Nine Major Earthquakes in the United States of the Ionian Islands, 1815–1864

Abstract

Nine major earthquakes that affected the islands of Corfu, Paxoi, Lefkada, Kephalonia, Ithaca, and Zakynthos in the Ionian Sea offshore western Greece at the time of British Protectorate of the United States of the Ionian Islands (1815–1864) have been reappraised by means of a systematic investigation of contemporary, locally produced documents of diverse typologies. With an in-depth study of the earthquakes attested by multiple observations, this article complements and concludes the research focused on 50 yr of seismic records that was introduced by my recent companion article on the solitary records of earthquake effects throughout the Ionian Islands. Although some earthquakes discussed in this article had already been studied and interpreted in modern times, the exclusive use of carefully contextualized and independent records of earthquake effects allowed the author to overcome the imprecisions of preceding interpretations. Because of the exhaustive documentation, this study proposes a different vision of the characteristics of these nine major earthquakes from their dates of occurrence to newly assigned sets of intensity data.