The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History

by William K. Klingaman

  Raffles spent his last months in Java touring the island, examining the ruins of ancient Hindu temples and statues, and continuing his study of Java’s geography and wildlife. Although his health deteriorated toward the end of his tenure (“Anxiety soon pulls a man down in a hot climate,” Raffles acknowledged), he undertook a series of initiatives to restrict the importation and sale of opium in Java, and to encourage exports of the island’s sugar and coffee to Europe. And he gathered the information forwarded by the residents at the company’s stations throughout the islands in response to his inquiries about the effects of Tambora’s eruption. Once he had assembled their replies, he asked a colleague to prepare them for publication.

  Tambora was still rumbling desultorily when Raffles departed Java on March 25, 1816. As the island faded into the distance, tangible evidence of the eruption still floated in the seas around Raffles’ ship. Immense pumice rafts, some as large as three miles across, littered the Java Sea, moving steadily to the west on the South Equatorial Current.

  While passing through the South Atlantic, Raffles stopped at Saint Helena for a brief conversation with Napoléon Bonaparte. The former emperor greeted Raffles and a friend, Captain Travers, rather brusquely and then—after he asked Raffles to repeat his name more distinctly—began peppering Raffles with rapid-fire questions that barely gave him time to answer. Where had he been born? Had he spent much time in India? Had Raffles served in the British military force that captured Java five years earlier? How fared the local spice plantations on the islands? How did the king of Java (there was no king of Java) spend his time? Was Britain also returning the Spice Islands to the Netherlands? And which coffee was best—Java or Bourbon?

  Raffles answered as best he could, until Napoléon (who remained hatless throughout the interview) finally grew bored and gave a slight nod of his head to let his guests know their time was up. Uncertain how to salute their host—should they call him “General”? “Emperor”?—Raffles and Travers merely bowed and made their way back to their ship.

  Upon landing at Falmouth on July 11, Raffles spent a few days resting in Cornwall before setting off for London. “Although I am considerably recovered,” he informed a friend, “I yet remain wretchedly thin and sallow, with a jaundiced eye and a shapeless leg.” The countryside through which Raffles traveled was beginning to show evidence of the deepening economic downturn. Ironworkers and the colliers who worked in the iron trade were especially hard-hit. Before the recession, ironworkers’ wages were high enough that the men could rent small cottages and provide their families with a modest degree of material comforts, sometimes even saving a small percentage of their earnings. But as the furnaces shut down and coal pits closed in the postwar years, the workers were forced to sell their furniture and leave their homes, often wandering about the country searching for relief from private charities.

  Parliament remained in a contentious mood, still unwilling to raise taxes and doggedly unsympathetic to the growing ranks of the unemployed. On July 2, the speaker of the House of Commons informed the Prince Regent that while the government had provided some relief to distressed rural workers, it would do little more. After all, hard times were to be expected after a lengthy war, “and for the remedy for which they trusted much to the healing influence of time.” In reply, the Prince Regent lamented “the distresses of some classes of the people, [and] trusted that they would bear them with fortitude and energy.”

  Following the tumultuous “Bread or Blood” riots in East Anglia in May, protests during June and July remained remarkably well-mannered, despite the steadily rising price of grain and what William Cobbett called “the miserable state of things in England.” The most famous incident involved a delegation of colliers and laborers from Bilston, about 125 miles northwest of London, who embarked on a march to the city to present a petition to the Prince Regent detailing their difficulties. Carrying placards that read “Willing to work, but none of us to beg,” the marchers dragged several carts full of coal behind them as a gift to the prince. They covered about twelve miles a day, subsisting on gifts of food and money from the residents of towns along the way. Since the colliers did not beg, they were not subject to the restrictions of the Vagrancy Act; moreover, they were exempt from turnpike tolls, since the turnpikes imposed tolls only on vehicles drawn by horses or other beasts.

