206 THE SEA. 



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. 



"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.* In Norfolk, a small town experienced the horrors 



* Although so severe in England and a large part of the Continent, Scotland scarce felt the fury of the^ 

 grle. Defoe, in his poem on the subject, says: 



"They tell us Scotland 'scaped the Hast; 



Xo nation else have been without a taste: 

 All Europe sure have felt the mighty shock, 



'T has been a universal stroke. 

 But heaven has other ways to plague the Scots, 



As poverty and plots." 



