Much has been written about the great gale of 1824. This happened on the 23rd and 24th November. This seems to have been a combination of a severe SW gale, a storm surge in the Channel and a huge swell. Considerable damage was suffered in all the coastal communities along the Dorset coast.  The following is extracted from the Portland Year Book and Island Record of 1905 describing the situation in Chiswell at the southern end of Chesil Beach:

Mr Robert Pearce thus describes the event:- Towards the close of 1824 the weather was unusually wild, and on the 23rd November the sea rose so high that it overflowed the Chesil Beach. Anything like it had not been known before, and hence the people were not prepared for it. The story is a tragic one. The old and the weak, the infant and mother were bore down by the flood. Twenty persons were killed or drowned. Between 20 and 30 houses were washed away.

The problems at Smallmouth and the ferry were also described:

At Smallmouth passage the Ferry House was precipitated by the violence of the winds and waves into a heap of ruins; and the poor, honest worthy old ferryman, after 30 years servitude in that capacity and passage, fell victim to his benevolence and humanity. In a noble and generous attempt to preserve the life of a dragoon, he was carried away by the force and impetuosity of the current, and inevitably lost. A few minutes after the occurrence of this melancholy disaster, the dragoon was brought on shore safely by, and firmly mounted on, his spirited and valuable charger. Opposite the Passage house, on the other side of the ferry, a kind of hovel, built by Governor Penn, for the accommodation and convenience of passengers in wet and stormy weather, was carried away by the floods.

The passage at high water is now five times its former distance across and rather unsafe and dangerous

Elsewhere along the Fleet the village of Fleet was almost totally destroyed, including the church which was later rebuilt further inland. The Abbotsbury Swannery area was submerged to a considerable depth as indicated by a pole located near the entrance gate to the Swannery.

Before the 1824 storm is was possible to take a horse and cart across the sandflats at low tide. After the storm the water was much deeper and this was no longer possible. Before the new Ferry Bridge was built in the 1980’s the sand levels had built up and it would have been possible to ford the channel again.

Eventually the first Ferrybridge was built to replace the ferry and opened in 1839.