Was that the deadliest cyclone ever in Andhra?
Coringa is a small village in East Godavari district, few kilometers away from Kakinada. A port was built at Coringa by the Britishers in 1759. The port became famous for building ships with a capacity of 1,500 tonnes, and the ships from United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Portugal were repaired. Coir, homeopathy medicines, fibre, pulses, paddy and oils were exported to Southeast Asian countries, and cycles, motorcycles, iron ore, machinery, sugar and kerosene were imported.
K.N. Murali Sankar reported that
A 50-foot-long bridge with auto-opening facility — considered to be an engineering marvel — was built in 1889 paving the way for ships of a capacity of 600 tonnes directly to the berths. The present lighthouse replaced an old one in 1805. By 1905, the construction of ships was completely stopped and the port was closed owing to sandcasting.
In 1789, Coringa was hit by a cyclone leaving 20,000 dead. After looking at the destruction caused by this cyclone, Henry Piddington, a scientist (possibly) from the British East India Company, coined the term “cyclone”. Despite the devastation, the port operations were restored.
On 25 November, 1839, another cyclone stuck Coringa with wild winds and a 12 meter high strom surge, and this lead to death of 3,00,000 people, and loss of 20,000 vessels. This cyclone is ranked third in the world, in terms of the magnitude of loss incurred.
This is the deadliest cyclone ever occurred in Coastal Andhra.
The contents for this Medium post are shamelessly copied from the following sources.
