The other misfortune to which the town of Lowestoft is peculiarly liable, and from which it has greatly suffered, is that of a dangerous coast, when exposed to violent storms. This is, in a great measure, owing to the singular nature of this coast, arising from its numerous sands and shoals, and not having any harbour, or other place of security, to protect the shipping from the violence of a storm; consequently they have been too often sacrificed to the fury of the relentless ocean. It is impossible to describe every dreadful shipwreck and melancholy scene of distress which have happened on this dangerous coast, they being too numerous to be recounted, as well as painful to be related; it shall suffice, therefore, only to mention a few of the most remarkable ones, such as were attended with the most distressing circumstances, and exposed the unhappy seamen to the most alarming situations. At the end of the annals of Norwich, a manuscript in the chapter archives, an account is given, that in the year of Christ 1530, in the night immediately following the 4th of November, a violent storm, as it were, all over England, happened; and the next day following, namely, the 5th day of the said month, about one in the afternoon, the lord cardinal Thomas Wolsey was seized in his own house, at Cahowe, within his diocese of York; and afterwards, in his journey towards London, in the vigil St. Andrew next following he died at Leicester, upon which day a storm, _as if from Hell_—(a remarkable instance of the prejudice of the times; and shews how much better Christianity is understood in this more liberal and enlightened age)—again happened almost all over England, by the fury of which at Lowestoft, within the diocese of Norwich, and elsewhere in divers places within the realm of England, many ships were lost. On the 30th July, 1730, happened in this town and neighbourhood, a most remarkable storm, accompanied with a dreadful tempest of thunder, lightning, and hail; the hailstones were of such prodigious magnitude as to measure from six to nine inches in circumference, and descended with such violence, as to break all the glass windows on the west side of the town, which cost the inhabitants £300 to repair the damage. All the corn was beat down and spoiled, for about a mile in breadth and three in length. On December 24th, 1739, that severe frost called the hard winter, commenced with a violent gale of wind; when sixteen sail of ships were driven ashore on the coast between Yarmouth and Lowestoft, and were all totally lost, after their respective crews had undergone the severest hardships from the inclemency of the weather. And in another storm, which happened on the 15th of December, 1757, twenty two sail of ships were driven ashore on the coast between Yarmouth and Kessingland, the greater part of which were lost. A particular account of the damage each ship sustained was soon after published in the _London Gazette_.