Non-Fiction
1 Best Non-Fiction Book About Great Storm of 1703
Histories, biographies and reference works are listed separately from the historical novels above.
Phase
Great Storm of 1703
26–27 November 1703 (Old Style)
The Great Storm of 1703 struck southern Britain during the night of 26–27 November under the calendar then used in England. Exceptional winds damaged London, uprooted forests, destroyed buildings and windmills, and drove a storm surge into vulnerable coastal and river communities.
The maritime losses were particularly severe. Royal Navy and merchant vessels were wrecked or driven from anchor, and thousands of sailors died. The disaster exposed the dependence of early eighteenth-century Britain on shipping, naval infrastructure and coastal communications.
Daniel Defoe’s The Storm, published in 1704, assembled testimony solicited from survivors and remains the event’s defining contemporary narrative.
