The First Substantial Work of Modern Journalism Covering the Great Storm of 1703; Including the Biography of the Author and His Own Experiences
Preaching of sermons is speaking to a few of mankind: printing of books is talking to the whole world. The parson prescribes himself, and addresses to the particular auditory with the appelation of My brethren; but he that prints a book, ought to preface it with a Noverint Universi, Know all men by these presents.
The proper inference drawn from this remarkable observation, is, that though he that preaches from the pulpit ought to be careful of his words, that nothing pass from him but with an especial sanction of truth; yet he that prints and publishes to all the world, has a tenfold obligation.
The sermon is a sound of words spoken to the ear, and prepared only for present meditation, and extends no farther than the strength of memory can convey it; a book printed is a record, remaining in every man’s possession, always ready to renew its acquaintance with his memory, and always ready to be produced as an authority or voucher to any reports he makes out of it, and conveys its contents for ages to come, to the eternity of mortal time, when the author is forgotten in his grave.
If a sermon be ill grounded, if the preacher imposes upon us, he trespasses on a few; but if a book printed obtrudes a falsehood, if a man tells a lie in print, he abuses mankind, and imposes upon the whole world, he causes our children to tell lies after us, and their children after them, to the end of the world.
This observation I thought good to make by way of preface, to let the world know, that when I go about a work in which I must tell a great many stories, which may in their own nature seem incredible, and in which I must expect a great part of mankind will question the sincerity of the relator; I did not do it without a particular sense upon me of the proper duty of an historian, and the abundant duty laid on him to be very wary what he conveys to posterity.
I cannot be so ignorant of my own intentions, as not to know, that in many cases I shall act the divine, and draw necessary practical inferences from the extraordinary remarkables of this book, and some digressions which I hope may not be altogether useless in this case.
And while I pretend to a thing so solemn, I cannot but premise I should stand convicted of a double imposture, to forge a story, and then preach repentance to the reader from a crime greater than that I would have him repent of: endeavouring by a lie to correct the reader’s vices, and sin against truth to bring the reader off from sinning against sense.
Upon this score, though the undertaking be very difficult amongst such an infinite variety of circumstances, to keep exactly within the bounds of truth; yet I have this positive assurance with me, that in all the subsequent relation, if the least mistake happen, it shall not be mine.
If I judge right, ’tis the duty of an historian to set every thing in its own light, and to convey matter of fact upon its legitimate authority, and no other: I mean thus (for I would be as explicit as I can), that where a story is vouched to him with sufficient authority, he ought to give the world the special testimonial of its proper voucher, or else be is not just to the story: and where it comes without such sufficient authority, he ought to say so; otherwise he is not just to himself. In the first case he injures the history, by leaving it doubtful where it might be confirmed past all manner of question; in the last he injures his own reputation, by taking upon himself the risk, in case it proves a mistake, of having the world charge him with a forgery.
And indeed, I cannot but own it is just, that if I tell a story in print for a truth which proves otherwise, unless I, at the same time, give proper caution to the reader, by owning the uncertainty of my knowledge in the matter of fact, it is I impose upon the world; my relator is innocent, and the lie is my own.
I make all these preliminary observations, partly to inform the reader, that I have not undertaken this work without the serious consideration of what I owe to truth, and to posterity; nor without a sense of the extraordinary variety and novelty of the relation.
I am sensible, that the want of this caution is the foundation of that great misfortune we have in matters of ancient history; in which the impudence, the ribaldry, the empty flourishes, the little regard to truth, and the fondness of telling a strange story, has dwindled a great many valuable pieces of ancient history into mere romance.
How are the lives of some of our most famous men, nay the actions of whole ages, drowned in fable? Not that there wanted pen-men to write, but that their writings were continually mixed with such rhodomontades of the authors that posterity rejected them as fabulous.
From hence it comes to pass that matters of fact are handed down to posterity with so little certainty, that nothing is to be depended upon; from hence the uncertain account of things and actions in the remoter ages of the world, the confounding the genealogies as well as achievements of Belus, Nimrod, and Nimrus, and their successors, the histories and originals of Saturn, Jupiter, and the rest of the celestial rabble, whom mankind would have been ashamed to have called Gods, had they had the true account of their dissolute, exorbitant, and inhuman lives.
