We left Ghent about 10 pm last night and arrived about 8 am today at Bruinisse, in the province of Zeeland, back in the Netherlands.Tuesday, 11 April, Zeeland: water and engineering
Written 26 June 2023
We left Ghent about 10 pm last night and arrived about 8 am today at Bruinisse, in the province of Zeeland, back in the Netherlands.
At the left here is the view out my window of the positive forest of wind turbines that was silhouetted against the sunrise when I got up.
Half an hour after the ship moored, we set off on our morning's excursion, which started with a scenic drive through the countryside. Zeeland consists of six islands and peninsulas. People were already here, and already reclaiming land by building dikes, back 9th century. It's always been an agricultural area. Today, it gows sugar beets, potatoes, and grain, as well as apples, pears, and cherries. In hothouses, they grow cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers. In the right=hand photo is a grain elevator painted like a depth gauge; they take water depth very seriously here.
In 1953, off the coast of the Netherlands, a record-breaking nor'easter coincided with a spring tide, and as the resulting huge storm surge attempted to funnel southwestward through English Channel, it overflowed the "funnel" producing a catastrophic breach of the dikes protecting Zeeland, at the delta of the Scheldt River. Very large areas of the country (ca. 90% of Zeeland) flooded, many meters deep, over the tops of houses, overnight. More than 1836 people and larger numbers of cattle, sheep, and poultry perished. The land was under salt water for nine months before the main breach could be closed and the drying process begun. It took years more, even after the water was pumped out, to get enough salt out of the ground that crops could be sown.
This day's excursion was focused on that disaster and the enormous storm-surge barrier that was built to prevent a recurrence. I'm pretty sure this storm was the one mentioned in an earlier entry as being the event during which the dike that closed off the Zuiderzee paid for itself. And I hadn't realized until this visit that that storm was also the one that prompted construction of the Thames flood barriers that protect London.
The land is still salty today, but is arable. For a very long time, they couldn't grow anything. Granulated plaster was added to the soil, which apparently helps somehow to desalinate it. The ditches here are still salt water and can't be used for irrigation. A relative of the guide's grows flowers, and for a long time he had to import very expensive tanks of fresh water from another island. The island is still surrounded by salt water, so clearing it of salt could take a long time, centuries.
When the plan to protect Zeeland from a repeat of the 1953 disaster was first proposed, it was to be a huge dike, like the one protecting Amsterdam, and would turn the whole area into a freshwater wetland, but environmentalists protested that it was too valuable as a salt-water marsh area for wildlife, so the plan was modified. The flood barrier that was eventually built (about which more below) keeps enough connection to the sea, and the fisheries and wildlife are continuously monitored.
During our drive, we crossed the 1965 Zeelandbrugge, a 3-mile bridge, not part of the Deltaworks we saw later. According to our guide, Zierikzee, the capital of the island we were on (Walcheren, I think), is a thousand years old. Traffic increased because, after the flood they built better roads as part of the recovery effort. They even have about 70,000 miles of little roads reserved for bicycles.
Oysters and lobsters are fished here, during a very limited season, which just opened a week ago. Last week, the guide said, the lobsters were sold for $32,000 at auction. He must mean that was the total for the whole crop. Hanging-rope culture of mussels is also a local industry.
Indoors, in a green building at the end of the bridge, aquaculturists are raising yellow-tailed kingfish, a substitute for tuna. The company is currently expanding to other locations. They raise marine ragworms in some of the salt-water the ditches, for use as live bait for fishing, for maturation of shrimp in aquaculture, and for specialized pharaceutical products.
As we drove, the guide told us about a local specialty called "butter bubble candy," which he provided us with samples of. Hot caramelized sugar is poured on a slab, folded and rolled repeatedly, then cut into little squares. It tasted like butterscotch.
The island at the other end of the bridge was Wadeland, where the orchards are surrounded by pleached trees (willows and poplars) as windbreaks. To tell the truth, much of the time, I had no idea where we actually were, and comparison of place names we heard with maps after the fact made clear that we zigzagged all over Zeeland island-hopping as we went.
