Because the British Islands lie in the direct track of storms coming in from the Atlantic, there have been many great storms in English history, not a few of which have left their mark. But there is one "Great Storm," and one only, though half hearted attempts have from time to time been made to fasten this title on other tempests.

As before the nineteenth century there was no scientific way of measuring the fury of a storm, it is only possible to judge the storms of earlier days by the havoc which they brought, and the impression made by them on the minds of the men and women who experienced them.

Subjected to this test, the 'Great storm' entirely justifies its title. It destroyed more property and caused the death of more people, both on land and sea, than any other known English storm then or since. There can be no doubt that the wind blew with true hurricane force, and that it maintained its strength for an unprecedented time. It is not very uncommon for a severe winter gales, for example, that of January 26, 1927 to develop squalls of hurricane force; but, to judge by its results, it would seem tolerably certain that the 'Great Storm' did something more than this, that in its continued violence it was a very good imitation of (though not!) a Caribbean hurricane. 

Perhaps the most remarkable testimony to the wide and lasting nature of the impression made by this storm is afforded by the extraordinary success of Addison's famous comparison of Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirlwind:

So when in angel by Divine command

With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,

Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pass'd,

Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;

And pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

"The extraordinary effect," says Macaulay, -which this simile produced when it first appeared, and which to the following generation seemed inexplicable, is doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which most readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis. 

'Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pass'd.' Addison spoke, not of a storm, but the storm. The great tempest of November 1703, has left a dreadful recollection in the minds of all men. No other tempest was ever in this country the occasion of a parliamentary address or of a public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large mansions had been blown down. One prelate had been buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of houses, still attested, in all the southern counties, the fury of the blast."

Macaulay

It is easy to overestimate the force of a gale which comes after a long spell of fine weather; but the Great Storm enjoyed no such fictitious advantage. On the contrary, the weather in the neighbourhood of the English Channel had been exceptionally bad, with hardly a break, from the middle of November; a series of what we now know as "Atlantic depressions" passed over Southern England, and gale succeeded gale, some of them being so severe that had no Great Storm followed, they would themselves have been remembered from the loss they caused. The Great Storm stood, therefore, to be judged by the most severe standard.

From the few barometric observations of the storm which have been preserved, it appears that its centre must have passed roughly over Liverpool, and have moved across England in an easterly direction. Also, as often happens in such storms, the force of the wind was confined to the area lying south of the centre. Its greatest fury was experienced south of a line from the Bristol Channel to the Thames. It blew a very heavy gale farther north; but a direct comparison of the damage done in the Downs with that on the East Anglian coast seems to show that even fifty miles north of the Thames there was a distinct abatement of its violence, and Spurn Head is the most northerly point at which we hear of an exceptional wind-force. On land the damage was widespread, and naturally there was a great degree of similarity in the reports, which came in from all over the south. The horror of the storm was emphasised by the fact that its most destructive period was confined to the hours of darkness, which, as it befell at the time of new moon, was absolute. The several reports, as is to be expected, give slightly discrepant accounts of the time when the greatest fury was reached, and of the wind's direction, but they confirm each other in the main. Thus we find that in the West Country the storm was at its height at or before midnight of the 26th; in London about 3 a.m. of the 27th; on the North Downs perhaps an hour later; and on the coast of Holland at about daylight. It would he possible from the observations made, and especially from those made on board ship, to plot the form and course of the storm with very tolerable accuracy and a chart of the storm at its height is shown below. 

The history of the storm

After a slight break in the stormy weather of the foregoing fortnight it began to blow again in the afternoon of the 26th, and by dark was blowing a gale. The gale soon freshened to a storm, blowing with a force approaching seventy miles an hour, and so continued during the early hours of the night. Even this was such a storm as comes but rarely, and everywhere it did damage. Tiles, coping-stones, chimney-pots, and suchlike were flying about in such profusion that it was dangerous to be out of doors, and of the few that ventured some were killed in the streets. But again, the houses were so rocked by the wind that many were afraid to stay indoors, and many more dreaded going to bed. As a choice of evils most stayed within doors, and being there, no doubt most went to their beds, there to sleep or to lie quaking according to the extent of their philosophy. This state of affairs played into the hands of such rogues as were hardy enough to risk the chimney-pots. just as we have records of heartless crime accompanying the Plague and the Fire of London, so, too, it happened in the Great Storm.

