Hollands Diep, 601st Anniversary
► █░▓ COMING HOME in my memories of childhood is still being connected with the railway crossing a bridge over big river and entering the home city after long time spent far away. The first sight of the glistering metropolis could be caught from the railway bridge and made my child's heart beat hard in awe and excitement after serene village months.
Decades of bus, car and airplane travel have pushed back these memories, until very recently. I relived it at this railway bridge coming back from Belgium. It my early years it used to be Sava, now it is Hollands Diep.
Filmed here is the Moerdijk bridge above Hollands Diep against the sky of sun setting. This water is the beginning of what has been the widest river in Holland for exactly 601 year now, an estuary of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. It has an extremely interesting origin and a dramatic history. It used to be land until the huge flood of 1216, which breached the dunes and created a deep saltwater inlet. This was a time when every couple of years a flood would come and kill tens of thousands of people. The XIII and XVI century (1530 was exceptionally vicious, but also 1099, 1362 and 1717) were absolutely the worst in the history of the Low Lands. On November 19th, 1404 floods have made a big mess of the area. Exactly 17 year later on the same day St. Elizabeth struck again. This time flood had connected the existing sea inlet to the Merwede river (the biggest branch of Rhine) and thus became an important estuary of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. From that moment on, the freshwater part of the estuary (east of the Hellegatsplein, between Willemstad en Numansdorp) was renamed 'Hollandsch Diep'.
These were not just inundations, these were catastrophic events of an unforgivable magnitude, some of the worst in history, which washed away existing land, settlements and even rivers, changed the geography and geopolitics and remained sometimes for decades or even for centuries. Hollands Diep is such a lasting one. It used to be land until 1216, then a sea inlet for two centuries, and then a river. The last time it saw a disastrous flood that took thousands of lives was in 1953. St. Elizabeth's flood that literally made this river in 1421 was the 7th worst in the long drenched history of the Lage Landen and ranks 20th on the list of deadliest floods in history.
Hollands Diep at this place is twice as wide as Danube at Belgrade. The latter in turn is wilder: it has much higher energy due to a stronger current flow.
Hollands Diep, 601st Anniversary
► █░▓ COMING HOME in my memories of childhood is still being connected with the railway crossing a bridge over big river and entering the home city after long time spent far away. The first sight of the glistering metropolis could be caught from the railway bridge and made my child's heart beat hard in awe and excitement after serene village months.
Decades of bus, car and airplane travel have pushed back these memories, until very recently. I relived it at this railway bridge coming back from Belgium. It my early years it used to be Sava, now it is Hollands Diep.
Filmed here is the Moerdijk bridge above Hollands Diep against the sky of sun setting. This water is the beginning of what has been the widest river in Holland for exactly 601 year now, an estuary of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. It has an extremely interesting origin and a dramatic history. It used to be land until the huge flood of 1216, which breached the dunes and created a deep saltwater inlet. This was a time when every couple of years a flood would come and kill tens of thousands of people. The XIII and XVI century (1530 was exceptionally vicious, but also 1099, 1362 and 1717) were absolutely the worst in the history of the Low Lands. On November 19th, 1404 floods have made a big mess of the area. Exactly 17 year later on the same day St. Elizabeth struck again. This time flood had connected the existing sea inlet to the Merwede river (the biggest branch of Rhine) and thus became an important estuary of the Rhine and Meuse rivers. From that moment on, the freshwater part of the estuary (east of the Hellegatsplein, between Willemstad en Numansdorp) was renamed 'Hollandsch Diep'.
These were not just inundations, these were catastrophic events of an unforgivable magnitude, some of the worst in history, which washed away existing land, settlements and even rivers, changed the geography and geopolitics and remained sometimes for decades or even for centuries. Hollands Diep is such a lasting one. It used to be land until 1216, then a sea inlet for two centuries, and then a river. The last time it saw a disastrous flood that took thousands of lives was in 1953. St. Elizabeth's flood that literally made this river in 1421 was the 7th worst in the long drenched history of the Lage Landen and ranks 20th on the list of deadliest floods in history.
Hollands Diep at this place is twice as wide as Danube at Belgrade. The latter in turn is wilder: it has much higher energy due to a stronger current flow.