At the left here is an orchard of small trees apparently espaliered on wooden frames. At the right is a picture the guide held up of the flag of Zeeland. Note the lion waist-deep in the waves in the center. The Latin motto reads "I struggle and I emerge."
At one point, as our bus crossed a short drawbridge over a large lock, the guide pointed out that vehicles no longer needed to queue up to cross when the drawbridge was up. Instead, a clever bypass has been constructed. If the bridge is up, you simply detour about half a mile along the canal, cross a different drawbridge there, drive the half mile back to the main road and continue on your way. The engineers simply ensure that the two bridges are never up at the same time. Vessels crossing under the main one just wait briefly in the half mile canal between the two until the lighter bridge at the far end of the detour can be raised to let them through.
More things we learned on our scenic drive:
Our first stop for the morning was another charming little historic town, Veere (pronounced veer-uh). On the way into town we stopped at this huge church (now an event space; they use the little chapel beside it for services). It's owned by some govenment entity and is currently under renovation. Over the years, it has been used and disused, as a stable, prison, and church, flooded, burned, rebuilt, etc. It dates originally from the 13th–14th centuries.
These four fat sheep were lounging nearby, as part of the historic display, I suspect. Back in the church's early days, sheep were king here, and the trade was in wool and fabric, especially with Scotland. In fact, some large percentage of the population consisted of Scottish wool merchants, and they complained about the water quality, which wasn't good enough to wash fleeces properly.
Accordingly, around 1400, the town built a cistern next to the church, to collect the vast amount of rain water than fell on its roof. Cisterns used to be relatively common—until 1988, when it was finally connected to the Dutch water system,, the entire town depended on cisterns for its water.
Now the one at this church, under the canopy in the left-hand photo, is the only one left in the Netherlands. It is particularly well designed and capacious—on some days, they conduct guided tours of it, now that it's dry.
The opening down into it is shown at the right, now covered with a grill to prevent anyone's falling in.
The town itself is, of course, quaint but absolutely beautiful. The tower at the left, which I initially took to be that of a newer church, is actually the town belfry. The photo at the right shows some of its imposing facade, with the tower behind. It now forms a part of the town's museum (we don't have time for that, the guide said; it would take half a day). You can still get married here, though; our guide was married there in 1984.
Hanging on a hook on the front of it were two neatly shaped, painted stones the size of bowling balls joined by short lengths of chain to a curved flat metal yoke. The town had no pillory. Instead, miscreants had to walk around the town square with those stones draped around their necks while the populace pelted them with rotten vegetables.
The rest of the museum is in one of the "Scottish houses" on the main square, shown here at the left. The gablestone features a sheep—it was all about the wool trade. It and the other houses in town stand on pilings set up to 20 feet deep into the soil.
This bulkhead door, near if not actually in the Scottish house, now opens onto a restaurant, but the guide pointed it out to us mainly to tell us that in Middelburg, the capital of Zeeland, huge rings were set in the pavement across the street from each such set of doors, for belaying the barrels as you rolled them down ramps into the cellars.
The streets were full of flowers, and many of the wider ones had median strips down the center planted as gardens.
At the left here is another of those gorgeous flowering currants. At the right is Polygaloides pauciflora, which has a variety of common names, ranging from the fanciful "bird-on-the-wing" to the dowdy "fringed milkwort."
Of course, daffodils and other spring bulbs were everywhere.
In one square was this statue of children playing, by Alphonsa J. (Phonse) van Daalen. A story went with it, but I'm afraid I couldn't reconstruct it from my notes.
The town is protected from the Veerse See, the body of water it borders on, by tall, grassy dikes. These cannons, now just ornamental, defended the town from attack.
At the left here is the 1819 "Godshuis" (God's house) purchased by the mayor to serve as a town homeless shelter. Today, it's a bed and breakfast.