From men we may descend to action: and this prodigious looseness of the pen has confounded history and fable from the beginning of both. Thus the great flood in Deucalion's time is made to pass for the universal deluge: the ingenuity of Daedalus, who by a clue of thread got out of the Egyptian maze, which was thought impossible, is grown into a fable of making himself a pair of wings, and flying through the air:— the great drought and violent heat of summer, thought to be the time when the great famine was in Samaria, fabled by the poets and historians into Phaeton borrowing the chariot of the sun, and giving the horses their heads, they run so near the earth as burnt up all the nearest parts, and scorched the inhabitants, so that they have been black in those parts ever since.
These, and such like ridiculous stuff, have seen the effects of the pageantry of historians in former ages: and I might descend nearer home, to the legends of fabulous history which have swallowed up the actions of our ancient predecessors, King Arthur, the Giant Gogmagog, and the Britain, the stories of St. George and the Dragon, Guy Earl of Warwick, Bans of Southampton, and the like.
I’ll account for better conduct in the ensuing history: and though some things here related shall have equal wonder due to them, posterity shall not have equal occasion to distrust the verity of the relation.
I confess here is room for abundance of romance, because the subject may be safer extended than in any other case, no story being capable to be crowded with such circumstances but infinite power, which is all along concerned with us in every relation, is supposed capable of making true.
Yet we shall nowhere so trespass upon fact, as to oblige infinite power to the shewing more miracles than it intended.
It must be allowed, that when nature was put into so much confusion, and the surface of the earth and sea felt such extraordinary a disorder, innumerable accidents would fall out that till the like occasion happen may never more be seen, and unless a like occasion had happened could never before be heard of: wherefore the particular circumstances being so wonderful, serve but to remember posterity of the more wonderful extreme, which was the immediate cause.
The uses and application made from this terrible doctrine, I leave to the men of the pulpit; only take the freedom to observe, that when heaven itself lays down the doctrine, all men are summoned to make applications by themselves.
The main inference I shall pretend to make or at least venture the exposing to public view, in this case, is, the strong evidence God has been pleased to give in this terrible manner to his own being, which mankind began more than ever to affront and despise: and I cannot but have so much charity for the worst of my fellow-creatures, that I believe no man was so hardened against the sense of his maker, but he felt some shocks of his wicked confidence from the convulsions of nature at this time.
I cannot believe any man so rooted in atheistical opinions, as not to find some cause to doubt whether he was not in the wrong, and a little to apprehend the possibility of a supreme being, when he felt the terrible blasts of this tempest I cannot doubt but the atheist’s hardened soul trembled a little as well as his house, and he felt some nature asking him some little questions; as these — Am not I mistaken? Certainly there is some such thing as a God — What can all this be? What is the matter in the world?
Certainly atheism is one of the most irrational principles in the world; there is something incongruous in it with the test of humane policy, because there is a risk in the mistake one way, and none another. If the christian is mistaken, and it should at last appear that there is no future state, God or Devil, reward or punishment, where is the harm of it? All he has lost is, that he has practised a few needless mortifications, and took the pains to live a little more like a man than he would have done. But if the atheist is mistaken, he has brought all the powers, whose being he denied, upon his back, has provoked the infinite in the highest manner, and must at last sink under the anger of him whose nature he has always disowned.
I would recommend this thought to any man to consider of, one way he can lose nothing, the other way be undone. Certainly a wise man would never run such an unequal risk: a man cannot answer it to common arguments, the law of Numbers, and the rules of proportion are against him. No gamester will set at such a main; no man will lay such a wager, where he may lose, but cannot win.
There is another unhappy misfortune in the mistake too, that it can never be discovered till it is too late to remedy. He that resolves to die an atheist, shuts the door against being convinced in time.
If it should so fall out, as who can tell,
But that there is a God, a Heaven, and Hell,
Mankind had best consider well for fear,
‘T should be too late when his mistakes appear.
I should not pretend to set up for an instructor in this case, were not the inference so exceeding just; who can but preach where there is such a text? when God himself speaks his own power, he expects we should draw just inferences from it, both for ourselves and our friends.
If one man, in an hundred years, shall arrive at a conviction of the being of his maker, it is very worth my while to write it, and to bear the character of an impertinent fellow from all the rest.
I thought to make some apology for the meanness of style, and the method, which may be a little unusual, of printing letters from the country in their own style.
