19. The First Cyclone That Wrecked Coringa in 1789
After centuries of prosperity, Coringa’s fortunes took a tragic hit in 1789. In December of that year, fairly late in the cyclone season by Bay of Bengal standards, a storm that came to be called The Great Coringa Cyclone developed. It produced severe storm-tide conditions. Witnesses described a succession of three giant waves striking Coringa. The first storm-tide drove ashore all the ships in anchorage. Then the second and third waves, even bigger than the first, flowed inland to inundate with salt water the fertile fields of the Godavari River’s delta. Coringa was almost completely destroyed, and around 20,000 people were killed.
The disaster was named the Great Coringa Cyclone. It was somewhat like when the 1914 – 1918 global war was initially called “The Great War” because nobody suspected that an even greater one would soon follow. Those who named the 1789 storm the “Great Coringa Cyclone” did not suspect that an even bigger and far more devastating cyclone would strike Coringa within a lifetime. When it arrived fifty years later, in 1839, Coringa had recovered from the 1789 disaster and bounced back, better than ever.