Atlantis and the Silver City (6 page)

Dr. Marc-André Gutscher and Georgeos Diaz Montexano had also both earlier picked up on the very obvious clues referring to the same Gades region of southwest Spain and formulated theories that this narrow area, the immediate seabed, and part of neighboring Morocco were the combined site of Atlantis. I realized that they could be partly correct, but the area was far too confined, as it does not take into account exactly
what Plato said about Gades, that it was only the eastern extremity of the lost civilization.

Another suggestion has been that Atlantis was a large island, once incorporating the Canary Islands and Madeira, which subsequently broke up as parts of it subsided. Like the theory put forward by Andrew Collins about Cuba, I think there is a definite link with Atlantis, as will be revealed as this book develops.

Other theories, though, are soon shot down. In the spring of 2009, for example, an unusual grid pattern was spotted on a Google Earth image, in the seabed off the coast of west Africa. This made headlines around the world in the press, on television news channels, and on the web. “It’s Atlantis,” was the cry. “It must be the street grid of the citadel.” Google pulled the shutters down on that theory by explaining that the grid was merely a by-product of the imaging system and no such layout existed. Furthermore, even if it had existed, such was the scale that each street would have been a few miles wide.

Those, therefore, are the main rival theories for the true location of Atlantis. Those, too, are the reasons why the theories don’t stand up to serious examination. Could my own ideas take matters further? I was impatient to move ahead with my research. And while these were early days, I was excited by my discoveries. I had thrown up several leads for further inquiries. I particularly wanted to look again at the Cuban and Bahamian connection, for example, although my main feeling was simply that Atlantis, as Plato had described it, had not yet been found. But I did have some vital information; I was convinced that I knew what had probably destroyed it.

CHAPTER FOUR

Destruction of Paradise

I
t was Sunday, November 1, All Souls’ Day, and by 9:40
A
.
M
. the capital city’s cathedrals and churches were packed with devout Catholics. They were, perhaps, aspiring to heaven, but instead were suddenly pitched into an unimaginable hell.

The entire city began to shake violently and there were simultaneous unholy growling and groaning noises. The phenomena persisted for an incredible six or seven minutes.

Eyewitness accounts tell of whole buildings swaying like saplings in the wind, and of terrified people throwing themselves from upper floors in the desperate hope of escaping the horror. Others, clinging on to something— literally for dear life—watched incredulously as people in the same room were flung across it, smashed through windows, and fell flailing to the street below. So immense was the force of the quake that an unbelievable eighty-five percent of the city was destroyed, including all the churches, entombing the pious at prayer and leaving them little time to question why God had forsaken them. Even today, a few hundred years later, the city’s largest convent at the time remains roofless, in ruins … a memorial to the dead.

Soon after the first tremor, at around 10
A.M.
, a second struck. Even more buildings, already badly damaged, were reduced to rubble.

Yet a third violent tremor followed at noon. Horrifying fissures, up to fifteen feet wide, tore through the city center, swallowing those unfortunate enough to be in their path.

Thousands gathered on a recently constructed quay on the waterfront, hoping to board boats to escape the catastrophic episodes. Without warning, the entire quay sank beneath their feet into the angry waters, like a high-speed elevator descending to hell. Nothing of the quay or its milling occupants was ever seen again. The seabed at that spot was later said to be six hundred feet deep.

(
IMAGE
2)
Western Europe and North Africa.

A firestorm raged through the city for days afterward, consuming everything in its path. It was estimated that at least thirty thousand souls perished in the city alone; some reports indicate more than double that many fatalities. Most of the towns and coastline villages of the surrounding region were flattened, and many were flooded. In some areas closest to the quake’s epicenter, the resulting tsunamis were estimated to be as high as thirty meters—the height of a modern ten-story apartment house.

It is believed that the earthquake would register nowadays as a colossal 8.9 to 9 on the Richter scale, and I have seen estimates as high as 10. That is at least equivalent to the fateful Japanese quake on March 10, 2011, and possibly up to ten times stronger. Most earthquakes resulting in severe carnage are a maximum of Richter 6.0 to 7.5. This was the largest earthquake in the known history of the Western world.

Two major aftershocks on December 11 and 23—and many more in the following weeks—further terrified the survivors; the population lived in constant fear.

The current worldwide perception of this disaster is minimal, yet it only happened surprisingly recently—in the era of Haydn and Handel, a year before Mozart’s birth, in 1755. It didn’t occur in Turkey, Asia, or South America, but in the capital city of Portugal: Lisbon. As I was to discover, similar events had frequently happened before and will almost certainly occur again in this most unstable of zones.
(SEE IMAGE 2, PREVIOUS PAGE.)

Despite the magnitude of the catastrophe, it had some enduring benefits for mankind as it kick-started, among other things, the study of earthquakes. Previously, little had been understood about seismic activity or what caused it.

