3. Blamed by the Church of England as divine punishment for a poor performance in battle against the Catholics in the War of the Spanish Succession, the Great Storm of 1703 killed more than 10,000 men and destroyed one-fifth of the Royal Navy.
Causing significant damage throughout the southern English mainland, including felling 4,000 oak trees in the New Forest, the Great Storm of 1703 was an immensely destructive extra-tropical cyclone that struck the British Isles on November 26, 1703. Believed to have been equivalent to a Category 2 hurricane, the event caused mass flooding throughout the West Country, destroyed hundreds of windmills, and blew down more than 2,000 chimneys across London. Returning to England at an inopportune moment, a convoy of 130 merchant ships escorted by several Royal Navy vessels attempted to shelter at Milford Haven. By the following afternoon, more than thirty had been destroyed.
Concurrently, a group of warships, including HMS Stirling Castle, HMS Northumberland, HMS Mary, and HMS Restoration were returning to port after contesting the War of the Spanish Succession in France. Driven onto the Goodwin Sands by colossal winds, more than a dozen ships were wrecked with minimal survivors. In total, more than 1,500 sailors died at the sandbank, with an estimated total casualty figure from the devastation ranging between eight to fifteen thousand. Daniel Defoe projected that the incident lost the Royal Navy in excess of one-fifth of its entire fleet.