  But the government would not permit them to complete their mission. There would be no audience with the Prince Regent, for there could be no admission that either Liverpool’s ministry or the Crown bore any responsibility for the nation’s economic difficulties. As they neared London, the colliers—who conducted themselves “with the most perfect order”—divided into two columns: one was met by magistrates and police at Henley-on-Thames, and the other at St. Albans. The magistrates explained that the processions could advance no farther, but they offered to purchase the coal and distribute it among the poor; then they treated the marchers to beer and gave them money for their journey home.

  Through it all, the summer remained stubbornly cold and wet, even by English standards. Spring temperatures had been nearly three degrees colder than average, and June and July started off even further below the norm. In Northamptonshire, just north of London, the high temperature had risen above 67 degrees only twice in the first three weeks of July; most nights the lows sank into the 40s. “The season has been so unusually and constantly cold that fires have been kept without intermission in almost every house,” wrote United States Ambassador John Quincy Adams in his diary. Adams, who had been meeting regularly with Castlereagh in London to implement the details of the Treaty of Ghent, knew a thing or two about cold weather, having spent much of his early life in Massachusetts. Yet even this native New Englander claimed that “I have not yet ventured to throw aside my flannel waistcoat, nor as yet for one night to discard the blanket from the bed.” Across the greater part of Europe, he concluded, “the weather has been equally extraordinary.”

  Indeed it had. The strong trans-Atlantic westerly winds that provided so effective a barrier to Arctic air during the mild winter of 1815–16 began to slow during the spring. Like a river whose course has been disrupted by fallen rocks or trees, the Atlantic jet stream began to develop wide meanders to the north and south of its usual track. Where the jet stream dipped south, Arctic air and frequent storms spilled into the lower latitudes. In the ridges between these troughs, mild air flowed from the south, higher pressure dominated, and conditions remained relatively stable. These ridges formed what meteorologists call “omega blocks”—the distortion of the jet stream around them resembles the Greek letter omega (Ω)—and stalled the progress of cyclones.

  An analysis of weather records by H. H. Lamb suggests that one such block existed across the central Atlantic in the summer of 1816. A second formed in eastern Europe near the Ukraine, which experienced exceptionally hot conditions that were likely due to the stagnant air that persisted within the ridge of high pressure. Between these ridges, the jet stream veered far to the south, allowing air from Greenland and Iceland (where ice-covered seas persisted into June) to sweep across Britain and Ireland and into central Europe. Low-pressure systems cascaded down from Iceland along this stream. Unable to penetrate the block to the east, they would continue to wreak havoc over Europe for much of the summer. A second prolonged dip in the jet stream formed upwind of the Atlantic block, affecting eastern Canada and New England; the June snowstorms in that area resulted from a particularly severe southward excursion of the jet stream.

  The weaker trans-Atlantic westerly winds and meandering jet streams signaled a reduced North Atlantic Oscillation Index. During the winter, the aerosol cloud from Tambora had strengthened the Arctic cyclonic vortex; by springtime it had begun to have the opposite effect on Atlantic pressure systems, and hence on the North Atlantic Oscillation Index and the jet stream. As the aerosol cloud reflected sunlight, the temperatures of the land and ocean cooled gradually, due to the heat stored under their surfaces. By the summer, more
than a year after the eruption, this cooling most likely had begun to overtake the stratospheric warming. Since the tropics cooled more than the Arctic, the temperature difference between the two narrowed, leading to reduced trans-Atlantic westerly winds, a weaker and meandering jet stream with several blocks, and frequent intrusions of Arctic air into North America and western Europe.

