Rough Weather

[Misson]

Since I have been looking for period references to accidents, the weather has become an increasingly interesting topic. Barlow has a pretty vivid account of a huge storm that occurred in 1702 in England. (If it were today, it would have been caused by ubiquitous Global Warming and Climate Change factors... sorry, couldn't resist the dig...) Anyhow, I'll let him tell it:

“[1702] And the 26th day at night began a violent storm, which all England hath great cause to remember. And as for our ship, we escaped very narrowly, losing one of our anchors and drove with our sheet anchor and small bower ahead, and our best bower cable broke, and near to the ‘Shew’ and Blacktail Sands in a dismal condition we cut all our masts by the board, all things appearing as dismal as death; having drove three or four miles, and had we drove less than half a mile further, we had certainly been all lost and not one man saved. And in the morning, seeing swimming by us masts, yards, and sails, and wrecks of ships.

And we lay two days in that condition, nobody coming near us. And then had we lost two boats and the lives of twenty-four men in them, some of the best men we had in the ship.

And making what shift we could in getting small masts up, we turned up to the Buoy of the Nore, having then moderate weather; there, hearing of very great loss and damage amongst the ships in the Down, losing four third-rate frigates, the Mary, Rear-Admiral of the Blue, and all her men lost except one or two, and the ships Northumberland, Restoration, and Starling Castle, some of them losing most of their men; and a great many merchant ships: and at the Buoy of the Nore a bomb-ketch and several small ships and men lost: the Weymouth frigate driving out of Sheerness, cut all her masts by the board: and two or three at Portsmouth: the Resolution and Newcastle and the Vigo frigate upon the coast of Holland; and in that storm the Queen lost ten men-of-war, some ships being overset in the Hope and river of Thames: and great damage was done upon the land by the high winds. England receiving much damage in most places.

[Editor Basil Lubbock's Footnote 1: In this terrible storm 15 men of war, 300 merchantmen and upwards of 6000 seamen were lost.

The Eddystone lighthouse together with its ingenious architect Mr Winstanley was totally destroyed.

400 windmills were either blown down or took fire, through the violence with which they were driven round by the wind.

19,000 trees were blown down in Kent and 4000 in New Forest.

In London, 800 houses collapsed in ruins and 2000 chimney stacks fell. And the loss of life through the Southern Counties was as great as if it had been a West Indian hurricane.] (Barlow, p. 552-3)

[hurricane]

Defoe wrote about the storm in, appropriately enough, The Storm. It contains eyewitness accounts he collected.

-- Hurricane

[Raphael Misson]

This passage from Adventure by Sea of Edward Coxere struck me as interesting:

“The 5th of the month called August, 1661, our ship being come from London, we sailed out of the Downs the 5th instant for Malaga. The 22nd we arrived at Malaga at 12 at night. The 12th and 7th month [september by the calendar in use at that time] at about 7 in the morning it began to rain, insomuch that in six or seven hours’ time it washed away some hundred houses, and some hundred people drowned without the walls of the town, as was judged. The water, running from the mountains, came with so much violence that it carried away the foundation of the houses. The people not being able to come out, [the houses] fell down with the people in them, and destroyed.” (Coxere, p. 131)

[Mission]

From Edward Cooke's book A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World in the Years 1708 to 1711:

“…at Nine shipp’d a Sea at the Poop, as we were in the Cabbin going to eat; it beat in all the Cabbin-Windows and Bulk-Head, and hove the first Lieutenant half way between the Decks, with several Muskets and Pistols that hung there, darting a Sword that was aginst the Bulk-Head of the Cabbin, through my Man’s Hammock and Rug, which hung against the Bulk-Head of the Steeridge, and had not the Bulk-Head of the great Cabbin given way, all we who were there must inevitably have been drown’d, before the Water could have been vented. Our Yaul was stav’d on the Deck, and it was a Wonder that many were not kill’d with the Shutters, the Bulk-Head, and the Arms, which were drove with a prodigious Force; but God in his Mercy deliver’d us from this and many other Dangers. Only one Man or two were hurt, and some bruis’d, but not one Rag of dry Cloaths left us, our Chests, Hammocks, and Bedding, being all soak’d in Water. This twenty four Hours Course South, Latitude per Estimation at 61 Deg. 48 Min.” (Cooke, p. 31)