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| The Thames and London Bridge in 1677 |
Our ancestors survived conditions with considerably less
resources than we have available. There was no central heating in their homes
and shops, of course, and fuel (peat, coal, and wood) was just as expensive, or
more so, as the fuels we consume today. Most people just couldn’t afford the
luxury of warmth in winter. They didn’t often change clothes or bathe in cold
weather when they’d have to haul and heat water. There are paintings from the Netherlands
that show women standing in a wide, shallow bowl while washing their legs with
a cloth. Lower-economic class families and their guests shared beds near a
kitchen hearth, or shut themselves into heavy curtains or a cupboard bed to
capture body heat. Portraits of well-to-do families show heavy velvets and furs
on men and women. While that certainly shows status, the sheer weight of the
clothing indicates that they were needed for warmth.
Family size burgeoned during the global temperature dip of
the 16th and 17th centuries: maybe the long, freezing
nights were not all that boring! It didn't hurt that the Puritans took the
"Be fruitful and multiply" command from Creation very seriously.
Of course our ancestors knew nothing about it, but they
experienced the effects of a plunge in sunspot activity in the 1600s, which
corresponded with the coldest years of the Little Ice Age. Specifically during
Mary Dyer’s* lifetime, 1611-1660, it was the time of famines, waves of bubonic
plague across Europe, the Thirty Years War, the Great Migration to America, the English Civil War, and the
explosion of the slave trade to the Americas
and Europe.
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Iceland surrounded by sea ice and icebergs, late 17th century
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Iceland’s
ports were ice-bound by miles, year-round for several years, and trade and passenger
shipping from Europe was forced far south to
avoid sea ice. On America’s
east coast, there were harvest failures, starvation, epidemics of smallpox and
yellow fever, and pest plagues. Boston
Harbor's sea water froze
over for more than a mile out, hard enough to walk on, for two weeks at a time.
See "Boston snowpocalypses
of 1638".
The few passenger ships that made an Atlantic winter crossing had to
ride at anchor in Massachusetts Bay until the
harbors thawed and boats could ferry passengers to the docks. (And you know
that those ships didn’t have central heating.)The weather was extreme in the summers, too: the hurricane that made landfall between Plymouth and Boston in 1635 is considered to be the strongest ever to hit New England, based on reports of tidal surge and millions of trees felled by the winds and tornadoes.
It seems that New England
was the victim of a polar vortex in 1638 and many other years.
Journal of
Governor John Winthrop—January 1638:
“About thirty persons of Boston going out in a fair day to Spectacle Island to cut wood, (the town being in great want thereof,) the next night the wind rose so high at N.E. with snow, and after at N.W. for two days, and then it froze so hard, as the bay was all frozen up, save a little channel. In this twelve of them gate to the Governor’s Garden [an island], and seven more were carried in the ice in a small skiff out at Broad Sound, and kept among Brewster’s Rocks, without food or fire, two days, and then the wind forbearing, they gate to Pull-in Point, to a little house there of Mr. Aspenwall’s. Three of them got home the next day over the ice, but their hands and feet frozen. Some lost their fingers and toes, and one died. The rest went from Spectacle Island to the main, but two of them fell into the ice, yet recovered again. In this extremity of weather, a small pinnace was cast away upon Long Island [in Boston Harbor] by Natascott, but the men were saved and came home upon the ice.”
The Little Ice Age “peaked” in the years of the Great Migration from England to the American colonies, and during the English Civil Wars of the 1640s—the coldest years in many centuries.
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| This graph shows the severity of winters in
Europe and North America from 1000-2000 AD. The absolute coldest period was from 1600-1675. |
“A ship came in hither, which was going
to New England, but the storms were so violent that they were forced to come hither,
[until] the winter there was nearly over. In this ship were two Friends, Anne Burden of
Bristol, and one Mary Dyer from London; both lived in New England
formerly, and were members cast out of their [Puritan] churches. Mary goes to
her husband who lives upon Rhode
Island...”
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| London Frost Fair, 1684 Click to enlarge |
In the winter of 1683-84, there was another period of
extreme cold where the wide and shallow River Thames froze above the London Bridge.
At that time, the bridge, which was dismantled in the 19th century,
dammed most of the ice to the west, and the river froze solid. (Now, of course,
there’s a deep and fast current contained between the embankments.) The novelty
of the frozen river drew thousands of people to play and skate, and slide
around, and of course, the more reckless broke bones or died of their injuries.
Horses drew carts, tents were erected for food vendors, and whatever one bought
for three pence on the shore cost four pence on the ice. With long, frozen winters with little heat and light, it must have been a very gloomy existence.
So when the Frost Fairs set up on the frozen Thames, there was, in a relatively
small area, entertainment, recreation, shopping, people-watching, and foods and
beverages they wouldn’t consume on a daily basis (think of today’s deep-fried
junk foods at fairs).
A NASA website says,
“During the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, from 1645 to 1715, there is believed to have been a decrease in the total energy output from the Sun, as indicated by little or no sunspot activity. Known as the Maunder Minimum, astronomers of the time observed only about 50 sunspots for a 30-year period as opposed to a more typical 40-50,000 spots. The Sun normally shows signs of variability, such as its eleven-year sunspot cycle. Within that time, it goes from a minimum to a maximum period of activity represented by a peak in sunspots and flare activity.”
More from NASA:
“Between the mid-1600s and the early 1700s the Earth’s surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere appear to have been at or near their lowest values of the last millennium. European winter temperatures over that time period were reduced by 1.8 to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1-1.5 Celsius). This cool down is evident through derived temperature readings from tree rings and ice cores, and in historical temperature records, as gathered by the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the University of Virginia.”
Could a Little Ice Age happen again? Scientists say that
after the current sun cycle, we’re heading for a “grand minimum” in
approximately 2020, that would last until about 2070 (don’t worry—be happy—we’ll
be dead by then!). A May 2013
article says the slight cooling effect of the sun’s decreased radiation
would only slow, but not stop, global warming. Yes, an ice age could happen
again. But not one that we’ll ever see.
Christy K Robinson
is author of two biographical novels on William
and *Mary Dyer, and a collection of her nonfiction research on the Dyers.
In 1660, Mary Dyer was hanged for her civil disobedience over religious
freedom, and her husband’s and friends’ efforts in that human right became a
model for the United States Constitution’s Bill of Rights 130 years later. The
books (and Kindle versions) are available on Amazon. CLICK
HERE for the links.