Above a nearby door was this "tree of life" ornament. The guide explained that you could tell whether an establishment was Catholic or protestant by its tree of life. If the tree was more ornamented at the bottom, like this one, it was one, and if decorated more at the top, it was the other, but I don't remember which was which.
Sorry 'bout the big white spot. My camera lens got something on it that marred a number of the photos I took that day before I noticed and polished it off—it didn't show on the camera screen as I lined up the shot.
The step-gabled building in the background at the left is a historic tavern, one of the oldest in the Netherlands, dating from the time of the Scottish community. It used to be the ferry stop for the town, and William of Orange had one of his weddings there. The figure in the olive-green coat, behind the other figures, with his hood snugged tight around his face, his hands in his pockets, and his Tilley hat hanging by his side, is David, trying to stay warm.
At the right is the door to the tavern. It backs on one of those tall dikes separating it from the Veerse See, which our guide described as freshwater but is actually brackish—they let some seawater in through the dike and lock that cut is off from the North Sea. Anyway, it's the largest, freshest lake around, and our guide said that on a breezy summer's day, it's positively white with sailboats.
By the tavern is the oldest yacht club in the Netherlands, membership by invitation only. You can dock your boat there without being a member, but you must pay a fee. Most of the boats are docked at a commercial marina on the lake.
Because the town draws many tourists, it also had its share of souvenir shops, fortunately pretty tasteful. At the left here, the colorful objects in the round basket are oyster shells whose inner surfaces have been painted with roses, china patterns, and other flowers. Above them, oyster-shell key chains, oyster-shell soap dishes, and ankle bracelets made from (exotic) shells.
At the right is a heap of bags of "bolusmix"—cinnamon-bun mix.
Other options included carved ducks and fish.
After another drive, shorter this time, we arrived at a photo-op spot constructed just to provide a good view of the storm-surge barrier, a huge engineering feat. On the way, we passed the traditional windmill at the left.
Near the little peninsula with the photo-op spot was this big barn of a restaurant labeled "Seafarm"—the letters forming the shape of a fish.
Right on the peninsula, where we parked, was Sky Marine, a cooperative hatchery producing both fish and shelfish for aquaculture and the food it takes to raise them.
At at the right, here's the barrier itself stretching off into the distance. It's basically a bridge, the spaces under which can be closed by heavy panels raised from their resting places under water by hydraulic power. Or perhaps lowered from above—I never got that straight. In any case, they move into place, preventing water from passing under the bridge. It's the largest such barrier in the world.
Tthe tide was low when we were there, so the water was calm on the "inside," the side we could see, and turbulent on the far side, where watr was was pouring out into the sea. Presumably it's the reverse when the tide is high and water pours inward. They tested the possibility of generating electricity from th at water movement, but it wasn't cost effective. Sandbanks sometimes form here, just inside the barrier, and seals occasionally show up to rest there.
At the left here is a telephoto shot of a couple segments of the barrier. The long horizontal white cylinder is the hydraulic reservoir for this section.
During construction, an extra pillar and an extra barrier panel were built, in case of need, but they were never used. The photo at the right shows the extra barrier panel, displayed for closer inspection. The fence prevents you from actually touching it.
Before they even started building the barrier, they located a couple of shallow spots along its projected path and built them up into islands, both to shorten the spans the barrier had to cross and to provide bases for the construction activities.
They also built four special vessels, Ostrea, Macoma, Mytilus, and Cardium (Oyster, Clam, Mussel, and Cockle) for the process.Between 1979 and 1983, they built the pillars. Each one took 14 days, and I think he said 1000 cubic m of concrete, and was 38–40 m high. The guide told us that "a U-shaped vessel called the Ostrich [I think he must have meant Ostrea] picked up and moved each pillar into place." Each one had to be placed with centimeter precision, to fit the panels that would have be slide between them.
The barrier stretch, coast to coast, about 9 km (ca. 6 miles).
