This is what I've always thought, too - that it wasn't a hurricane, though it might have had some gusts that were hurricane force. It certainly devastated the Isle of Wight, though. A Victorian pier was destroyed, and there are entire bare hillsides that used to be covered with trees.

I saw a very interesting documentary on that storm a year or so ago. What I'd never realised was that it effectively led to the stock market crash (Black Monday), because things had been shaky anyway, but no-one could get into work on the Friday because of storm damage, so everything went crash.