DESCRIPTION:
Kick 'Em Jenny Volcano, West Indies

Location of Kick-'em-Jenny
[Map,11K,InlineGIF]

Kick 'Em Jenny Submarine Volcano, West Indies
Location: Lesser Antilles, West Indies
Latitude: 12.30 North
Longitude: 61.63 West
Height: -160 meters (-525 feet)
Type: Submarine Volcano

Kick-'em-Jenny, an actively growing submarine volcano 8 kilometers (5 miles) off the north shore of Grenada, rises 1,300 meters (4,300 feet) from the sea floor. Its summit has grown from 235 meters (770 feet) below the sea surface in 1962 to 160 meters (525 feet) twenty years later. Numerous historical eruptions, mostly documented by acoustic signals, have occurred since 1939, when an eruption cloud rose 275 meters (900 feet) above the sea surface. Other known eruptions occurred in 1943, 1953, 1965, 1966, 1972, and 1974. The eruptions of 1939 and 1974 ejected eruption columns above the sea surface.

Written histories of the West Indies do not mention Kick 'em Jenny volcano before 1939, although there must certainly have been many eruptions before then. The name "Kick 'em Jenny" appears on many old maps when it usually refers either to the small island now more commonly called Diamond Island (or Ile Diamante) or to the whole passage between the Ile de Ronde and Grenada. We have generally assumed that the name "Kick 'em Jenny" refers to the fact that the waters in this region are sometimes extremely rough. ...

The first known eruption was on July 24 1939. It was witnessed by a large number of people in northern Grenada. One of the spectators was the well-known Grenadian historian Fr. R. P. Devas who wrote a two-page typescript account of the eruption which is preserved in the Seismic Research Unit. This eruption lasted for at least 24 hours and at its height it ejected an eruption column 900 feet above sea level. This eruption generated a series of sea waves or tsunamis which had amplitudes of about 2 meters in northern Grenada and the southern Grenadines. We have discovered very recently that these waves were sufficiently large to wash across the west coast road in Barbados but were not recognized at the time as tsunami waves.

Since 1939 there have been at least ten more eruptions. None of these has been so big as the 1939 eruption and most have been detectable only by seismographs. Kick 'em Jenny, like many other submarine volcanoes is a particularly efficient generator of acoustic signals which are transmitted through the ocean. These can be heard underwater (and on land close to the volcano) as a deep rumbling noise but more importantly they are recorded by seismograph stations. On several occasions they have been felt, strongly in northern Grenada and the Grenadines and perceptibly as far away as Martinique.

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