There has been a lot of shaking going on recently in this small archipelago of a mere 12,000 acres, some 650 miles from the nearest landfall at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and 700 or so miles to the closest shopping mall.Imagine what shaking would go on if a tsunami, earthquake or another 9/11 interrupted the entitlement of Bermudians to shop until we drop in the malls of America or Canada.A lot of people would probably enter a catatonic state from which no drugs or physical treatment, like shaking, could possible dislodge.Then there is the shaking of our national identity and sense of wellbeing as a peace-loving, ‘dark and stormy’ folk, as the fourth gunshot murder took place but a week before The Resurrection.Looks like a lot of shaking needs to be done in a number of areas, especially to bring the essential tourism trade back from the dead, back from the tomb where it was consigned when some declared that our essence was ‘Bermuda Inc.’, and not ‘Bermuda, the Isles of Rest’.On Monday, April 18, 2011, during lunch break for many, a shaking took place of a nature not felt in these islands for some time. A friend was on the penthouse floor of the new courthouse building, appropriately situated on Court Street and named for the late political shaker and mover, Dame Lois Marie Browne Evans, when an apparent tractor-trailer passing by shook the structure to its core and rooftop for some seconds.Thought he: “If a truck can shake the brand-new Courts of Justice, we better bring a judge and jury to pass sentence on its construction.”Soon, however, texts flooded in to declare that the greatest Magistrate of them all had handed down a judgment from not too far afar, or about 50 miles to the west of the Island, in the form of an earthquake, though one doubts many ran to church.According to geologist and former Bermuda College lecturer Dr Martin Brewer, former director of the sometimes earth-shaking Department of Immigration and a man who perhaps wisely keeps an earthquake sensor in his basement, the tremor struck at 15.38.26 UTC, as illustrated in the graph from his machine, kindly allowed to be presented here.Now we all now know, it hit at 38 minutes after noon, interrupted a lot of diverse activities for many, but to the scientists it occurred at 1500 hours, 38 minutes and 26 seconds in ‘Universal Time, Coordinated’, which in the old lay language was those divisions of the hour after 3 pm Greenwich Mean Time (as we are 3 hours behind GMT due to daylight savings).The magnitude was 4.6 on the Richter Scale and the quake originated at three miles below the ocean floor.Fifty miles off the Island is near the base of the volcano, Mount Bermuda, upon which we perch on the eastern half of its 50-mile length, from St. David’s to Argus Bank. The mountain of basalt was formed many millions of years ago, out near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the great underwater divide of our ocean, as opposed to the volcanic ‘Ring of Fire’ of the Pacific.According to a detail of the ‘World Ocean Floor Panorama’ by the late Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen (to whom the world owes the first mapping of the ocean floor and its many mountains), shown here, hundreds of fault lines stretch east and west of the Ridge, reaching into the neighbourhood of Bermuda.Fault lines are, of course, the geological expression of breaks in the crust of the Earth, created by earthquakes. Dr Brewer has identified seven earthquakes of some magnitude and close proximity that have been felt in Bermuda since 1951 and a number of others that were of some effect but of more distant epicentres. He notes that ‘Bermuda can expect to feel the effects of an earthquake of intensity III (the intensity of Monday’s earthquake as felt in Bermuda) or greater once every six years or so’, so no need to be completely complacent on these isles of potential geological unrest.The late historian Mrs Terry Tucker compiled a long list of Bermuda earthquakes from 1664 onwards, one ‘shaking, we are told, “churches, houses, yea, and the hearts of men too”, and doubtless providing a fearful theme for many an eloquent sermon’ thereafter.Water-shakers, or tsunamis, often accompany undersea earthquakes, but as Bermuda does not possess a great land mass, with a continental shelf or shelving coastline, it is unlikely that such “tidal waves” would have the same shattering effect, as seen recently in Japan.When, perhaps through a green bottle, someone saw a tsunami coming over the western reefs on December 9 (remembered as it is my birth date) several years ago, Bermuda, it is fair to say, went into a panic, and people lined the high roads round Gibbs Hill Lighthouse and were observed driving cars with seat belts and life preservers (of the watery type) in place.Consequently, a map was produced by yours truly of the ‘Great Tsunami of 1664’, which divided Bermuda into more islands than it then possessed.When one reader of this column called up to ask for more information on that earth-shaking event, I had to confess that it was a spoof, created when I was entirely smoke-free and soberly observing the ‘tsunamis’ which occur on the edge of the reefs many times each winter.The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Grand Banks of 1929 did, however, affect Bermuda according to accounts garnered by Dr Brewer.In the former, the island ‘had a constant flux of the sea every five or six minutes’ for a number of hours, while in the latter, ‘eye-witnesses described the sudden inrush of water, an equally rapid receding, and a final flow back to normal lasting some time’.At the confined area of Flatts Inlet (like the Japanese valleys between mountains), ‘Mr W. B. Smith’s dredging plant . . . was on Monday evening violently disturbed by what was thought a tidal wave . . . the mooring chains were broken, and the dredger, 70 ft long and 25 ft in depth, was in danger of being dashed against the wharf’.Fortunately in our 399th year of settlement, we have escaped a serious shaking up or watery bloodbath of a Japanese variety and thus we should appreciate that we are ‘too blessed to be stressed’, but as the joke about the scorpion goes, or rather does not, it is not apparently anymore in our nature to be grateful.Some might think that we need a good shakeup to understand what is important to Bermuda and some might say that ‘heritage’, not golf or spas, should be at the top of the list, especially for a revival of tourism, but as you know and as the ‘House of Cards’ Prime Minister was wont to say, ‘I couldn’t possible comment’.Edward Cecil Harris, MBE, JP, PHD, FSA is Executive Director of the National Museum of Bermuda, incorporating the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments may be made to director[AT]bmm.bm or 704-5480.