  Computer simulations of the effects of volcanic eruptions on climate provide evidence for this strengthening of the Atlantic jet stream in the first winter after the eruption, with a delayed weakening of the jet that can last for up to a decade, depending on the strength of the eruption and the lifetime of the stratospheric aerosol veil. The timing of the weakening varies among the simulations, however, even for the same volcanic eruption. While all simulations produce global cooling and a weaker Atlantic jet, some produce stronger cooling than others or delay the appearance of the negative North Atlantic Oscillation. The disagreements between these studies on the precise details of the climatic response to volcanic aerosols demonstrates that, even almost two hundred years after Tambora, there are still unanswered questions about how strongly the eruption affected the weather. A study by Drew Shindell and his colleagues, for example, concluded that the negative North Atlantic Oscillation Index did not emerge until two or three years after Tambora erupted. The exceptionally cold and stormy weather in Europe and North America in the summer of 1816, combined with the jet displacements noted by H. H. Lamb, however, argues that Tambora caused a transition to a negative North Atlantic Oscillation Index and a meandering jet stream within one year.

  As July slid and splashed to its sodden conclusion, British newspapers echoed the concerns of their American counterparts about the effects of the unusual weather on the coming harvest. “The continuance of the present very unseasonable weather has been attended with the most baneful effects in various parts of the country,” reported The Times of London on July 20. In the southern counties, incessant rain already had ruined the hay and clover crops. Farmers in that area feared that if the heavy rains continued, their wheat crops might fail as well, “and the effects of such a calamity and at such a time [i.e., during the economic downturn] cannot be otherwise than ruinous to the farmers, and even to the people at large.” As in the United States, reliable historical temperature records were scarce, and so The Times, too, resorted to comparisons through anecdotal evidence: “Such an inclement summer,” it ventured, “is scarcely remembered by the oldest inhabitant of London or its environs.” And on the Corn Exchange in London, the price of wheat continued to rise due to “the quantity of fine Wheat at market being small, and the weather continuing unsettled.”

  From Sweden to northern Italy, and Switzerland to Spain, great rain-bearing clouds seemed to darken the skies every day. “Melancholy accounts have been received from all parts of the Continent of the unusual wetness of the season,” mourned the Norfolk Chronicle; “property in consequence swept away by inundation, and irretrievable injuries done to the vine yards and corn crops.” Some of the worst damage occurred in the Netherlands. In the province of Guelderland, a region of rich grasslands crisscrossed by numerous rivers that was already suffering from the postwar agricultural depression, the rains had destroyed so much of the hay and grain crops usually used for fodder that farmers already had begun to kill their livestock, knowing they could not feed the cattle through the winter. Nor was there sufficient food for the human population. “An indescribable misery has taken place,” reported one observer, “so that the lower classes of people have been obliged to feed on herbage and grains.” Facing insufficient supplies of bread and potatoes, the governor of the province asked local magistrates to establish relief kitchens (at public expense) to provide their needy residents with what was known as Rumford’s soup—an inexpensive, filling, and reasonably nutritious concoction made from dried peas, vegetables, and sour beer. (Rumford’s soup had been invented about twenty years earlier by an American physicist and entrepreneur named Benjamin Thompson, who lived most of his adult life in Europe under the name Count Rumford.)

  During the first week of July, the Rhine rose at Arnhem “to the almost, at this season, unparalleled height of 15 feet, 7 inches,” and still the rain poured down. “In every part of the neighbouring country, where the lands are rather low, they are in a state of inundation,” read a report in The Times of London. The districts along the Maas and Waal Rivers were almost entirely under water. In Zutphen, northeast of Arnhem, farmers reportedly had given up any hope of saving even a portion of their crops. “Our rich grass lands are already under water,” reported one correspondent, “and the grass which is not yet spoiled can only be got at by mowing in boats, for the immediate use of the cattle, which we have been obliged to stall.”

  Along the river Yssel, “the grass which was cut on Tuesday last the farmers have been obliged to pick up with boats on the following day, to give their cattle food: in many places they have been obliged to cut the corn for that purpose: and as there is no fodder, such corn as can be got at must be cut, or the cattle will have nothing to subsist on.” Some desperate farmers reached into their stores of winter seed corn to feed their cattle, thereby endangering next year’s harvest as well. Dispatches from Overyssel and Friesland provinces were equally alarming. “Even if the weather were to take a favourable turn,” noted The Times of London, “the injury already sustained, and the calamitous consequences of a summer inundation, cannot be repaired.… This appears certain—that an unusual scarcity and high price of all provisions must be the consequence.”

