“This was the case, and as the place is not large, and the number of ships very great, the force of the wind had driven them so into one another, and laid them so upon one another, as it were in heaps, that I think a man may safely defy all the world to do the like.
“The author of this collection had the curiosity the next day to view the place, and to observe the posture they lay in, which nevertheless it is impossible to describe; there lay, by the best account he could take, few less than seven hundred sail of ships, some very great ones, between Shadwell and Limehouse inclusive; the posture is not to be imagined but by them that saw it; some vessels lay heeling off with the bow of another ship over her waist, and the stern of another upon her forecastle; the boltsprits of some drove into the cabin-windows of others; some lay with their sterns tossed up so high that the tide flowed into their forecastles before they could come to rights; some lay so leaning upon others that the undermost vessels would sink before the other could float; the numbers of masts, boltsprits and yards split and broke, the staving the heads and sterns, [pg 206]and carved work, the tearing and destruction of rigging, and the squeezing of boats to pieces between the ships, is not to be reckoned; but there was hardly a vessel to be seen that had not suffered some damage or other in one or all of these articles.
“There were several vessels sunk in this hurricane, but as they were generally light ships the damage was chiefly to the vessels; but there were two ships sunk with great quantity of goods on board: the Russell galley was sunk at Limehouse, being a great part laden with bale goods for the Straits; and the Sarah galley, laden for Leghorn, sunk at an anchor at Blackwall, and though she was afterwards weighed and brought on shore, yet her back was broken, or so otherwise disabled that she was never fit for the sea. There were several men drowned in these last two vessels, but we could never come to have the particular number.
THE WEST-INDIAMEN DRIVEN ASHORE AT TILBURY FORT.
“Near Gravesend several ships drove on shore below Tilbury Fort, and among them five bound for the West Indies; but as the shore is oozy and soft, the vessels sat upright and easy.” The loss of small craft in the river was enormous; not less than 300 ships’ boats and 500 wherries were sunk or dashed to pieces. Barges and lighters were sunk and broke loose by the score, and twenty-two watermen and others working on the river were drowned.
The effect of this tempest was felt very severely on shore, not less than 123 persons being killed by falling buildings, &c. It is said that not less than 800 dwellings were blown down, while barns, stacks of chimneys, pinnacles, steeples, and trees, were strewed all over the country.
Dozens of remarkable cases might be given of wonderful preservations at sea during this storm, and one or two have been cited. A small vessel ran on the rocks in Milford Haven and was fast breaking up, when an empty boat, which had got loose, drifted past so near the wreck that two men jumped into it and saved their lives. A poor boy on board could not jump so far, and was drowned. A poor sailor of Brighthelmston was taken off a wreck after he had hung by his hands and feet on the top of a mast for eight-and-forty hours, the sea raging so high that no boat durst approach him. A waterman in the river Thames, lying asleep in the cabin of a barge near Blackfriars, was driven below London Bridge, “and the barge went of herself into the Tower Dock, and lay safe on shore. The man never waked nor heard the storm till it was day; and, to his great astonishment, he found himself safe, as above.” Two boys, lodging in the Poultry, and living in a top garret, were, by the fall of chimneys, which broke through the floors, carried quite to the bottom of the cellar, and received no hurt at all.
It has been shown how universal was the storm on the English coasts, and it extended to all parts of the interior.[70] In Norfolk, a small town experienced the horrors [pg 207]of fire simultaneously with the gale. The inhabitants were powerless to extinguish it; and the wind blew the ruins, almost as much as the fire, in all directions. If the people came to windward they were in danger of being blown into the flames, and to leeward they dared not approach the fire, which would have scorched them up. Those who escaped the conflagration ran the imminent risk of being knocked on the head by bricks and tiles, which flew about as though they were tinder. The storm, although most severe on the Friday before-mentioned, lasted almost continuously for a week.
The city of London was a strange spectacle at this time. “The houses looked like skeletons,” says Defoe, “and an universal air of horror seemed to sit on the countenances of the people. All business seemed to be laid aside for the time, and people were generally intent upon getting help to repair their habitations.” The streets lay covered with tiles and slates, bricks and chimney-pots. Common tiles rose from 21s. per thousand to £6. Above 2,000 great stacks of chimneys were blown down in and about London, besides gable-ends and roofs by the score, and about twenty whole houses in the suburbs. In addition to those killed by the fall of various parts of buildings, above 200 were reported as wounded and maimed. And it must be remembered that these were not the days of morning and evening and special editions, and copious and generally correct reports. Had telegraphs and railways and steamships brought in the news collected by innumerable correspondents, as they would to-day, Defoe’s book would never have been compiled. And it may be here observed, in honour of the memory of that immortal author, that he never cites a case, or speaks of it as a positive fact, without giving his authority or authorities. He says in one place, “Some of our printed accounts give us larger and plainer accounts of the loss of lives than I will venture to affirm for truth: as of several houses near Moorfields levelled with the ground; fourteen people drowned in a wherry going to Gravesend and five in a wherry from Chelsea. Not that it is not very probable to be true, but, as I resolve not to hand anything to posterity but what comes very well attested, I omit such relations as I have not extraordinary assurance as to the fact.” This is hardly the way with all book-makers!