Disasters & Accidents in the 17th century

95 sourced entries, 1600 CE to 1698 CE, oldest first. Also see Disasters & Accidents across every century or everything else in the 17th century.

• 1600June 25 – In England, a fire destroys much of the town of North Walsham, Norfolk, burning down 118 homes, 70 shops, and most of the stalls in the market square. The fire is traced to the home of one person who tries to flee town after the blaze begins. Many of the persons left homeless are given shelter at the St Nicholas Church.source
• 1600September 24 – All 130 crew of the Dutch Republic ship Hoop die when the merchantman sinks in a storm while traveling in the Pacific Ocean between the Hawaiian Islands and Japan. The Liefde, a ship accompanying Hoop, is badly damaged but survives; all but 24 of its crew of more than 100 die from starvation and thirst after drifting more than six months before arriving in Japan on April 19, 1601.source
• 1607September 14 – Flight of the Earls: Hugh O'Neill, 2nd Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, 1st Earl of Tyrconnell, flee Ireland for Spain with 90 followers, to avoid capture by the English crown, never to return.source
• 1608January 7 – At Jamestown, Virginia, fire destroys "all the houses in the fort"; the fort is repaired in March.source
• 1609March 19 – The Dutch warship Mauritius sinks off the coast of the Cape of Cape Lopes Gonçalves on the modern-day West African nation of Gabon. The wreckage of the Mauritius will not be located until 375 years later, in 1985.source
• 1609March 24 – Led by the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, the Lithuanian Navy breaks the blockade of Riga by sinking two Swedish Navy warships off the coast of Salacgrīva.source
• 1609June 2 – With the Sea Venture as its flagship, a fleet of nine English ships and more than 500 passengers altogether, departs from England to bring supplies to the English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. The fleet runs into a storm in July and the Sea Venture is wrecked in the Bermuda islands on July 24.source
• 1609June 29 – A fleet of ships from the Kingdom of Spain, assisted by a French warship, fights a battle in the Mediterranean Sea against a larger fleet of 23 ships from the North African Eyalet of Tunisia and sinks 21 of them. The other two Tunisian ships are captured.source
• 1609July 23 – A three-day hurricane begins in the Caribbean Sea and separates the nine London Company's ships and their 600 passengers who are en route to relieve the Jamestown settlement. One ship sinks, and the flagship is wrecked. Less than 300 settlers make it to Virginia.source
• 1609August 10 – The Spanish galleon San Francisco sinks in a storm off the coast of Japan, with the loss of 56 men. Clinging to floating wreckage, the survivors are able to reach Yubanda, near Onjuku in modern-day Chiba Prefecture.source
• 1610January 6 – Nossa Senhora da Graça incident: A Portuguese carrack sinks near Nagasaki, after fighting Japanese samurai for four nights.source
• 1612September 22 – Retreating Polish and Lithuanian troops burn the Russian city of Vologda in reprisal for their defeat at Moscow.source
• 1613June 29 – Fire destroys London's famed Globe Theatre, during a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII.source
• 1615August 30 – A Spanish treasure fleet of 41 ships is struck in the Gulf of Mexico by a powerful storm that sinks the ship San Miguelsource
• 1615November 7 – The Portuguese freighter Nossa Senhora da Luz, carrying 150 crew and a cargo of Chinese and Burmese goods, sinks in a storm near the Azores.source
• 1617March 4 – On Shrove Tuesday, angry rioters burn down London's Cockpit Theatre because of its increase in the price of admission to its plays. Three rioters are killed when the actors at the theater defend themselves.source
• 1617December 24 – An unexpected storm strikes off the coast of Finnmark in Norway, sinking 10 ships and drowning at least 40 people. A little more than three years later, Mari Jørgensdatter tells interrogators that she and several other witches caused the storm, prompting the Vardø witch trials.source
• 1617At least seven women are sentenced to death by burning for witchcraft, at the Finspång witch trial in Sweden.source
• 1619January 12 – James I of England's Banqueting House, Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire. Inigo Jones is commissioned to design a replacement.source
• 1622May 25 – The English ship Tryall, which left Plymouth, England for Batavia (now Jakarta), wrecks on the Tryal Rocks, nine months later (the wreck is discovered in 1969).source
• 1622September 6 – Spanish treasure fleet sinks off Marquesas Keys in the straits of Florida. Atocha, Margarita, and Rosario are the most heavily laden treasure ships found in the 20th century.source
• 1623October 26 – "Fatal Vespers": 95 people are killed when an upper floor of the French ambassador's house in London collapses under the weight of a congregation attending a mass.source
• 1623November 1 – Fire at Plymouth Colony destroys several buildings.source
