returning from helping Archduke Charles, the claimed King of Spain, fight the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. These ships included HMS Stirling Castle, HMS Northumberland, HMS Mary and HMS Restoration, with about 1,500 seamen killed particularly on the Goodwin Sands. Between 8,000 and 15,000 people died overall. Some sources cite a figure between 10,000 and 30,000 people having died. In total, around 300 Royal Navy ships anchored along the south coast were lost. The first Eddystone Lighthouse off Plymouth was destroyed on , killing six occupants, including its builder Henry Winstanley. (John Rudyard was later contracted to build the second lighthouse on the site.) A ship torn from its moorings in the Helford River in Cornwall was blown for before grounding eight hours later on the Isle of Wight. The number of oak trees lost in the New Forest alone was 4,000. The towns of Plymouth, Hull, Cowes, Portsmouth and Bristol were devastated. The storm of 1703 caught a convoy of 130 merchant ships sheltering at Milford Haven, along with their man of war escorts Dolphin, Cumberland, Coventry, Looe, Hastings and Hector. By 3:00pm the next afternoon, losses included 30 vessels. Reaction The storm was unprecedented in ferocity and duration and was generally reckoned by witnesses to represent the anger of God, in recognition of the "crying sins of this nation". The government declared 19 January 1704 a day of fasting, saying that it "loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of our people". It remained a frequent topic of moralising in sermons well into the 19th century. Literary The great storm also coincided with the increase in English journalism, and was the first weather event to be a news story on a national scale. Special issue broadsheets were produced detailing damage to property and stories of people who had been killed. Daniel Defoe produced his full-length book The Storm (July 1704) in response to the calamity, calling it "the tempest that destroyed woods and forests all over England". He wrote: "No pen could describe it, nor tongue express it, nor thought conceive it unless by one in the extremity of it." Coastal towns such as Portsmouth "looked as if the enemy had sackt them and were most miserably torn to pieces". Winds of up to destroyed more than 400 windmills. Defoe reported that the sails in some turned so fast that the friction between