Even the process of preparing the seabed for the pillars was elaborate. They brought in sand and used vibrating shafts to settle it very firmly. Apparently large plastic mattresses filled with sand extend over the seabed about 2000 ft on each side the barrier.
At the left here is a fiew from the bus of the spare pillar, out among the turbines, which is now apparently used as a "climbing object.
At the right is an area left natural and marshy, for the benefit of migrating waterfowl and other wildlife. We saw many such areas as we drove around. We also saw sheep grazing on the dikes; apparently the farmer pays the government a fee for the privilege.
The barrier has been used 28 times since Queen Beatrix declared it open, but they also periodically raise and lower the doors by a meter or so, just to make sure they still move.
Annually, there's a bike race the length of the barrier, against the wind and without any mechanical aids or hand brakes. The record is about 22 minutes to cover the six miles.
After crossing the barrier (left-hand photo) museum of the 1953 flood, which is housed in the four large caissons that were finally used to plug the breach in the dike. They were left-over components of the mulberry harbors built for the WWII Normandy invasion. They were floated across the channel, positioned carefully, and sunk to fill the gap. They now serve as the four sections of the museum, and each has a different theme: (a) straight information about the flood, (b) the emotional and human side of the disaster, (c) the reconstruction process, and (d) the future, the message of which is "The water is coming." Global warming means that the storm surge barrier is only a temporary remedy and that the world, and particularly this part of it, cannot let down its guard.
In the left-hand photo is one of the caissons, sunk into the dike of which it is still a part, and viewed through the bus windshield. Below ground the four caissons are joined by tunnels.
The right-hand phioto shows the entryway to the museum. The blue glass ceiling marks the surface of the water at this point during the inundation, which we are viewing from the underside. Note the "floating" yellow bottle and wooden chairs hanging down from it.
Here, still in the first caisson, is a typical Dutch room of the time. The pale blue shading on the back wall shows the water line.
The panel at the right shows a photo taken on 1 February 1953—the breach occurred during the night of 31 January to 1 February. The text superimposed on it lists some statistics: 3000 homes destroyed, 40,000 homes damaged, 300 farms destroyed, 12,000 pigs drowned, 25,000 cows drowned, 200,000 hectares of land inundated, 3,000 farms damaged. 72,500 evacuees. 1836 people dead.
Actually, the number of people who died is sometimes given as 1835 and sometimes as 1836. The difference arises because 1835 "registered persons" died, but an infant girl who was born on the evening of 31 January drowned before her birth could be registered in the morning. We never learned whether her family perished with her.
Written 28 June 2023
Our guide lost an aunt and uncle, and as we passed, he pointed out the house of an acquaintance of his who lost 16 family members that day.
As it started, a radio operator near the breach started broadcasting for help. A passing helicopter changed course to check out the situation and realized how bad the problem was. By daylight, there was no hope at all. A quote from a survivor, on the museum wall, said, "water thundered towards us, taking everything with it, destroying everything in its path."
This map table bears a tag for each inundated village. I think the little clock faces on the labels indicate the time the water arrived there.
On another table were dozens of notebooks containing photos. I think each village has its own notebook. I wish we'd had time to look through more of them.
The photo at the left shows the concrete caissons being floated across the English channel, and the diagram at the right shows how they were placed to block the large breach in the dike.
The Dutch had tried for months to close that breach, but only nine months after the storm, on 6 November did they succeed. Over 2500 men worked day and night to put the caissons in place. Each one was floated into position, then workers on top of them opened valves in the bottom that flooded the interiors so that they sank into place.
The extraordinary panels shown here are the work of fiber artist Miep van Riessen. She conceived and spent five years executing a multipanel map of the flooded region. The photo at the left shows the overall map.
The close-up at the right shows that it is entirely made up of the names and years of birth of those who died, embroidered row on row in colored thread. She included the newborn infant.