• 1624May 24 – The city of Oslo, Norway, is destroyed by fire for the fourteenth time. King Christian IV of Denmark–Norway decrees its rebuilding on a new site, where it will be renamed Christiania.source
• 1626May 30 – Wanggongchang Explosion in Beijing, China: a gunpowder factory explosion destroys part of the city and kills 20,000 people.source
• 1627August 16 – In a persecution of Christians in Japan, 14 Franciscan missionaries and converts are killed.source
• 1628August 10 – The Swedish 64-gun sailing ship Vasa sinks 20 minutes into her maiden voyage, in Stockholm Harbor.source
• 1629January 8 – Frederick Henry, Hereditary Prince of the Palatinate, the 15-year-old son of the German Palatinate elector, Frederick V, drowns in an accident while sailing to Amsterdam.source
• 1630October 18 – Frendraught Castle in Scotland, the home of James Crichton of Frendraught, burns down.source
• 1631February 20 – A fire breaks out in Westminster Hall, but is put out before it can cause serious destruction.source
• 1631July 16 – The city of Würzburg is taken by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, putting an end to the Würzburg witch trials, but not before an estimated 900 people from the city and its environs have been burned at the stake for witchcraft.source
• 1632December 6 – Indians wipe out a new Dutch settlement of Swanadael in New Netherland.source
• 1633May 28 – Aurangzeb, Crown Prince of the Mughal Empire in India, narrowly escapes death when an elephant stampedes through his encampment, but is able to defend himself with a lance.source
• 1634September 12 – A gunpowder factory explodes in Valletta, Malta, killing 22 people and damaging several buildings.source
• 1638October 21 – The Great Thunderstorm in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, England: probable ball lightning strikes the parish church, killing 4 and injuring about 60.source
• 1638Shipwrecked English buccaneer Peter Wallace, called Balis by the Spanish, settles near and perhaps gives his name to the Belize River, the first known European settlement in Belize.source
• 1641September 23 – The English ship Merchant Royal sinks off Cornwall along with its cargo of 100000 lb of gold and 18 of its 58 crew. More than 380 years later, treasure seekers will still not have located the wreckage.source
• 1642September 2 – London theatre closure 1642: England's Long Parliament orders the theatres of London closed, effectively ending the era of English Renaissance theatre.source
• 1646July 12 – Lightning strikes the gunpowder tower of the castle of Bredevoort in the Netherlands, causing an explosion that destroys parts of the castle and the town, killing Lord Haersolte of Bredevoort and his family, as well as others. Only one son, Anthonie, who is not home that day, survives.source
• 1647September 27 – The Dutch merchant ship Princess Amelia runs aground off of the coast of Mumbles Point, Wales and sinks, killing 86 of the 107 people aboard, including former New Netherlands Governor Willem Kieft.source
• 1649December 20 – The Puritan law enforcers of the Commonwealth of England raid the Red Bull Theatre in London for violations of the laws against performance of plays and arrest the actors, as well as confiscating their property.source
• 1652July 17 – The "Great Fire of Glasgow" destroys one-third of the Scottish city.source
• 1652October 2 – The Great Fire of Oulu destroys almost all of the houses of the town’s bourgeoisie, the provision warehouses and the drawbridge of Oulu Castle, in the town of Oulu, Finland.source
• 1653April 28 – The Great Fire of Marlborough destroys 224 houses and much of the textile businesses in the Wiltshire town which, "at that date was one of considerable importance, and had merchants of affluence and repute."source
• 1653September 13 – A violent storm off the west coast of Scotland sinks the English Navy warship Swan, and the commandeered merchantmen Speedwell and Martha and Margaret, all of which have been anchored off of Mull. Most of the crews had gone ashore, but 23 of the men on the ship Speedwell are killed.source
• 1654October 12 – The Delft Explosion, in the arsenal, devastates the city in the Netherlands, killing more than 100, among whom is Carel Fabritius (32), the most promising student of Rembrandt.source
• 1656April 28 – The Dutch East India Company ship Vergulde Draeck, with 193 crew aboard and a valuable cargo is wrecked off Ledge Point, Western Australia, with the loss of 118 members. Another 75 make it to shore, with limited provisions. The ship had been bound from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta in Indonesia).source
• 1656May 7 – Nine days after the wreck of the Vergulde Draeck, a steersman and six crew members are dispatched to Batavia to get help. The other 68 survivors remain at Ledge Point and await rescue but are not seen again.source
• 1657March 2 – The Great Fire of Meireki in Edo, Japan, destroys most of the city and damages Edo Castle, killing an estimated 100,000 people.source