For the last I only leave this short reason with the reader, the desire I had to keep close to the truth, and hand my relation with the true authorities from whence I received it, together with some justice to the gentlemen concerned, who, especially in cases of deliverances, are willing to record the testimonial of the mercies they received, and to set their hands to the humble acknowledgment. The plainness and honesty of the story will plead for the meanness of the style in many of the letters, and the reader cannot want eyes to see what sort of people some of them come from.
Others speak for themselves, and being writ by men of letters, as well as men of principles, I have not arrogance enough to attempt a correction either of the sense or style; and if I had gone about it, should have injured both author and reader.
These come dressed in their own words because I ought not, and those because I could not mend them. I am persuaded, they are all dressed in the desirable, though unfashionable garb of truth, and I doubt not but posterity will read them with pleasure.
The gentlemen, who have taken the pains to collect and transmit the particular relations here made public, I hope will have their end answered in this essay, conveying hereby to the ages to come the memory of the dreadest and most universal judgment that ever almighty power thought fit to bring upon this part of the world.
And as this was the true native and original design of the first undertaking, abstracted from any part of the printer’s advantage, the editor and undertakers of this work, having their ends entirely answered, hereby give their humble thanks to all those gentlemen who have so far approved the sincerity of their design as to contribute their trouble, and help forward by their just observations, the otherwise very difficult undertakings
If posterity will but make the desired improvement both of the collector’s pains, as well as the several gentlemen’s care in furnishing the particulars, I dare say they will all acknowledge their end fully answered, and none more readily
The Age’s Humble Servant.
Though a system of exhalation, dilation, and extension, things which the ancients founded the doctrine of winds upon, be not my direct business, yet it cannot but be needful to the present design to note, that the difference in the opinions of the ancients, about the nature and original of winds, is a leading step to one assertion which I have advanced in all that I have said with relation to winds, viz.:— that there seems to be more of God in the whole appearance, than in any other part of operating nature.
Nor do I think I need explain myself very far in this notion: I allow the high original of nature to be the Great Author of all her actings, and by the strict rein of his providence, is the continual and exact guide of her executive power; but still it is plain that in some of the principal parts of nature she is naked to our eye. Things appear both in their causes and consequences, demonstration gives its assistance, and finishes our further inquiries: for we never inquire after God in those works of nature which depending upon the course of things are plain and demonstrative; but where we find nature defective in her discovery, where we see effects but cannot reach their causes; there it is most just, and nature herself seems to direct us to it, to end the rational inquiry, and resolve it into speculation: nature plainly refers us beyond herself, to the mighty hand of infinite power, the the author of nature, and original of all causes.
Among these Arcana of the sovereign Oeconomy, the winds are laid as far back as any. Those ancient men of genius who rifled nature by the torch-light of reason even to her very nudities, have been run a-ground in this unknown channel; the wind has blown out the candle of reason, and left them all in the dark.
Aristotle, in his problems, sec. 23, calls the wind, “Aeris Impulsum.” Seneca says, “Ventus est aer fluens.” The Stoics held it, “Motum aut fluxionem aeris.” Mr. Hobbs, “Air moved in a direct or undulating motion.” Faumier, “Le Vent et un movement agitation de l’air causi par des exhalations et vapours.” The moderns, “A hot and dry exhalation repulsed by antiperistasis;” Des Cartes defines it, “Venti nihil sunt nisi moti, &c.” Dilati Vapores, and various other opinions are very judiciously collected by the learned Mr. Bohun in his treatise of the origin and properties of wind, p. 7, and concludes, “That no one hypothesis, how comprehensive soever, has yet been able to resolve all the incident phenomena of Winds.” Bohun, of winds p. 9.
This is what I quote them for, and this is all my argument demands; the deepest search into the region of cause and consequence, has found out just enough to leave the wisest philosopher in the dark, to bewilder his head, and drown his understanding. You raise a storm in nature by the very inquiry; and at last, to be rid of you, she confesses the truth and tells you, “It is not in me, you must go home and ask my father.”
Whether then it be the motion of air, and what that air is, which as yet is undefined, whether it is a dilation, a previous contraction, and then violent extension as in gunpowder, whether the motion is direct, circular, or oblique, whether it be an exhalation repulsed by the middle region, and the antiperistatis of that part of the heavens which is set as a wall of brass to bind up the atmosphere, and keep it within its proper compass for the functions of respiration condensing and rarefying, without which nature would be all in confusion; whatever are their efficient causes, it is not to the immediate design.