Even before the the dikes were restored, all those refugees needed help. A large number of prefab housing units were ordered, but of course they arrived packed flat in pieces, some assembly required, and the instructions were in a Scandinavian language. It took the workers a week to figure out the process and get the first one assembled, but the process went much more quickly after that.
The photos here are outside and inside views of one of those temporary units. We were able to walk into it and explore the little kitchen, the living room, with a Singer sewing machine set up, the bedrooms and bathroom.
At the left here is a decorative plate commemorating the successful closing of the breach. Across the top is that motto again, "I struggle and I emerge." It was only one of many, many hundreds of such items, on display, both commemorations after the fact and artefacts recovered from the drowned areas.
The small green hut on the right is a dike-worker; those were way-huts like shepherd's huts, for dike workers and dike walkers. Men and boys came from all over the Netherlands to work on the dikes.
When most of the water had been pumped back out, the "mud girls" came—girls and young women from all over the Netherlands arrived with their mops and buckets and the motto, "Let's roll up our sleeves and clean." Their goal was to go into all those hundreds of houses that had been flooded, some over their rooftops, for nine months, subject to the tides, and make them liveable again.
The final caisson was devoted to considerations of the future, and it's entire message was "the water is coming." More preparations are needed now.
More things we learned from the guide in the bus on the way back to the ship:
Back on the ship, they had scheduled lunch late to accommodate the especially long morning excursion. The "menu" appears at the left here—it was "typical Dutch lunch" day. At the right is a plate we found on the table, bearing two cheese spreads, butter, and slices of a mild pâté.
Also on the table was this plate of Dutch cheeses and typical smoked fishes—trout, mackerel, and eel. I was the only one who would eat the smoked fish—Rachel's allergic, but what was wrong with the rest of those people?!
The salad area of the buffet included mixed greens with several toppings and dressings, slaw with shrimp in it, green beans, and potato salad. Behind them, Shepherd's pie and a big bowl of fries.
Then a raised platter of raw oysters and more Dutch cheeses. Then a variety of sweet and savory buns, little apple turnovers, and chocolate puddings topped with fruit.
Beyond the chocolate puddings was a platter of cut fruit (not shown), and beyond that
the chocolate fountain and its accompanying watermelton stuck with fruit skewers to dip in the chocolate.
As you can see, I photographed the buffet out of order, as I encountered gaps in the line I could shoot pictures through. At the right here are vegetable soup and vegetarian stampot.
Then slices of salmon strudel, meatballs, stirfried beef, and chewy potato dumplings.
Then Indonesian noodles, beef stew, frikadiller, and, in the back, roast chicken and roast pork.
While we ate lunch, the ship left Zeeland headed back toward Amsterdam.
Lunch was followed by a Q&A session with the ship's head housekeeper, which I didn't find very informative.
That was followed by the chef's waffle-making demonstration. This time, the chef actually succeeded in making a couple of waffles, which were served to the people closest to the front, topped with stewed cherries. Meanwhile the waitstaff brought out little plates for the rest of us, each bearing a wedge of cold, soggy waffle topped with powdered sugar and stewed cherries. Even hot, the waffles were not very good. I could tell by looking at the batter and the waffles, even before the chef distributed the recipe, that they were baking soda waffles just like the ones we make with Bisquick, not the light, fluffy, crispy, yeast-raised ones we had twice in Antwerp. And I don't think his waffle irons were even hot enough to make really crispy ones.
Almost as soon as the demo materials were cleared away, it was time for Dutch afternoon tea, which was pretty much like the one on the Freya.
And shortly after that, it was dinner time!
I was delighted to find that it was the chateaubriand dinner, one of our favorite Viking menus. I started with the regional specialty flammekuche, a sort of white pizza with cream, onions, bacon, and cheese. This one tasty enough, but again the Viking inability to produce crisp food detracted. The crust wasn't thin enough or crispy enough.
But the chateaubriand with béarnaise and potato gratin were great.
You can see that Rachel and David are enjoying themselves.
Dessert was bread and butter pudding with rum raisin sauce, and a fine one it was, too.
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