Though rare , the North Sea has been the site of a number of historically documented tsunamis . The Storegga Slides were a series of underwater landslides , in which a piece of the Norwegian continental shelf slid into the Norwegian Sea . The immense landslips occurred between 8150 BCE and 6000 BCE , and caused a tsunami up to high that swept through the North Sea , having the greatest effect on Scotland and the Faeroe Islands . The Dover Straits earthquake of 1580 is among the first recorded earthquakes in the North Sea measuring between 5.6 and 5.9 on the Richter scale . This event caused extensive damage in Calais both through its tremors and possibly triggered a tsunami , though this has never been confirmed . The theory is a vast underwater landslide in the English Channel was triggered by the earthquake , which in turn caused a tsunami . The tsunami triggered by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake reached Holland , although the waves had lost their destructive power . The largest earthquake ever recorded in the United Kingdom was the 1931 Dogger Bank earthquake , which measured 6.1 on the Richter magnitude scale and caused a small tsunami that flooded parts of the British coast
1931 Dogger Bank earthquake
1931 Dogger Bank earthquake
North Sea