24. Prayers Did Not Elicit the Desired Response
A massive earthquake and a city-wide inferno were bad enough. However, more was in store for the unfortunate Portuguese capital on All Saints Day, 1755, as the catastrophe took yet another macabre turn. Shaken and frightened survivors sought to escape the conflagration and rubble that had once been proud buildings. Thousands rushed towards the city’s harbor, where the large open squares of the royal palace promised safety from both flames and falling debris. There, they were further alarmed by an odd sight: a harbor without water, in which ships rested on a bare seabed. The bewildered survivors descended into the bottom of Lisbon’s harbor and walked atop its bottom. Before long, they began to gather around priests who led them in prayers that sought God’s mercy and begged His forgiveness for whatever sins had occasioned such divine wrath.
Many were still occupied in fervent prayers and begging for God’s mercy in the harbor when the sea returned. A series of huge tsunami waves refilled the harbor, destroyed all moored boats, crashed into the quays, and engulfed the lower part of Lisbon on the shore of the Tagus, including the newly built marble quay of Cais De Pedra, which disappeared into the river. The first three tsunami waves were the largest, and they completed the destruction brought about by the earthquake and fire. Tens of thousands of terrified survivors who had rushed to the open space of the docks and the waterfront quay for safety lost their lives to the tsunamis, including thousands of faithful in the midst of their fervent prayers for God’s mercy.