Home > Canvey Island Floods > Archive Film     1953 film in context Film context by Philip Butcher East Anglian Film Archive Canvey Island Floods and The Reopening of the Railway at Brightlingsea are two films made in 1953. The floods of January 31st, 1953 occurred when a particularly strong northerly wind forced extra water down into the lower part of the North Sea. Coupled with a high spring tide, and low pressure, water flooded over the banks into Essex. Canvey Island was particularly hard hit, with 58 people being drowned. 37 people lost their lives at Jaywick and 8 at Harwich. Richard Pike of Southend, a keen film maker, went out the next morning at daylight and filmed around Canvey Island. People were still being searched for, and transport was taking survivors out of the Island. The film Richard Pike made had a primitive sound track added to explain what was going on. The film entered the Essex Education Film Library, and was distributed around schools. Only one remaining copy was left 30 years later, and this is now in the East Anglian Film Archive. At Brightlingsea the railway line was damaged, and no trains ran for several months until the line was repaired, then a local person with a home movie camera filmed the first train to leave Brightlingsea since the flood. Local schoolchildren are seen getting on the “Brightlingsea Thunderbolt” as the train was named – the reason being that a feature film had recently been made about a train called “The Titfield Thunderbolt.”