• 1660July 24 – The Great Fire of 1660 begins in Constantinople, capital of the Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul in Turkey), and destroys two-thirds of the city over two consecutive days, consuming 280,000 buildings and killing 40,000 people.source
• 1660Blaise Pascal's Lettres provinciales, a defense of the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, is ordered to be shredded and burned by King Louis XIV of France.source
• 1662February 20 – The survivors of the wreck of the Dutch freighter Arnhem strike reefs but are able to make their way to an uninhabited island, probably the Ile D'Ambre or Ilot Fourneau both islands within the territory of Mauritius. During more than two months while shipwrecked, the survivors kill and eat the local wildlife, including the last surviving dodo. They are rescued by the English ship Truroe in May.source
• 1664September 23 – The French Navy ship Tigre sinks off of the coast of the island of Sardinia, with the loss of 64 men. Another 58 of the crew are rescued.source
• 1664December 20 – All but 3 members of the over 200-person crew of the Dutch ship Kennemerland are killed when the trade ship sinks in a storm near the Out Skerries islands off of the coast of Scotland.source
• 1665May 19 – Great fire of Newport, Shropshire, England.source
• 1666March 11 – The tower of St. Peter's Church, Riga, collapses, burying eight people in the rubble.source
• 1667February 8 – The first part of the Rebuilding of London Act 1666, following the destruction by the Great Fire of London of 1666, goes into effect as royal assent is given to the Fire of London Disputes Act 1666, which establishes the Fire Court. The Court, sitting at Clifford's Inn near Fleet Street, hears cases starting on February 27 and continuing until the end of 1668.source
• 1668October 31 – The English ship HMS Providence is wrecked at Tangier on the North African coast.source
• 1669January 2 – Pirate Henry Morgan of Wales holds a meeting of his captains on board his ship, the former Royal Navy frigate Oxford, and an explosion in the ship's gunpowder supply kills 200 of his crew and four of the pirate captains who had attended the summit.source
• 1669July 16 – A rockfall from the Mönchsberg mountain above Salzburg in Austria kills 230 people as tons of the mountainside fall onto a neighborhood on a street, the Gstättengasse.source
• 1669Ottoman units burn the eastern part of Kolárovo.source
• 1670January 27 – The Muslim emperor Aurangzeb of the Mughal Empire in India issues an order for the destruction of all Hindu temples and schools in the empire, including the Keshvadeva Temple in Mathura.source
• 1670March 31 – The British warship HMS Sapphire is wrecked beyond repair when her captain, John Pearce, orders the ship to be run aground at Sicily while fleeing what he believes to be four Algerian pirate ships, rather than attempting to fight. The ships turn out to have been friendly, and Pearce and his lieutenant, Andrew Logan, are court-martialed for their cowardice and executed on September 17.source
• 1670August 17 – A joint fleet of warships from England (commanded by Commodore Richard Beach on HMS Hampshire) and from the Dutch Republic (led by Admiral Willem Joseph van Ghent on Spiegel) rescue 250 Christian slaves and then sink six Algerian pirate ships in a battle in the Mediterranean Sea off of the coast of Morocco at Cape Spartel.source
• 1671November 9 – The Duke of York's Theatre is opened in London by the players of the Duke's Company, rivals to the "King's Company" at the Theatre Royal, which burns down two months later. The site is now the Dorset Garden Theatre.source
• 1672March 12 – Action of 12 March 1672, a 2-day naval engagement between an English coastal patrol and a Dutch Smyrna convoy off the south coast of England. The English fleet suffers severe damage while most of the Dutch convoy escapes, although one of the Dutch commanders (De Haaze) is killed and one warship taken as a prize (Klein Hollandia) sinks; the latter will be rediscovered in 2019.source
• 1675March 25 – England's first royal yacht, HMY Mary, strikes rocks off of the coast of Anglesey while traveling from Dublin to Chester with 74 passengers and crew, and quickly sinks, with the loss of 35 people. The other 39 are able to get to safety. The wreckage is not discovered until almost 300 years later, on July 11, 1971.source
• 1675September 20 – In England, a fire destroys most of the town of Northampton. According to a contemporary account, "the market place (which was a very goodly one), the stately church of Allhallows, 2 other parish churches and above three-fourth parts of the whole town was consumed and laid in ashes.".source
• 1676May 26 – A fire destroys the town hall and 624 houses in Southwark, London.source
• 1676November 27 – A fire in Boston, Massachusetts, is accidentally set by a careless and sleepy apprentice, who drops a lighted candle, or leaves it too near some combustible substance; this is the largest fire known at this time in the district. The Rev. Increase Mather’s church, dwelling and a portion of his personal library are destroyed.source
