In November 1703, the most powerful storm ever recorded in Britain struck the southern coast of England, killing an estimated 8,000–15,000 people, destroying over 400 windmills, sinking dozens of Royal Navy warships in the English Channel, and devastating towns from Bristol to London. The Great Storm, driven by exceptional Atlantic wind systems, demolished the Eddystone Lighthouse and left a trail of devastation across the entire South of England that remained visible for years. It was the deadliest natural disaster in recorded British history.

Daniel Defoe, future author of Robinson Crusoe, personally witnessed the storm in London and published The Storm (1704) — one of the earliest works of modern journalism and disaster literature — compiling eyewitness accounts from across Britain into a pioneering documentary narrative. The storm and Defoe's response to it influenced the development of literary realism and the emerging tradition of documentary writing about natural catastrophe. The destruction of hundreds of windmills also made the storm a powerful image of wind's dual nature as both power source and destroyer in the literary imagination.