The storm which hit the south of England 296 years ago today, on the night of November 26th, 1703, was of such severity that it has gone down in history as "the Great Storm".
It was an event that has been of considerable interest to meteorologists in the intervening years, because it occurred near the beginning of what might be called the scientific renaissance, when meteorological instruments had begun for the first time to be used widely and fairly systematically.
As a result, a wealth of information about the storm was carefully recorded for posterity, and it is one of the earliest whose ferocity can be assessed with any confidence.
At least 123 people were killed on land by the Great Storm, and the material damage was awesome: over 17,000 trees were blown down in Kent alone; 400 windmills were wrecked, many of them because the intense friction of the rotating blades caused them to catch fire; the Eddystone lighthouse disappeared without trace with all its occupants; and more than 8,000 sailors lost their lives at sea.
One of the more eminent victims of the storm was the Bishop of Bath and Wells. His lordship's palace was in Wells in Somerset and his sad story has been told thus: "The dismal accident of our late bishop and lady was most remarkable; they were killed on that night by the fall of two chimney stacks, which fell upon the roof and drove it in upon my lord's bed, forced it quite through the next floor and down into the hall, and buried them both among the debris.
"And it is so supposed that my lord was getting up, for he was found some distance from my lady who was found in her bed; but my lord had his morning-gown on, so it is supposed that he was coming down from the bed just as it fell".
And perhaps just as interesting is the identity of the recorder of the bishop's fate. Much of our descriptive knowledge of the Great Storm of November 1703 comes to us from Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders and many other well-known classics.
Along with consulting the scientific authorities of the day, Defoe placed advertisements in many local newspapers, and as a result received a wealth of correspondence about the damage and the loss of life throughout the country.
His account of it, under the lengthy title The Storm - or a Collection of the Most Remark- able Casualties and Disasters which Happened in the Late Dreadful Tempest both by Sea and by Land, was published in the following year, 1704.