  Conditions were no better in most of the German states. “We continue to receive the most melancholy news from Germany on the extraordinary weather which afflicts nearly the whole of Europe,” noted a correspondent in Paris. “The excessive abundance of rain has caused disasters almost every where.” Crops in Saxony and Würzburg failed, leaving farmers “in utter despair.” To the south, Upper Franconia—famous for its breweries and grain—lay waste under “continual rains, torrents the like of which we have never before seen, [and] storms followed by hail.” The Rhine and the Neckar Rivers rose nine and a half feet above their usual level, flooding the area around Manheim and leaving whole villages under water. “The hopes of a very fine harvest have been almost ruined,” wrote one witness to the devastation. “The loss in hay, corn, tobacco, and pulse is incalculable.”

  Switzerland fared even worse. Frances, Lady Shelley (no relation to the poet), left Paris in early July and headed for Switzerland with her husband, Sir John Shelley, an English nobleman notorious for his self-indulgent lifestyle and his friendship with the Prince Regent. As they approached the Swiss border after eight days of incessant rain, Lady Shelley noted that “the country was flooded, and the crops everywhere suffering from the unusually wet season. The hay in many places has been washed down the stream.” On July 15 they reached Lac de Bienne, where Jean-Jacques Rousseau had lived, and found “the whole country … completely inundated, and the three lakes now form but one. The season has been calamitous. All the crops were destroyed, and much of the beauty of the scenery has been spoiled by the wintry aspect of the meadows.”

  From the canton of Glarus, a center of textile production in eastern Switzerland, came word that the inhabitants, due largely to “the severity of the present season, are sunk to the last degree of wretchedness.” The only glimmer of hope came from a private charity which was trying to build a settlement for the poor on the banks of the river Linth. In the plains of the canton of Basel, fields of wheat and potatoes lay submerged in water as the Birsig overflowed its banks; only the crops planted on higher ground held out any hope of survival. As the prospect of famine increased, the government of the canton of Bern issued an ordinance prohibiting the export of bread, flour, and grain.

  Things seemed a little brighter in Austria. A report from Vienna on July 12 noted that “the harvest, which has been delayed in Austria by the continuation of the cold and bad weather, has at length begun every where.” Although the grain had
been damaged by late frosts and damp weather, it appeared as if the yield of wheat, barley, and oats might actually exceed the diminished expectations in some regions. But the region from Calabria to Tyrol was already suffering from “an unexampled dearth” of grain, while the grape harvest throughout Austria “does not give any hopes either with respect to quantity or quality.”

  Vineyards in Burgundy were faring no better, as the Saône River flooded its banks: “All the fine plain of the Saône is covered with water.” In Chancey, about one hundred and fifty miles north of Geneva, rivers reportedly rose so high that rafts could pass over the bridges. Facing a shortage of grain in the province of Lorraine, the prefect of La Meurthe forbade the brewing of beer or the use of grain to make distilled liquor. In Montauban in southwestern France, unusually large hailstones pelted crops in mid-July and “completely destroyed the hopes of the harvest wherever this storm reached.” And throughout France, landowners resigned to minimal harvests resisted the collection of the land tax, which in turn exacerbated the government’s budget difficulties.

  Like their American counterparts, many Europeans assumed that God could alter the weather if He wished. As reports of the damage to grain and vineyards poured into Paris—where the Seine rose eight feet over several days—priests directed their flocks to pray for an end to the deluge, and so the cathedrals of Paris were filled with suppliants praying for dry weather. John Quincy Adams similarly reported that “the churches and chapels have been unusually crowded” in both England and France. In Sweden, too, prayers were “offered up in the churches daily to the Deity for a favourable change.”