, Gloucestershire, Devon and South Wales. What was originally assumed to be a flood is now believed to have been a tsunami. The book itself is moved forward a few years to 1616 and is a fast-paced, thrilling adventure that combines an exciting story with local history.North of Bristol, going up the Severn Estuary, the water travelled hard and fast inland by as much as six miles. By contrast, something massive is needed to create waves with such a great height in the case of a mega-tsunami. Unlike usual tsunamis, mega-tsunamis are caused by giant landslides and other impact events such as volcanic eruptions or huge asteroids crashing into the sea. These phenomena rapidly displace large volumes of water, as energy from falling debris or expansion is transferred to the water." What Sir David King says This is one of the few physical clues that remain today and help demonstrate the severity of the floods. BBC staff (4 April 2005). "Tsunami theory of flood disaster". BBC News Online . Retrieved 13 November 2010. For the first and second time then, a major tsunami was captured on video, multiple times. It showed not a huge wave, but a rushing sea sweeping aside everything in its path - just like the descriptions of the Great Bristol Channel Flood. A storm surge

Contemporary accounts are few and far between, and it took sometimes weeks for the early journalists and writers of the day to get from London to the Bristol Channel after word arrived of the great calamity.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. A team led by Dr Evan Jones from the university’s history department has used digital photography to revisit the tiny and fragile book, catalogued for almost 100 years with the code 09594/1, which means it can be touched once, and then left alone again. The flood was commemorated in a contemporary pamphlet entitled God's warning to the people of England by the great overflowing of the waters or floods. [23] An earlier 2002 research paper, following investigations by Professor Simon Haslett of Bath Spa University and Australian geologist Ted Bryant of the University of Wollongong, suggested that the flooding may have been caused by a tsunami, after the authors had read some eyewitness accounts in the historical reports which described the flood. [9] [10] [11] The British Geological Survey has suggested that, as there is no evidence of a landslide off the continental shelf, a tsunami would most likely have been caused by an earthquake on a known unstable fault off the coast of southwest Ireland, causing the vertical displacement of the sea floor. [12] One contemporary report describes an earth tremor on the morning of the flood; [13] however, other sources date this earthquake to a few months after the event. [14]

Whether it is sand on the marsh, or it's pebbles in the clay, or it's erosion on the headland or boulders piled up in key spots, you go for the simplest explanation, and I can put down most of the signs we have seen down to one wave," said Dr Bryant. Bristol Channel Floods: 400-Year Retrospective RMS Special Report (PDF). Risk Management Solutions (RMS). 2007. p.12. In 1607, Henbury was a large ‘hundred’ taking in several parishes, not just where we know Henbury today. It would have included modern day Shirehampton, Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston. Read More Related Articles Risk managment experts, who have run simulations of a storm surge coming up the Bristol Channel today, say that in a worst case scenario the flood heights would top existing defences and cause flooding over an extremely large area. On the 400th anniversary, 30 January 2007, BBC Somerset looked at the possible causes and asked whether it could happen again in the county. [24]As there were no newspapers at the time, the only remaining accounts of the devastation were in the form of letters and pamphlets. At Appledore, Devon, a 60 tonne ship was well-laden and ready to sail and was driven by the wave onto marshy ground well above high tide, likely never to be recovered. Dr Musson believes the event was caused by a storm surge but "the idea of putting a large historical earthquake in this spot is not so fanciful." The tide rose and fell such a prodigious amount on any given day that any boat that wasn’t ‘ship-shape and Bristol fashion’ might well break up when the tide went out, and it was left stranded. When the waters rose That weather system would have included strong westerly winds that literally blew the sea into the land with tremendous force.