• 1679April 8 – In the Italian region of Piedmont, a landslide causes the village of Bosia to sink into the ground and then get buried, killing 200 inhabitants. The village is then rebuilt at another site and continues to exist.source
• 1679November 27 – A fire in Boston, Massachusetts, burns all of the warehouses, 80 houses, and all of the ships in the dockyards.source
• 1681November 29 – A storm strikes the Isthmus of Panama and overwhelms the Spanish Navy's Flota de Tierra Firma, sinking the ship Nuestra Señora de Encarnación in the Chagres River. The Encarnación wreckage is not found until almost 340 years later, in 2011, mostly intact and still loaded with most of its cargo.source
• 1681December 3 – Another ship in the Flota de Terra Firma, Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, sinks in the Chagres River with the loss of its 280 crew.source
• 1682February 5 – In Japan, on the 28th day of the 12th month in the year Tenna 1, a major fire sweeps through Edo (now Tokyo).source
• 1682June 8 – The English trading freighter Johanna is wrecked off of the coast of South Africa with the loss of 10 of her 114 crew, becoming the first of Britain's East India Company fleet to be lost.source
• 1682November 22 – Nearly 1,000 houses in Wapping, London are destroyed in a fire.source
• 1683March 22 – Great fire in Newmarket, Suffolk, England, consuming half the houses and forcing King Charles II (who is in residence) to flee the town.source
• 1685October 22 – Louis XIV of France issues the Edict of Fontainebleau, which revokes the Edict of Nantes and declares Protestantism illegal, thereby depriving Huguenots of civil rights. Their Temple de Charenton-le-Pont is immediately demolished and many flee to England, Prussia and elsewhere.source
• 1687September 26 – Half of the Parthenon is destroyed in Athens after mortar shells are fired by Republic of Venice forces under the command of Francesco Morosini in a battle against the Ottoman Empire for control of the city. The strike ignites a stock of gunpowder that the Ottomans had stored inside the 2,200-year-old temple, which had been completed in 438 BC as a shrine to the goddess Athena. During the fighting September 23 and September 29 for control of the Acropolis in the Morean War, the Temple of Athena Nike is demolished and the Propylaea suffers damage.source
• 1688January 2 – Fleeing from the Spanish Navy, French pirate Raveneau de Lussan and his 70 men arrive on the west coast of Nicaragua, sink their boats, and make a difficult 10 day march to the city of Ocotal.source
• 1688March 1 – A great fire devastates Bungay, England.source
• 1689April 19 - A fire in Amalienborg-palace in Copenhagen kills 180 people.source
• 1689October 26 – Skopje fire of 1689 occurs, lasting for two days and burning much of the city.source
• 1691April 9 – A fire at the Palace of Whitehall in London destroys its Stone Gallery.source
• 1693December 27 – The new 80-gun English Navy warship HMS Sussex departs Portsmouth on its maiden voyage, escorting a fleet of 48 warships and 166 merchant ships to the Mediterranean Sea. The fleet runs into a storm on February 27, 1694, and on March 1, Sussex and 12 other warships sink, along with a cargo of gold.source
• 1694March 1 – British flagship (carrying gold coin) and twelve other ships are wrecked in a storm in the Mediterranean off Gibraltar with the loss of approximately 1,200 lives.source
• 1694September 5 – The Great Fire of Warwick breaks out in England and destroys half the town. Donors raise £110,000 toward disaster relief, with Queen Anne contributing £1,000.source
• 1695January 24 – Milan's Court Theater is destroyed in a fire.source
• 1696January 27 – In England, the ship (formerly Sovereign of the Seas) catches fire and burns at Chatham, after 57 years of service.source
• 1696April – A fire destroys the Gra Bet (Left Quarter) of Gondar, the capital of Ethiopia. The fire starts "in the house of a prostitute" and destroys many buildings, including the churches of St. George, Takla Haymanot and Iyasu.source
• 1696September 11 – England's Royal Navy scuttles and deliberately sinks its 32-gun battleship HMS Sapphire in Bay Bulls Harbour in Newfoundland, rather than let it be captured by the French Navy following a disastrous battle.source
• 1697May 17 (May 7 Old Style) – The 13th century royal Tre Kronor ("Three Crowns") castle in Stockholm burns to the ground, and a large portion of the royal library is destroyed.source
• 1698January 4 – The Palace of Whitehall in London, England is destroyed by fire.source
• 1698April 1 – Scottish pirate William Kidd and his crew arrive at Île Sainte-Marie off of the coast of Madagascar in Kidd's Adventure Galley bringing with them the cargo of the captured ships Quedagh Merchant and Rouparelle. Upon arrival, all but 13 of Kidd's crew desert to work for another pirate, Robert Culliford. The Adventure Galley, which is leaking and falling apart, sinks and the Rouparelle is sunk by the deserters. Kidd and his 13 henchmen depart on Quedah Merchant.source