Journey 6
Daniel Defoe
Orford Ness
Was the Great Storm of 1703 as bad as Defoe made out?
Just 20 years before Defoe’s Tour, this part of Britain was battered by an infamous storm. 300 ships were sunk, and a staggering 8000 people killed.
Defoe wrote that the storm blew houses to the ground, flattened barns and windmills and toppled church
spires. Was it really so ferocious, or was he embellishing the tale?
On meeting a coastal ecologist at Orford Ness, Nick discovers that Defoe was probably telling the truth. He claimed that the storm blew away three miles of this spit, and by aging the vegetation there now, his claim can be verified. Sweeping away millions of tones of shingle in one night, the storm completely changed this coastline.