HMS Northumberland: diving a victim of the Great Storm of 1703

In late November 1703, the crew of HMS Northumberland must have thought that things couldn’t get much worse. The warship was newly returned from a long and arduous campaign against the French, but during the voyage home many of its crew had died – not from battle injuries, but from disease. Those who remained were weak and sick, and when their vessel finally made anchor off the east Kent coast, conditions below deck must have been miserable. Their tribulations were far from over, however. On the night of 26/27 November, Britain was struck by what would become known as the Great Storm of 1703, which modern scholars have equated to a Category 2 hurricane. This 18th-century image shows t