The Great Storm of 1703 is the most severe storm ever recorded in the British Isles. It affected southern England and the English Channel. A 120 mph "perfect hurricane", it started on November 24, 1703, and did not die down until December 2.

Observers at the time recorded barometric readings as low as 973 millibars (measured by William Derham in South Essex ), but it has been suggested that the storm may have deepened to 950 millibars over the midlands.

Damage

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• At sea, many ships (many returning from helping the King of Spain fight the French in the War of the Spanish Succession) were wrecked, including HMS Resolution (1667) at Pevensey and on the Goodwin Sands HMS Stirling Castle (1697), HMS Northumberland (1679) and HMS Restoration (1678), with about 8,000 lives lost overall, particularly on the Goodwins
• The first Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed on November 27, killing six occupants.
• The number of oak trees lost in the New Forest alone was 4,000.
• On the Thames, around 700 ships were heaped together in the Pool, the section downstream from London Bridge.

Beliefs and response

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• The storm was generally reckoned to represent the anger of God - in recognition of the "crying sins of this nation", the government declared December 16 a day of fasting, saying it "loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of our people".

Literary

The Great Storm also coincided with the increase in English journalism, and was the first weather event to be a news story on a national scale. Special issue broadsheets were produced detailing damage to property and stories of people who had been killed.

Daniel Defoe produced his first book, The Storm, published in July 1704, in response to the calamity, calling it "the tempest that destroyed woods and forests all over England". "No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it," he wrote of it. Coastal towns such as Portsmouth "looked as if the enemy had sackt them and were most miserably torn to pieces". He thought the destruction of the sovereign fleet was a punishment for their poor performance against the Catholic armies of France and Spain during the first year of the War of the Spanish Succession.

See also

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• European windstorm
• List of United Kingdom disasters by death toll

External links

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• Analysis by Risk Management Solutions (pdf)
• BBC - The Great Storm of 1703

References

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1. - Philosophical Transactions (1704-5), 24 (no. 289), 1530-4

1703 | Storms | History of England | Climate of the United Kingdom | Weather events | Disasters in England