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Caption
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Storm at Seaham, on the night of Jan 1st 1953.
Bow sent me a link to an article on the net which almost certainly dates the storm, the results of which are shown in the following photographs, to the night of January 31st 1953.
A short extract from the article below -
On January 31 1953 there was a combination of an intense low pressure heading down the North Sea, hurricane force winds and a high tide. As a result a huge mound of water was pushed south down the North Sea creating a high tide up to 2.5 metres (8ft) above normal.
This storm is described as the worst peacetime disaster that the UK has known. It killed 307 people and 30,000 were evacuated - but that is only part of the story. On the same night 132 people out of 172 passengers and crew died when they abandoned the British Rail ferry, Princess Victoria, in heavy seas, and across the North Sea another 1,835 people were drowned as the dykes gave way.
In that single night in the South and East 24,000 homes were damaged.
The full article can be found at - http://www.open2.net/naturalhistory/1953.html
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