It is apparent, that God Almighty, whom the philosophers care as little as possible to have anything to do with, seems to have reserved this, as one of those secrets in nature which should more directly guide them to himself.
Not but that a philosopher may be a Christian, and some of the best of the latter have been the best of the former, as Vossius, Mr. Boyle, Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Verulam, Dr. Harvey, and others; and I wish I could say Mr. Hobbs, for it a pity there should lie any just exceptions to the piety of a man, who had so few to his general knowledge, and an exalted spirit in philosophy.
When therefore I say the philosophers do not care to concern God himself in the search after natural knowledge, I mean, as it concerns natural knowledge’, merely as such; for it is a natural cause they seek, from a general maxim, that all nature has its cause within itself: it is true, it is the darkest part of the search, to trace the chain backward; to begin at the consequence, and from thence hunt counter, as we may call it, to find out the cause: it would be much easier if we could begin at the cause, and trace it to all its consequences.
I make no question, the search would be equally to the advantage of science, and the improvement of the world; for without doubt there are some consequences of known causes which are not yet discovered, and I am as ready to believe there are yet in nature some terra incognita both as to cause and consequence too.
In this search after causes, the philosopher, though he may at the same time be a very good Christian, cares not at all to meddle with his Maker: the reason is plain; we may at any time resolve all things into infinite power, and we do allow that the finger of Infinite is the first mighty cause of nature herself: but, the treasury of immediate cause is generally committed to nature; and if at any time we are driven to look beyond her, it is because we are out of the way: it is not because it is not in her, but because we cannot find it.
Two men met in the middle of a great wood; one was searching for a plant which grew in the wood, the other had lost himself in the wood, and wanted to get out: the latter rejoiced when through the trees he saw the open country; but the other man’s business was not to get out, but to find what he looked for: yet this man no more under-valued the pleasantness of the champion country than the other.
Thus in nature, the philosopher’s business is not to look through nature, and come to the vast open field of infinite power; his business is in the wood; there grows the plant he looks for; and it is there he must find it. Philosophy’s aground if it is forced to any farther inquiry. The Christian begins just where the philosopher ends; and when the inquirer turns his eyes up to heaven, farewell philosopher; it is a sign he can make nothing of it here.
David was a good man, the scripture gives him that testimony; but I am of the opinion, that he was a better king than a scholar, more a saint than a philosopher: and it seems very proper to judge that David was upon the search of natural causes, and found himself puzzled as to the inquiry, when he finishes the inquiry with two pious ejaculations, “When I view the Heavens, the works of thy hands, the moon and the stars which thou hast made; then I say, what is man!” David may very rationally be supposed to be searching the causes, motions, and influences of heavenly bodies; and finding his philosophy aground, and the discovery not to answer his search, he turns it all to a pious use, recognises infinite power, and applies it to the ecstacies and raptures of his soul, which were always employed in the charm of exhalted praise.
Thus in another place we find him dissecting the womb of his mother, and deep in the study of anatomy; but having, as it may be well supposed, no help from John Remelini, or of the learned Riolanus, and other anatomists, famous for the most exquisite discovery of human body, and all the vessels of life, with their proper dimensions and use, all David could say to the matter was, good man, to look up to heaven, and admire what he could not understand, Psal. — “I was fearfully and wonderfully made,” &c.
This is very good, and well becomes a pulpit; but what is all this to a philosopher? It is not enough for him to know that God has made the heavens, the moon, and the stars, but must inform himself where he has placed them, and why there; and what their business, what their influences, their functions, and the end of their being. It is not enough for an anatomist to know that he is fearfully and wonderfully made in the lowermost part of the earth, but he must see those lowermost parts; search into the method nature proceeds upon in the performing the office appointed, must search the steps she takes, the tools she works by; and, in short, know all that the God of nature has permitted to be capable of demonstration.
And it seems a just authority for our search, that some things are so placed in nature by a chain of causes and effects, that upon a diligent search we may find out what we look for: to search after what God has in his sovereignty thought fit to conceal, may be criminal, and doubtless is so; and the fruitlessness of the inquiry is generally part of the punishment to a vain curiosity: but to search after what our maker has not hid, only covered with a thin veil of natural obscurity, and which upon our search is plain to be read, seems to be justified by the very nature of the thing, and the possibility of the demonstration is an argument to prove the lawfulness of the inquiry.
