After a sleepless night and an anxious morning, there was relief on the coast of East Anglia. The embattled denizens of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft saluted the flood defences that held almost without exception against the swelling tide and the good fortune that kept them dry as the surge passed by. The casualties of the morning appeared few and far between.

On a road on the quayside, James Cox, a bus driver for Anglia, watched as a mechanic attempted to resuscitate his Citroën Saxo, which had been halted by the waters that poured for a moment over the concrete ramparts in one of the few breaches of the town's defences.

On the same road, David Smith, the landlord of The Duke's Head pub, watched the fire brigade pumping out his cellar.

“We were lucky,” he said. “It could have been a disaster. We were looking at water up to the ceiling.” He had moved all his spirits upstairs and stayed open all night serving tea to flood warning refugees: the evacuated, the anxious and one family from Lancashire who had just arrived for a week's holiday. After a night in The Duke's Head, they set off for home as the roads opened.

Mr Smith was philosophical about his flooded cellar. “It's a 400-year-old building, it's done it for the last 400 years,” he said.

Before dawn, scores of people had arrived on the sea front to watch the rising tide, willing it to stop. In Lowestoft, Connor Donavin, 42, a plumber, stared at the waves crashing into the sea wall.

“I think we might just get away with this,” he said. He had spent the evening sandbagging his home, which stands well below the level of the sea wall, and helping to evacuate 33 horses from a nearby riding stables.

Others had spent an evening in refuge centres. Caister High School opened to take in 300 people, 500 came to stay. A pregnant woman due the following week went into labour and was taken to hospital.

“We ought to have a prize for the best name related to a baby being born in the refuge centre,” said Superintendent Glyn Evans of Norfolk police.

At 8.35 that morning he was able to tell the headmaster that the 500 guests sleeping in classrooms, the gymnasium and on the canteen tables could begin to go home, and that their homes were still dry.

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