A remarkable cabinet card capturing a massive storm wave crashing over the Hastings promenade, made by Henry Constantine Jennings at his Memorial Studio, 51 Robertson Street, Hastings. Jennings operated the Memorial Studio at 51 Robertson Street from 1881 to 1886, placing this view squarely within that window. The scene documents a moment of genuine coastal drama: a towering wall of foam-white surf is caught mid-surge as it overwhelms the seafront railing, with water already sheeting across the promenade. A record high tide and gale on 1 January 1877 caused the worst storm damage in Hastings then on record, partly washing away the parade, making that event a plausible candidate for the occasion depicted, though the card's production date aligns with Jennings's active years.

The composition is taken from an elevated vantage looking west along the seafront, revealing a long terrace of multi-storey Georgian and Victorian commercial buildings with shopfront awnings, balconies, and chimney stacks receding toward the cliffs. Iron lamp posts and a low railing line the flooded promenade between the wave and the buildings. Figures in Victorian dress stand watching on the promenade, while a dense crowd of spectators in coats and hats fills the foreground in the lower register, lending scale to the towering surge.

The Memorial Studio was held by Henry Constantine Jennings, born around 1843 in Paris, France, and his topographic and event views of Hastings represent an important document of the Sussex seaside resort in the early 1880s. In 1886, the firm of W. S. Bradshaw and Sons purchased Jennings's photographic studio, and George William Bradshaw arrived to take over the Memorial Studio in Robertson Street.

The photographer's imprint reads vertically on the left border of the mount: "Photographed by Constantine Jennings, The Memorial Studio, Robertson Street, Hastings." The reverse bears no inscription; a faint rectangular label remnant and the handwritten numeral "250" appear at the lower right.