I first researched this event more than twenty years ago for an article in a magazine. It is enshrined in the annals of history as The Great Lisbon Earthquake, but that is a misconception. In fact it was The Great Algarve Earthquake. In 1755, mass tourism was unheard of and had not yet thrust Portugal’s southernmost province onto the world’s stage. Few had heard of The Kingdom of the Algarve, as it was known. Back then, anyone found exposing their nipples on a beach and worshipping the sun would probably, at the behest of the Pope, have been lashed to a stake in the town square
and burned alive as a witch. Plenty of poor souls suffered such a fate for less erratic behavior.

Today the Algarve’s golf courses, stunning golden cliffs, and sundrenched, sandy beaches are famous, forming a backdrop for many a television commercial. The region has taken its place as one of Europe’s most popular tourist destinations, with millions of sun-seekers arriving through the airport at Faro every year.

This all began back in the 1960s, when stars like the Beatles and Cliff Richard discovered the area’s charms. Little had changed since 1755, apart from the rebuilding of the shattered towns. There was no airport, there were few made-up roads, and the common mode of rural transport was the donkey cart—all part of the attraction of the region: celebrities could lose themselves in paradise, away from the prying eyes of the press. Over-exposure on the beach, however, was still viewed with distaste by the locals.

In 1755, Lisbon was one of the world’s richest and most famous cities; its devastation and the associated huge death toll resulted in global alarm. This is hardly surprising, since such was the awesome power released by the earthquake that tremors were felt throughout Europe—to be exact, over a total area of 1,300,000 square miles. There were ground motions in Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and North Africa. In Italy, locals were amazed—and mightily relieved—when a violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius stopped abruptly. Tens of thousands perished in Morocco, and Algiers, a thousand kilometers away, was completely destroyed. Even Scandinavia was affected—the Dal River suddenly overflowed its banks— and, bizarrely, church bells suddenly started ringing in Paris.

Scientists now believe the epicenter of the earthquake was several hundred kilometers southwest of Cape St. Vincent, itself the most southwesterly point of the Algarve, and of Europe. It was near a large seabed zone known as the Gorringe Bank (or Ridge), which is much closer to the surface than the surrounding seabed. The exact point was on the now-notorious fault line where the African plate, one of nine forming the earth’s crust, collides with and grinds against the Euro-Asian plate to the north. Each is inexorably trying to invade the other’s territory, which has produced, shaped, and folded the contours and mountains of Africa and Europe over millions of years. (
SEE IMAGE
3,
NEXT PAGE.)

(
IMAGE
3)
The position of the Gorringe Bank, now submerged in the Atlantic
.

Plate tectonics is a twentieth-century science, and exactly when and where earthquakes will occur is still not predictable with any certainty. We do know, however, that enormous pressure builds up and is eventually released by one plate suddenly moving over, under, or along another.

This particular fault starts way out in the Atlantic at the Azores, travels east toward Europe, where it meanders in front of the Algarve and the Costa de la Luz in Spain’s southern province of Andalucía, and then runs under the Mediterranean Sea and moves on to Italy and Mount Vesuvius. It is a recipe for disaster on a gigantic scale, as witnessed by the destruction of Lisbon, despite its location some four to five hundred kilometers from the quake’s epicenter.

Unfortunately for the Algarve, at the moment, the crustal plates seem to be most in conflict in the epicenter area of the 1755 quake. Having just
learned what happened to Lisbon, try to conjure up what it was like in the Algarve, considerably closer to the quake’s origins. It is almost beyond imagination. All the ports and coastal villages of the region, and of Costa de la Luz in neighboring Spain, were destroyed by the initial tremors. Earthquake-proof building methods were as yet nonexistent. Anyone fortunate enough to have survived on the coast and its immediate hinterland was quickly inundated by the terrifying tsunami. As we said earlier, waves reached heights of thirty meters in places, far higher than the tsunami in Thailand on December 26, 2004, and three times the height of that which struck Japan in March 2011. The one that caused havoc and mayhem in Samoa in September 2009 reached barely five meters.

Every inland settlement and town was also reduced to rubble. It was reported that in Silves, the Algarve’s opulent capital during the Moorish occupation, nothing but birds stirred among the debris and rubble for many years.

Much of the coastline was changed as the brittle sandstone cliffs were shaken and torn apart, before being battered by a succession of great waves. There were huge landslides in the mountains that sweep across the north of the Algarve. It has been estimated that, extending from the Algarve, the total area shaken was four times that of Europe.

The tsunami reached Britain by the afternoon and all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean on the same evening—albeit with a reduction of the staggering height. Research has revealed that about 282,000 square kilometers of the seabed sank by as much as 30 meters over a radius of 300 kilometers.
¹⁴
These figures beggar belief, but they are the result of painstaking surveys of the seabed by marine geologists. Recently, other parts of the seabed have been discovered to have thrust upward, and this has been attributed to the same event.

The three individual earthquakes lasted for a considerable time—some reports say one went on for as long as nine minutes. That is an inordinately long period. It is known that on some geological faults, a destructive ripple effect can occur along a large section, lasting many minutes and resulting in devastation over extensive areas. According to experts, one such susceptible fault running up the west coast of America from Seattle to Canada is overdue to fracture.