'I cannot but observe here," says Defoe, "how fearless such people as are addicted to wickedness are, both of God's judgment and uncommon prodigies; which is visible in this particular, that a gang of hardened rogues assaulted a family at Poplar, in the very height of the storm, broke into the house, and robbed them: it is observable that the people cried 'Thieves' and after that cried 'Fire' in hopes to raise the neighbourhood; but such is the power of self-preservation, and such was the fear the minds of the people were possessed with, that nobody would venture out to the assistance of the distressed family, who were rifled and plundered in all the extremity of the middle of the tempest."

Defoe

Perhaps there were also other "hardened rogues" of whom we do not hear, who calculated their chances equally well. The wind blew furiously for some hours, and then, when a lull might have been expected, the whole might of the storm was unleased. We hear of people everywhere starting from their beds, as though summoned to the Last judgment; and indeed their accounts of the booming of the wind, like thunder aloft, are terrible enough. At St James's, the Queen rose with her maids of honour, but though part of the palace roof was blown away, no harm befell them. At Wells the Bishop's Palace, modernized from an old castle, suffered heavy damage. The Bishop, Dr. Kidder, had his bedroom in an old part of the building. Roused by the fall of wreckage, he huddled on his dressing-gown and made for the door; but as he did so a chimney-stack crashed through the ceiling, dashing out his brains, and burying his wife, who remained in bed, in the ruins. Similar accidents were not uncommon; but though in some cases they were fatal, in others there were remarkable, or as it seemed miraculous, escapes.

Another common experience was that the lead on  the roofs of churches was either rolled up by the wind or blown away in large sheets. This was reported from all over the south country; that it bulks so largely in the accounts of damage done may be attributed to the fact that a high proportion of the correspondents who answered Defoe's appeal for information were the parish priests. In the country, where houses stood singly, and where no doubt the majority were still built of wood, the havoc was even greater. We hear of 800 houses blown down, while barns, corn-ricks, and hay-stacks were demolished by the thousand. Church steeples, too, were blown down, one of them, at Brenchley, being reputed the highest in Kent.

"This strong and noble structure by the rage of the winds was levelled with the ground, and made the sport and pastime of boys and girls, who to future ages can boast that they leap'd over such a steeple”.

The greatest of all the damage in the countryside was to the standing trees. That shallow-rooted trees like elms should be overturned is not remarkable, especially when we remember that the season had been wet and the ground was sodden; but the wind was equal to greater feats than laying flat whole rows of elms. Great oaks and beeches were snapped off through their thick trunks, and whole orchards were destroyed. A plaintive cry came from Somerset that the loss of their apple-trees promised a shortage of cider. Defoe himself made a tour to collect data for his account of the storm, and invited correspondence from all parts of the country. He says that he himself counted 17,000 trees down in Kent alone, then ceased counting from weariness. He records that there were twenty-five parks which lost above 4,000; and that 450 "parks and groves" lost each from 200 to 1,000 trees. The total clearly must have run into hundreds of thousands. But it may be noticed that this was not all sheer loss; for the vast amount of damage to wooden structures stood to be repaired. Houses had to be roofed or built, barns to be rebuilt, 400 windmills had been "over-set" and needed rebuilding; and then there was a prodigious amount of timber needed to make good the destruction of shipping. It may be doubted if much of the sound timber blown down in the great storm went to waste.

It is a well-known thing that a strong gale blowing in the direction of the flood tide into a narrowing channel will greatly raise the level of the water at the head of that channel. We have frequent experience of this in London, where a northerly gale at the time of spring tides raises the river to the top of its embankments, and even overflows some roads near the waterside. The Great Storm did not veer to the north-west in time to produce this effect to its full extent in the neighbourhood of the Thames and of the Straits of Dover; but on the other side of England the furious south-west wind caused the most memorable of floods in the Severn valley. Bristol was flooded, the water rising eight feet above the highest level recorded; at Chepstow they had long memories, and it was a question whether a great flood of 1607 had not been as high or even higher. In these districts to the loss of house property, of ships and boats, and of other things which could suffer from flood as well as from the wind, has to be added whole crops swept away, and' many thousands of cattle drowned.

Bristol suffered at least £100,000 worth of damage, a great part of it from the flooding of cellars in which was stored the rich produce of the West Indies and America: 1,000 hogsheads of sugar, 1,500 of tobacco, are enumerated among the losses. What the whole loss in the Severn valley may have been is probably beyond recovery. "They tell us," says Defoe, "the damage done by the tide amounts to above £200,000; 15,000 sheep drown'd in one level, multitudes of cattle on all the sides, and the covering of lands with salt water is a damage cannot well be estimated." We may well leave it at that.