The design of this digression, is, in short, that as where nature is plain to be searched into, and demonstration easy, the philosopher is allowed to seek for it; so where God has, as it were, laid his hand upon any place, and nature presents us with an universal blank, we are therein led as naturally to recognise the infinite wisdom and power of the God of nature, as David was in the texts before quoted.
And this is the case here; the winds are some of those inscrutables of nature, in which human search has not yet been able to arrive at any demonstration.
“The winds,” says the learned Mr. Bohun, “are generated in the intermediate space between the earth and the clouds, either by rarefaction or repletion, and sometimes haply by pressure of clouds, elastical virtue of the air, &c., from the earth or seas, as by submarine or subterraneal eruption or decension or refelition from the middle region.”
All this, though no man is more capable of the inquiry than this gentleman, yet to the demonstration of the thing, amounts to no more than what we had before, and still leaves it as abstruse and cloudy to our understanding as ever. Not but that I think myself bound in duty to science in general, to pay a just debt to the excellency of philosophical study, in which I am a mere junior, and hardly any more than an admirer; and therefore I cannot but allow that the demonstrations made of rarefaction and dilation are extraordinary; and that by fire and water wind may be raised in a close room, as the Lord Verulam made experiment in the case of his feathers.
But that, therefore, all the causes of wind are from the influences of the sun upon vaporous matter first exhaled, which being dilated are obliged to possess themselves of more space than before, and consequently make the particles fly before them; this does not seem to be a sufficient demonstration of wind: for this, to my weak apprehension, would rather make a blow like gunpowder than a rushing forward; at best this is indeed a probable conjecture, but admits not of demonstration equal to other phenomena in nature.
And this is all I am upon, viz., that this case has not equal proofs of the natural causes of it that we meet with in other cases: the Scripture seems to confirm this, when it says, in one place, “He holds the wind in his hand;” as if he should mean, other things are left to the common discoveries of natural inquiry, but this is a thing he holds in his own hand, and has concealed it from the search of the most diligent and piercing understanding: this is farther confirmed by the words of our Saviour, “The wind blows where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but knowest not whence it Cometh”; it is plainly expressed to signify that the causes of the wind are not equally discovered by natural inquiry as the rest of nature is.
If I would carry this matter on, and travel into the seas, and mountains of America, where the mansones, the trade-winds, the sea-breezes and such winds as we have little knowledge of, are more common; it would yet more plainly appear ‘that we hear the sound, but know not from whence they come.’
Nor is the cause of their motion parallel to the surface of the earth, a less mystery than their real original, or the difficulty of their generation: and though some people have been forward to prove the gravity of the particles must cause the motion to be oblique; it is plain it must be very little so, or else navigation would be impracticable, and in extraordinary cases where the pressure above is perpendicular, it has been fatal to ships, houses, &c., and would have terrible effects in the world, if it should more frequently be so.
From this I draw only this conclusion, that the winds are a part of the works of God by nature, in which he has been pleased to communicate less of demonstration to us than in other cases; that the particulars more directly lead us to speculations, and refer us to infinite power more than the other parts of nature does.
That the wind is more expressive and adapted to his immediate power, as he is pleased to exert it in extraordinary cases in the world.
That it is more frequently made use of as the executioner of his judgments in the world, and extraordinary events are brought to pass by it.
From these three heads we are brought down directly to speak of the particular storm before us; viz., the greatest, the longest in duration, the widest in extent, of all the tempests and storms that history gives any account of since the beginning of time.
In the farther conduct of the story, it will not be foreign to the purpose, nor unprofitable to the reader, to review the histories of ancient time and remote countries, and examine in what manner God has been pleased to execute his judgments by storms and tempests; what kind of things they, have been, and what the consequences of them; and then bring down the parallel to the dreadful instance before us.
We read in the Scripture of two great storms; one past and the other to come. Whether the last be not allegorical rather than prophetical, I shall not busy myself to determine.
The first was when God caused a strong wind to blow upon the face of the deluged world; to put a stop to the flood, and reduce the waters to their proper channel.
I wish our naturalists would explain that wind to us, and tell us which way it blew, or how it is possible that any direct wind could cause the waters to ebb; for to me it seems, that the deluge being universal, that wind which blew the waters from one part must blow them up in another.
Whether it was not some perpendicular gusts that might by their force separate the water and the earth, and cause the water driven from off the land to subside by its own pressure.
I shall dive no farther into that mysterious deluge, which has some things in it which recommend the story rather to our faith than demonstration.
