The Storm

The Storm documents the violent tempest that crossed southern Britain in late November 1703, destroying houses, churches, forests, windmills and ships while causing particularly severe losses in the Royal Navy and merchant fleet. Defoe gathers reports from London, coastal towns, country estates and vessels at sea to show how the same weather system produced radically different forms of danger across the country.

To assemble the book, Defoe appealed publicly for written testimony and incorporated dozens of signed eyewitness accounts alongside his own commentary. The result is an early work of investigative journalism as well as a national disaster narrative, concerned with evidence, providence, human error and the vulnerability of maritime Britain. Its documentary method anticipates the mixture of testimony and reconstruction later used in A Journal of the Plague Year.