Some curious results followed. From the great destruction of corn-ricks men might perhaps have foreseen a shortage or dearness of bread in the ensuing winter. Things actually transpired rather differently. By a fortunate chance, the season, which hitherto had been very wet, turned dry, and for a month no appreciable rain fell. Accounts say the scattered corn was therefore gathered up, practically undamaged, and threshing was put in hand at once on a large scale. This was for two reasons: both to save the cost of rebuilding the ricks, and because, owing to the great number of houses which had been unroofed, there was an unprecedented demand for straw for making thatches. Thus in some measure the storm served to repair its own devastation. The benefit of the destruction of corn-ricks thus fell to the general public; but it was quite otherwise in the case of houses damaged in the towns. There the public suffered as might be expected, and the building trade alone was the gainer. All the tiles made by the next summer were not enough to cover the houses which had been unroofed, and it is not surprising to learn that the price of tiles rose to three or four times the normal figure. And it was a golden time for bricklayers, who-presumably by the threat of striking, though strikes were not encouraged in those days, succeeded in obtaining 5 shillings (25p) a day instead of the 2 shillings (10p) which they usually received. In the circumstances it is not remarkable that many people refused to pay these exorbitant prices, preferring to make shift as best they could, patching their houses with boards or anything else that would serve till prices fell to a more reasonable figure.

As a curious result of the storm, it was noticed in the Isle of Wight that the fine spray of the sea, blown many miles inland, had rendered the grass so salt that cattle would not cat it; and that hedges and trees showed on the ends of their twigs knobs of salt congealed. The same thing appeared in Sussex and in Kent, especially at Cranbrook, the old capital of the Weald; and this implied, when allowance was made for the direction of the wind, that the spray had been blown at least twenty-five miles. This is a regular feature of West Indian hurricanes; but it was unprecedented in England (although it was noted after the 1987 storm.Ed.)

Several other curious meteorological phenomena were observed either during the storm or at a time so near to it that the storm gained the credit of them. It is disputed whether there was thunder and lightning accompanying the wind, and there is some excuse for the doubt which existed. The booming of the wind aloft, as heard during the lulls, seems to have distinctly simulated thunder; and there was, besides, an undoubted exhibition of a most unusual nature. "Tho' one cannot remember," says Defoe, "to have heard it thunder, or that I saw any lightning, or heard of any that did in or near London; yet in the countries the air was seen full of meteors and vaporous fires: and in some places both thunderings and unusual flashes of lightning, to the great terror of the inhabitants." These "unusual flashes" are elsewhere described as not striking down, but running horizontally along or near to the ground (this is an interesting account as similar things were seen in the 1987 storm but put down to electricity pylons and lines arcing, clearly that was not the case in 1703 however). A waterspout (or tornado?) was also seen on the afternoon of the 26th in a field in Oxfordshire.  

As would be expected, the greatest mischief caused by the storm was done at sea. There is, for the purpose of comparison between land and sea, no certain record of the loss of life; but it is believed that on land the deaths, other than those caused by the Severn floods, were about 125, or not many more. On the other hand, it was stated that the lives lost at sea amounted to 8,000 a not unlikely figure: we have pretty exact records of the losses of the Navy, and know that they included some 1,500 lives. There were two reasons why the losses at sea should be so heavy. Had all the ships which felt the storm been in open water the vast majority of them would in the ordinary course have ridden it out with more or less damage.

The men-of-war of the third-rate drew about eighteen feet, and there was no escape for them that way, and in such weather a ship which struck was a ship lost. There is little detail on record of the loss of the Mary and of the seventy-gun ships, both because they drove ashore in the dark, and because in the courts-martial-which were always held to inquire into the loss of any of the King's ships-it was not yet the custom to keep minutes of the evidence. We only know that the one survivor from the Mary saved his life by swimming on board the Stirling Castle, which must therefore have gone ashore close to leeward of her, and that he, doubly fortunate, was one of the eighty. survivors who were taken off from the part of the wreck which remained above water on the following day. The other ships broke up completely and all were drowned. We presumably owe to the one survivor of the Mary the knowledge that Admiral Beaumont, a young man of thirty-four, lashed himself with two other officers to a piece of the wreck. What became of them no one knows: they were never picked up.

