of Our Day and Age
11-' Breakdown
On the night of January 31, 1953, heavy north-westerly gales and an extraordinary spring tide hurled themselves upon the entire east coast of Britain from King's Lynn to the Thames. East Anglia's most severe sea floods in living memory had begun.
The effect on the electricity distribution system was disastrous. Yet within forty-eight hours engineers of the East-tern Electricity Board had restored the supply to two-thirds of the consumers in the area who had been plunged into darkness. How this was achieved under appalling conditions is described in this programme, which tells the story of hundreds of maintenance engineers through the eyes of one man, Len Hancox of Harwich.
Script by Stephen Grenfell
Production by Joe Burroughs