The other storm I find in the Scripture is that “ God shall reign upon the wicked, plagues, fire, and a horrible tempest.” What this shall be, we wait to know; and happy are they who shall be secured from its effects.
Histories are full of instances of violent tempests and storms in sundry particular places. What that was, which mingled with such violent lightnings set the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah on fire, remains to me yet undecided: nor am I satisfied the effect it had on the waters of the lake, which are to this day called the Dead Sea, are such as some fabulous authors have related, and as travellers take upon them to say.
I am not of opinion with the early ages of the world, when these islands were first known, that they were the most terrible of any part of the world for storms and tempests.
Cambden tells us, the Britons were distinguished from all the world by unpassable seas and terrible northern winds, which made the Albion shores dreadful to sailors; and this part of the world was therefore reckoned’ the utmost bounds of the northern known land, beyond which none had ever sailed: and quotes a great variety of ancient authors to this purpose; some of which I present as a specimen.
Et Penitus Toto Divisos Orbe Britannos.
Britain’s disjoined from all the well known world.
Quem Littus adusta,
Horrescit Lybiae ratibusq; Impervia 1 — Thule.
Ignotumq; Fretum. — Claud.
And if the notions the world then had were true, it would be very absurd for us who live here to pretend miracles in any extremes of tempests; since by what the poets of those ages flourished about stormy weather, was the native and most proper epithet of the place:
Belluosus qui remotis
Obstrepit Oceanus Britannis. — Hor.
Nay, some are for placing the nativity of the winds here-abouts, as if they had been all generated here, and the confluence of matter had made this island its general rendezvous.
But I shall easily show, that there are several places in the world far better adapted to be the general receptacle or centre of vapours, to supply a fund of tempestuous matter than England; as particularly the vast lakes of North America, of which afterwards.
And yet I have two notions, one real, one imaginary, of the reasons which gave the ancients such terrible apprehensions of this part of the world; which of late we find as habitable and navigable as any of the rest.
The real occasion I suppose thus: that before the multitude and industry of inhabitants prevailed to the managing, enclosing, and improving the country, the vast tract of land in this island which continually lay open to the flux of the sea, and to the inundations of land-waters, were as so many standing lakes; from whence the sun continually exhaling vast quantities of moist vapours, the air could not but be continually crowded with all those parts of necessary matter to which we ascribe the original of winds, rains, storms, and the like.
He that is acquainted with the situation of England, and can reflect on the vast quantities of flat grounds, on the banks of all our navigable rivers, and the shores of the sea, which lands at least lying under water every spring tide, and being thereby continually full of moisture, were like a stagnated standing body of water brooding vapours in the interval of the tide, must own that at least a fifteenth part of the whole island may come into this denomination.
Let him that doubts the truth of this, examine a little the particulars; let him stand upon Shooters Hill in Kent, and view the mouth of the river Thames, and consider what a river it must be when none of the marshes on either side were walled in from the sea, and when the sea without all question flowed up to the foot of the hills on either shore, and up every creek, where he must allow is now dry land on either side the river for two miles in breadth at least, sometimes three or four, for above forty miles on both sides the river.
Let him farther reflect, how all these parts lay when, as our ancient histories relate, the Danish fleet came up almost to Hartford; so that all that range of fresh marshes which reach for twenty-five miles in length, from Ware to the river Thames, must be a sea.
In short, let any such considering person imagine the vast tract of marsh-lands on both sides the river Thames, to Harwich on the Essex side, and to Whitstable on the Kentish side, the levels of marshes up the Stour from Sandwich to Canterbury, the whole extent of the low-grounds commonly called Rumney-marsh, from Hythe to Winchelsea and up the banks of the Rother; all which put together, and being allowed to be in one place covered with water, what a lake would it be supposed to make? According to the nicest calculations I can make, it could not amount to less than 500,000 acres of land.
The isle of Ely, with the flats up the several rivers from Yarmouth to Norwich, Beccles, &c., the continued levels in the several counties of Norfolk, Cambridge, Suffolk, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Lincoln, I believe do really contain as much land as the whole county of Norfolk; and it is not many ages since these countries were universally one vast Moras or Lough, and the few solid parts wholly unapproachable: insomuch that the town of Ely itself was a receptacle for the malecontents of the nation, where no reasonable force could come near to dislodge them.
It is needless to reckon up twelve or fourteen like places in England, as the moores in Somersetshire, the flat shores in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Durham, the like in Hampshire, and Sussex; and in short, on the banks of every navigable river.
