Qualla: 1620 Robben Island Earthquake

1620 Robben Island Earthquake: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Between six and seven o'clock on the morning of 7 April 1620, the French navigator Augustin de Beaulieu stood on the deck of his ship, becalmed in Table Bay near Robben Island, and heard two startling thunderclaps "like cannon shots." He recorded the event in his logbook. Four centuries later, scientists are still arguing about what he actually heard.

1620 Robben Island Earthquake: A Fleet at Anchor

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beaulieu was leading three French ships through Table Bay, decades before the Dutch would establish a permanent settlement at the Cape. In 1620, the bay was a waypoint -- a place where ships stopped for fresh water and provisions before continuing to the East Indies or returning ...

1620 Robben Island Earthquake: The Oldest Earthquake in South Africa

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For much of the historical record, Beaulieu's account was accepted at face value. The event was catalogued as an earthquake of Mercalli intensity II to IV -- weak to light -- making it the oldest recorded seismic event on the southern African subcontinent. South Africa sits on a ...

1620 Robben Island Earthquake: Thunder, Not Tremor

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2012, Sharad Master of the University of the Witwatersrand published a paper in the South African Journal of Science challenging the event's classification. Master examined Beaulieu's original account and concluded that the two thunderclaps were very likely atmospheric phenome...

1620 Robben Island Earthquake: Echoes Across Table Bay

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Robben Island would go on to acquire far heavier historical weight -- as a place of banishment, a leper colony, and ultimately the prison where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years of incarceration. But in 1620 it was simply a landmark in a bay, a reference poi...