3-070-600 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Storm on the Thames, Tuesday, January 18, 1881. 'In the Pool; 2. In the Lower Pool, off Limehouse; 3. At Woolwich; 4. Destruction of Fishing-Boats at Gravesend; 5. Rescue at Southend Pier; 6. The Storm at Neptune-terrace, Sheerness...Not for many years past has the southern part of Great Britain felt a wintry storm to be compared in violence and long continuance with that of last week...The scene on the river,...so choked up by ice as to necessitate a partial suspension of navigation, was remarkable, especially in the Pool, where hundreds of vessels...are always moored...The morning tide, which, owing to the force of the gale, ran up very swiftly, brought immense masses of the drift ice to bear so strongly on the numerous tiers of coal-laden barges that in some cases they broke from their moorings and drifted up stream; others were swamped and capsized by the accumulation of water forced over them, while many small boats sank...The Woolwich Pier was much damaged by the force of the flood...In the docks at North Woolwich and at the entrance from the river twenty-six barges were sunk, and two men were drowned...Woolwich Dockyard and Woolwich Arsenal were flooded to a great extent...Two men were blown into the water...and drowned'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.