The sum of the matter is this; that while this nation was thus full of standing lakes, stagnated waters, and moist places, the multitude of exhalations must furnish the air with a quantity of matter for showers and storms, infinitely more than it can be now supplied withal, those vast tracts of land being now fenced off, laid dry, and turned into wholesome and profitable provinces.
This seems demonstrated from Ireland, where the multitude of loughs, lakes, bogs, and moist places, serve the air, with exhalations, which give themselves back again in showers, and make it be called, the pisspot of the world.
The imaginary notion I have to advance on this head, amounts only to a reflection upon the skill of those ages in the art of navigation; which being far short of what it is since arrived to, made these vast northern seas too terrible for them to venture in: and accordingly, they raised those apprehensions up to fable, which began only in their want of judgment.
The Phonecians, who were our first navigators, the Genoese, and after them the Portugese, who arrived to extraordinary proficiency in sea affairs, were yet all of them as we say, fair-weather seamen; the chief of their navigation was coasting; and if they were driven out of their knowledge, had work enough to find their way home, and sometimes never found it at all; but one sea conveyed them directly into the last ocean, from whence no navigation could return them. When these, by adventures, or misadventures rather, had at any time extended their voyaging as far as this island, which, by the way, they, always performed round the coast of Spain, Portugal, and France; if ever such a vessel returned, if ever the bold navigator arrived at home, he had done enough to talk on all his days, and needed no other diversion among his neighbours, than to give an account of the vast seas, mighty rocks, deep gulfs, and prodigious storms he met with in these remote parts of the known world: and this magnified by the poetical arts of the learned men of those times, grew into a received maxim of navigation. That these parts were so full of constant tempests, storms, and dangerous seas, that it was present death to come near them, and none but madmen and desperadoes could have any business there, since they were places where ships never came, and navigation was not proper in the place.
And Thule, where no passage was
For ships their sails to bear.
Horace has reference to this horrid part of the world, as a place full of terrible monsters, and fit only for their habitation, in the words before quoted.
Belluosus qui remotis
Obstrepit Oceanus Britannis.
Juvenal follows his steps;
Quanto Delphino Balaena Britannica major. — Juv.
Such horrid apprehensions those ages had of these parts, which by our experience, and the prodigy to which navigation in particular, and sciential knowledge in general, is since grown, appear very ridiculous.
For we find no danger in our shores, no uncertain wavering in our tides, no frightful gulfs, no horrid monsters, but what the bold mariner has made familiar to him. The gulfs, which frighted those early sons of Neptune, are searched out by our seamen, and made useful bays, roads, and harbours of safety. The promontories which running out into the sea gave them terrible apprehensions of danger, are our safety, and make the sailors’ hearts glad, as they are the first lands they make when they are coming home from a long voyage, or as they are a good shelter when in a storm our ships get under their lee.
Our shores are sounded, the sands and flats are discovered, which they knew little or nothing of, and in which more real danger lies, than in all the frightful stories they told us; useful sea-marks and land-figures are placed on the shore, buoys, on the water, lighthouses on the highest rocks; and all these dreadful parts of the world are become the seat of trade, and the centre of navigation: art has reconciled all the difficulties, and use made all the horribles and terribles of those ages become as natural and familiar as daylight.
The hidden sands, almost the only real dread of a sailor, and by which till the channels between them were found out, our eastern coast must be really unpassable, now serve to make harbours: and Yarmouth road was made a safe place for shipping by them. Nay, when Portsmouth, Plymouth, and other good harbours would not defend our ships in the violent tempest we are treating of, here was the least damage done of any place in England, considering the number of ships which lay at anchor, and the openness of the place.
So that upon the whole it seems plain to me, that all the dismal things the ancients told us of Britain, and her terrible shores, arose from the infancy of marine knowledge, and the weakness of the sailor’s courage.
Not but that I readily allow we are more subject to bad weather and hard gales of wind than the coasts of Spain, Italy, and Barbary: but if this be allowed, our improvement in the art of building ships is so considerable, our vessels are so prepared to ride out the most violent storms, that the fury of the Sea is the least thing our sailors fear: keep them but from a lee shore, or touching upon a sand, they will venture all the rest: and nothing is as great satisfaction to them, if they have a storm in view, than a sound bottom and good sea room.