Even from the sheltered ports and anchorages to the westward some ships were driven to sea. There was a remarkable yarn of a tin-ship-that is, a ship laden with tin-which was blown out of the Helford River in Cornwall shortly before midnight, and was beached on the Isle of Wight next morning "between two rocks," with the loss of the ship, but without the loss of a man. The contemporary account is frankly incredible, but can, by a little care, be brought within the bounds of probability. It was stated that the wind, then at NW blew the ship out of the river at midnight, and that she grounded on the Isle of Wight at eight the next morning, having therefore run eighty leagues in eight hours, a speed far beyond experience.

Examination of the evidence shows that to go clear of the land the ship must have started with the wind north-westerly, and that to be driven in on the Wight she must have had it, as alleged, about W.S.W. So far so good; but there is reason to believe that in Cornwall the shift of wind from N.W. to W.S.W. came long before midnight, which would mean that the ship was blown to sea probably about ten o'clock. And when she is credited with having grounded at eight the next morning we are equally at liberty to suppose that for eight we may read ten. The wind in the western channel was not as furious as in the Downs, and the tin-ship was able to set a scrap of sail; in such circumstances there can be no doubt that she drove very fast. But the distance from the Helford River to the Isle of Wight, even to St. Catherine's, is not eighty leagues (240 miles), but barely fifty leagues (150 miles). Thus from 240 miles in eight hours, a speed of thirty knots, our ship's progress is reduced to 150 miles at most in perhaps twelve hours, corresponding to a speed of about twelve knots or a little more. Even that would be a most exceptional speed in 1703, and rightly to be admired; but it was in every way an exceptional night.

The families of the men of the Navy who perished, from Admiral downwards, were relieved out of the public funds. It is pleasant to be able to place it on record that the initiative came from the Queen, whose proposal was that they should be considered as having lost their lives in action, and their families treated by the established scale, which was, in fact, done. As far as the Humber Estuary the storm was very severe; we hear of many ships anchored near its mouth being blown to sea, some of which in all likelihood came to grief in the open. But there was no such exceptional loss in that quarter as to attract very particular attention in a night of such disasters. It was reported, as striking evidence of the violence of the wind at Spurn Point that night, that it fused the bars of the grate on which the coal-fire burnt which then formed the light, a thing which had never before been known to happen.

In the port of London the fact of the tide being high when the storm was at its fiercest did not make for safety. It gave the wind a further fetch, and deprived the ships of the shelter of the banks, with the result that anchors dragged, moorings parted, and the whole mass of ships was driven to leeward in a solid body. Owing to the horseshoe bend made by the river, everything between Ratcliff and Deptford was driven by the south-west wind into the bight of Limehouse, and the space being small and the number of ships very great, near 700 sail, they were driven into and on top of one another in heaps. One would be seen lying heeling from the shore with the bows of one ship over her waist and the stem of another on her forecastle; the bowsprits of some drove into the cabin windows of others; some lay so that the tide flowed into them before they could be righted; some so much on top of others that the undermost sank before the other was floated. Boats everywhere were crushed to pieces between the ships, masts were carried away, and a very pretty general average was made of the external carved works in which all ships of any proper pride then indulged. Such is the picture, and there can be no doubt that in harbour. as at sea, the damage was very severe.

The first lighthouse on the Eddystone built by Winstanley, stood through the gales of a fortnight before the fatal November 26th. Apparently it had suffered some damage, for on the 26th Winstanley, profiting by the short lull in the weather, went off to the lighthouse with a few workmen to superintend necessary repairs. The gale which sprang up prevented his return to the shore, if indeed he wished to return, and the storm that followed gave him the opportunity he is said to have desired. How or when the lighthouse went can never be known; all that is certain is that on the morning of the 27th no trace of the tower or of its occupants remained, everything above the solid base having been swept away by the storm.

It is of interest that on the 28th there was a very high tide in the Thames, due no doubt to the north-west winds piling up the water in the south of the North Sea.

This particular storm does not appear to have had warm or cold fronts; it had more the appearance of a whirling mass of homogeneous air, like a tornado on a very large scale. In some other cyclones the passage of the cold front has given rise to very violent line-squalls, which in the days of sail were very dangerous to ships because of the sudden change of wind direction which accompanies them.

Certainly then a storm that rightly went down in the annals of English history; England suffers many severe gales but for this to have been so noteworthy means that it was clearly the 'storm of storms'.