The thermometer had been higher than usual, and the weather hot, or calm, or both, for eight days before; wind east and north-east. On the 14th in the morning, the wind shifting to the south-west, the weather calm and hazy, there was a shower. The afternoon hazy and fair, wind north-west. The barometer moderately high, but the mercury remarkably variable.
On the 15th in the morning, the wind fresh at north-west, the atmosphere hazy. Being on the sands, half a mile east of Penzance, at 10 A. M. near low water, I perceived on the surface of the sands a very unusual inequality: for whereas there are seldom any unevennesses there, but what are made by the rippling of the water, I found the sands, for above 100 yards square, all full of little tubercles (each as large as a moderate mole-hill), and in the middle a black speck on the top, as if something had issued thence. Between these convexities were hollow basons of an equal diameter. From one of these hollows there issued a strong rush of water, about the bigness of a man’s wrist, never observed there before nor since.
About a quarter after six, P. M. the sky dusky, the wind being at west north-west, it fell quite calm. At half past six, being then in the summer-house at Keneggy, the seat of the Hon. J. Harris, Esq; near Penzance, with some company, we were suddenly alarmed with a rumbling noise, as if a coach or waggon had passed near us over an uneven pavement; but the noise was as loud in the beginning and at the end, as in the middle; which neither the sound of thunder, or of carriages, ever is. The sash-casements jarred: one gentleman thought his chair moved under him; and the gardener, then in the dwelling house (about an hundred yards distant from us) felt the stone pavement of the room he was in move very sensibly.
In what place the shock began, and whether progressive or instantaneous in the several places where it was felt, is uncertain, for want of accurately determining the precise point of time in distant places.
The shock was not equally loud or violent. Its extent was from the isles of Scilly eastward as far as Liskerd, and towards the north as far as Camelford; thro’ which district I shall trace it, according to the best informations I could procure.
In the island of St. Mary, Scilly, the shock was violent. On the shores of Cornwall, opposite to Scilly (in the parish of Senan, near the Land’s-end) the noise was heard like that of a spinning-wheel on a chamber-floor. Below stairs there was a cry, that the house was shaking; and the brass pans and pewter rattled one against another in several houses in the same parish. In the adjoining parish of St. Just, two young men being then swimming, felt a strong and very unusual agitation of the sea. In the town of Penzance, in one house the chamber-bell rung; in another the pewter plates, placed edgeways on a shelf, shifted, and slid to one end of the shelf: and it was every-where perceived more or less, according as people’s attention was engaged.
At Trevailer, the seat of William Veale, Esquire, about two miles from Penzance, the noise was heard, and thought at first to be thunder: the windows shook, and the walls of the parlour, where Mr. Veale sat, visibly moved. The jarring of the windows continued near half a minute; but the motion of the walls not quite so long: and some masons, being at work on a contiguous new building, the upright poles of the scaffolds shook so violently, that, for fear of falling, they laid hold on the walls, which, to their still greater surprize, they found agitated in the same manner. And a person present, who was at London at the time of the two shocks in the year 1751, thought this shock to resemble the second, both in degree and duration[10].
At Marazion, the next market-town east of Penzance, the houses of several persons shook to that degree, that people ran out into the street, lest the houses should fall upon them.
In the borough of St. Ives, on the north sea, six miles north of Penzance, the shock was so violent, that a gentleman, who had been at Lisbon during several shocks, said, that this exceeded all he had met with, except that on the 1st of November 1755, so fatal to that city.
At Tehidy, the seat of Francis Basset, Esq; the rooms shook, and the grounds without doors were observed to move. The shock was felt sensibly at Redruth, St. Columb, Bodman, &c. along to Camelford, which is about 90 miles from the isle of Scilly. From Marazion eastward it was felt at several places in like manner, as far as Lostwythyel; but at Liskerd, about ten miles east of Lostwythyel, it was but faintly perceived, and that by a few persons. It was still less sensible at Loo and Plymouth, “scarcely sufficient to excite curiosity or fear”[11].