From hence it comes to pass, that such winds as in those days would have passed for storms, are called only a fresh gale, or blowing hard. If it blows enough to fright a South country sailor, we laugh at it: and if our sailors bald terms were set down in a table of degrees, it will explain what mean.
Stark calm.
Calm weather.
Little wind.
A fine breeze.
A small gale.
A fresh gale.
A topsail gale.
Blows fresh.
A hard gale of wind.
A fret of wind.
A storm.
A tempest.
Just half these tarpaulin article, I presume, would have passed in those days for a storm; and what our sailors call a top sail gale would have drove the navigators of those ages, into harbours: when our sailors reef a topsail, they would have handed all their sails; and when we go under a main-course, they would have run afore it for life to the next port they could make: when our hard gale blows, they would have cried a tempest; and about the fret of wind they would be all at their prayers.
And if we should reckon by this account, we are a stormy country indeed, our seas are no more navigable now for such sailors than they were then: if the Japanesses, the East Indians, and such like navigators were to come with their thin cockle shell barks and calico sails; if Cleopatra’s fleet, or Caesar’s’ great ships with which he fought the battle of Actium, were to come upon our seas, there hardly comes a March or a September in twenty years but would blow them to pieces, and then the poor remnant that got home, would go and talk of a terrible country where there is nothing but storms and tempests; when all the matter is, the weakness of their shipping, and the ignorance of their seamen: and I make no question but our ships ride out many a worse storm than that terrible tempest which scattered Julius Caesar’s fleet, or the same that drove AEneas on the coast of Carthage.
And in modern times we have a famous instance in the Spanish Armada; which, after it rather frighted than damaged by Sir Francis Drake’s machines, not then known by the name of fire ships, were scattered by a terrible storm, and lost upon every shore.
The case is plain, it was all owing to the accident of navigation: they had, no doubt, a hard gale of wind, and perhaps a storm; but they were also on an enemy’s coast, their pilots out of their knowledge, no harbour to run into, and an enemy astern, that when once they separated, fear drove them from one danger to another, and away they went to the northward, where they had nothing but God’s mercy, and the winds and seas to help them. In all those storms and distresses which ruined that fleet, we do not find an account of the loss of one ship, either of the English or Dutch; the Queen’s fleet rode it out in the downs, which all men know is none of the best roads in the world; and the Dutch rode among the flats of the Flemish coast, while the vast galleons not so well fitted for the weather, were forced to keep the sea, and were driven to and fro till they had got out of their knowledge; and like men desperate, embraced every danger they came near.
This long digression I could not but think needful, in order to clear up the case, having never met with anything on this head before: at the same time it is allowed, and histories are full of the particulars, that we have often very high winds, and sometimes violent tempests in these northern parts of the world; but I am still of opinion, such a tempest never happened before as that which is the subject of these sheets: and I refer the reader to the particulars.
1Taken frequently for Britain.
Before we come to examine the damage suffered by this terrible night, and give a particular relation of its dismal effects; it is necessary to give a summary account of the thing itself, with all its affrightning circumstances.
It had blown exceeding hard, as I have already observed, for about fourteen days past; and that so hard, that we thought it terrible weather: several stacks of chimnies were blown down, and several ships were lost, and the tiles in many places were blown off from the houses; and the nearer it came to the fatal 26th of November, the tempestuousness of the weather encreased.
On the Wednesday morning before, being the 24th of November, it was fair weather, and blew hard; but not so as to give any apprehensions, till about four o’clock is the afternoon the wind increased, and with squalls of rain and terrible gusts blew very furiously.
The collector of these sheets narrowly escaped the mischief of a part of a house, which fell on the evening of that day by the violence of the wind; and abundance of tiles were blown off the houses that night: the wind continued with unusual violence all the next day and night; and had not the great storm followed so soon, this had passed for a great wind.
On Friday morning, it continued to blow exceeding hard, but not so as that it gave any apprehensions of danger within doors; towards night it increased: and about ten o’clock, our barometers informed us that the night would be very tempestuous; the Mercury sunk lower than ever I had observed it on any occasion whatsoever, which made me suppose the tube had been handled and disturbed by the children.
But as my observations of this nature are not regular enough to supply the reader with a full information, the disorders of that dreadful night have found me other employment, expecting every moment when the house I was in would bury us all in its own ruins; I have therefore subjoined a letter from an ingenious gentleman on this very head, directed to the Royal Society, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 289, P. 1630, as follows:—