The Lighthouse Keeper Who Wished For The Greatest Storm

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]On the night of November 26, 1703, the wind tears the lead roofs off Westminster Abbey.

[00:00:07]The entire Royal Navy Channel Squadron is wrecked at anchor.

[00:00:11]By morning, 8,000 people in England are dead. The storm reaches the South Coast around midnight with winds estimated at 120 mph.

[00:00:21]Queen Anne hides in the cellar of St. James's Palace while chimneys collapse around her.

[00:00:27]In London, 2,000 chimney stacks fall in a single night. The Thames rises 6 ft higher than ever recorded, flooding 5,000 homes.

[00:00:37]Across the country, 400 windmills are destroyed. Some spin so fast that the friction sets them on fire.

[00:00:46]The Bishop of Bath and Wells is killed in his bed by a collapsing chimney.

[00:00:51]In the New Forest, 4,000 oak trees are felled.

[00:00:55]Out on the Eddystone Rock off Plymouth, the lighthouse keeper, Henry Winstanley, is inside the lighthouse he built.

[00:01:02]He had once said he wished to be inside it during the greatest storm there ever was.

[00:01:08]By dawn, the lighthouse is gone.

[00:01:10]Winstanley and five other men have vanished. Only the iron fastenings remain on the rock.

[00:01:17]A young writer named Daniel Defoe begins collecting eyewitness accounts by mail.

[00:01:22]His book becomes the first work of modern journalism.