LL-L "Maritime matters" 2003.01.30 (11) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Gustaaf Van Moorsel <gvanmoor at cv3.cv.nrao.edu>
Subject: LL-L "Commemoration" 2003.01.30 (07) [E]

Ron wrote:

> That's right.  The 1962 flood (wasn't it in February?) was devastating,

Wasn't this the same flood that indirectly catapulted the
then not well-known mayor Willy Brandt's career by the ex-
cellent way he handled the situation?

I don't remember the 1953 flood in the Netherlands as I was too
busy learning to walk in the much drier East of the country ...
It is true that the effects of this flood (in which 1800 people
drowned) are being felt in the Netherlands to this very day.

Gustaaf

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Maritime matters

Gustaaf:

> I don't remember the 1953 flood in the Netherlands as I was too
> busy learning to walk in the much drier East of the country ...
> It is true that the effects of this flood (in which 1800 people
> drowned) are being felt in the Netherlands to this very day.

That sounds just horrible, considering that "only" 315 people died in the
"Hamburg-Sturmflut" of 1962 and it traumatized and otherwise affected people
for a long time, probably still does.  A little girl I knew had followed her
family onto the roof of their house near a broken dyke in the middle of the
night.  She died, not of drowning but of what amounts to fright ...  She had
always feared water, and that must have been the ultimate nightmare for her.
Commemorations indeed!

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Commemoration"

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Folklore
>
> that we could tap into here.  The North Sea has been seen both as a great
> benefactor and as a great threat.  Why, it even has a nickname in Lowlands
> Saxon (Low German): _(de) blanke Hans_ 'White John' (probably originally
> referring to white foam on top of breakers during wind storms).

My father was in the Merchant Navy most of his life and
sailed the whole world, but he always said the North Sea
was the worst. This meant nothing to me until I was 12
years old when the family sailed from Edinburgh to the
Shetlands on the St Ninian. This ship was subject to a
Shetlandic superstition (or perhaps they just know more
about boats than us!) - they believed that it was top-
heavy and one day would turn turtle.

Well, some time after leaving Orkney for Shetland a
terrific storm blew up - it's one of those stories I
tell that's very difficult to get anyone to believe,
and I've often only managed to convince someone by
getting other members of the family to corroborate it.
I remember standing out on the deck holding on to the
inner rail (the outer would have been far too dangerous)
and looking up at waves that rose far above the top of
the ship, almost like mountains. Actually, they were
said to be 80 feet high, but being a very real danger
they looked much more than that!

Of course the entire ship was rising bodily on each wave
and then sinking down between the next two waves. The
storm kept up for two whole days, and in all this time
we saw nothing but the next two or three waves in each
direction. Everybody - even those like me with excellent
sea legs - was extremely ill, and when the sea finally
calmed me and my cousin and two friends we'd made were
all up at the bow staring at the horizon _willing_ the
Shetland islands to come in sight so that we could be
relieved from this terrible sea-sickness. When at last
we made port at Lerwick we rushed down the gangplank
only to discover that walking on solid ground made us
feel much more ill than being on the boat had done!

Anent floods, I acquired a book recently, 'Lays and
Legends of the North' by David Grant which has an
epic poem in north-eastern Scots called 'The Muckle
Spate o Twenty-Nine' ('The Great Flood of (18)29')
describing such a disaster in the north-east of
Scotland. It's much too long to scan in tonight, but
I'll try to do it this weekend as part of this thread.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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