Hooghly River Cyclone of 1737
When did the Hooghly River Cyclone of 1737 occur?
What were the main effects of the Hooghly River Cyclone of 1737?
What is the estimated death toll from the Hooghly River Cyclone of 1737?
What was the reported height of the storm surge during the cyclone?
Hooghly River Cyclone of 1737, tropical cyclone that made landfall near the lower reaches of the Hooghly River, near Calcutta (now Kolkata) in Bengal Presidency (now West Bengal, India) on October 11, 1737. Among the earliest major natural disasters recorded around the city of Calcutta, the cyclone generated destructive winds, torrential rainfall, and a massive storm surge that inundated the low-lying delta. Many of the British colonial structures in and around Calcutta were damaged or destroyed.
Contested death toll
Reliable data for the 1737 cyclone is scarce, and the reported fatalities have varied over the years. Official East India Company correspondence placed the number of deaths caused by the cyclone’s storm surge in the colonial settlement at Calcutta at about 3,000. This figure is primarily attributed to direct damage from the cyclone’s storm surge in the urban area of the settlement and does not take into account any aftereffects such as diseases caused by the storm, though the storm is known to have triggered a famine of indeterminate impact.
Much of the uncertainty surrounding the human toll of the cyclone arises from exaggerations regarding the storm in contemporary media. Issues of The Gentleman’s Magazine and London Magazine circulated in London in 1738, for instance, reported that an earthquake had occurred along with the cyclone. A 1994 study disproved the occurrence of the earthquake, stating that the type of damage reported to such colonial structures as St. Anne’s Church showed no signs of damage from a tremor and that the earthquake was never mentioned in official East India Company reports. The study suggested that the rumor may have originated with passengers and crew who arrived in London on merchant ships at least six months after surviving the event in Calcutta who likely tried to rationalize the damage they witnessed to buildings by connecting it to an earthquake. Later reports published in London inflated the death toll to about 300,000 when the storm was conflated with the supposed earthquake and, in some accounts, a tsunami that was purported to have occurred about the same time as the cyclone. The occurrence of these additional disasters has also been discredited by subsequent research that used the known and verifiable parameters of the cyclone to estimate its fatalities to be between 25,000 and 45,000.
Origin
Meteorological data from the period are unavailable, but historical accounts indicate that the cyclone developed in the Bay of Bengal, an area prone to intense tropical systems because of warm waters and high humidity. Experts approximated the path of this storm by comparing it to that of another cyclone that hit the area in the same season. The extrapolated trajectory places the point of origin for the storm close to longitude 90° E and has the storm moving north and curving northwest toward the Bengal coast before shifting north-northeast toward the Hooghly estuary.
Landfall and impact
According to eyewitness accounts, the cyclone made landfall near the mouth of the Hooghly River on the night of October 11–12. It is believed to have developed into a powerful cyclone, striking Calcutta and surrounding areas (the districts of Howrah, Medinipur, and 24 Parganas, as well as parts of the Sundarbans in modern-day Bangladesh) with great force. The Julian-calendar date recorded for the storm is September 30, 1737, equivalent to October 11 on the Gregorian calendar, which was adopted by the British Empire in the year 1752. Studies suggest that the population of the entire area of impact may have been as many as 227,000. The urban population of Calcutta, in particular, was about 20,000 at the time.
According to contemporary accounts, the storm surge created by the cyclone swept up the Hooghly River, causing severe flooding and structural damage and carrying away boats and barges. At least eight of nine moored company vessels were lost as a direct result of the cyclone. The East India Company’s structures in Calcutta—churches, warehouses, and administrative buildings—were badly damaged, some reduced to rubble, and surrounding villages were obliterated by the surge. Letters from company officials describe entire villages of thatched huts flattened or washed away, leaving few survivors.
- Also called:
- Calcutta Cyclone of 1737, Great Bengal Cyclone of 1737, and Hugli River Cyclone of 1737
- Date:
- October 11, 1737
A reconstruction of the storm in a 1995 study estimated the radius of its maximum winds as 22 miles (35 km) and its forward speed (the speed with which the storm as a whole moves on land) as close to 16 miles (25 km) per hour. The storm surge caused by the cyclone was reported by eyewitnesses to have been a considerable 40 feet (12 meters) high. Despite exaggeration in other data from contemporary accounts, experts attach a high degree of confidence to this figure. From these parameters, the study infers that the cyclone likely reached an intensity that would correspond to a category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Other studies approximate the cyclone’s speed as 170 miles (272 km) per hour, because of which the cyclone remains one of the most significant disasters in South Asian history.
