North Sea Drainage Project to Increase Area of Europe (Sep, 1930)
North Sea Drainage Project to Increase Area of Europe
If the extensive schemes for the drainage of North Sea are carried out according to the plan illustrated above, which was conceived by a group of eminent English scientists, 100,000 square miles will be added to the overcrowded continents of Europe. The reclaimed land will be walled in with enormous dykes, similar to the Netherland dykes, to protect it from the sea, and the various rivers flowing into the North Sea will have their courses diverted to different outlets by means of canals.
I am relieved to know they forgot the idea. That would have made it easy fo Hitler a few years later, wouldn’t it?
I guess if they had really done that, they wouldn’t have worried about Hitler. The climatic changes would have made them worry mostly about surviving at all. Just think of it. It would have created a large land-mass, probably causing a gigantic desert inside of western europe.
is there any documentation to support this? It seems completely batty, and would require extraordinary diplomatic efforts to decide who got what part of the reclaimed land.
The diplomacy would surely have been easy compared with building a wall across the North Sea. We have enough trouble today maintaining floating platforms out there, never mind a fixed structure that has to reach to the sea bed, and that has to stand against eroding forces that easily scour away coastlines.
(As for Hitler trying to cross it, I’m sure the Royal Navy would have been directed to blow some holes in it.)
There was a similar plan for the Mediterranean
http://strangemaps.word…
Kris:
The dry Mediterranean was mentioned in an Arthur C. Clarke novel (short story?) but I can’t remember which one.
Ironically an alternate plan to control the overcrowding in Europe would come along in just 9 short years
I am happy to see that the group of “eminent English scientists” had not completely turned their back on common sense, and foresaw that the Harwich naval base would have to be abandoned.
hey the rail route to the continent has been relized!
” Ironically an alternate plan to control the overcrowding in Europe would come along in just 9 short years”
Neil wins. discussion over.
I think the Mediterranean was dried in Robert Harris’ novel Fatherland. No doubt the idea came from the Altlantropa project.
No, it wasn’t dried in Fatherland – you’re thinking of Man in the High Castle, IIRC. Fatherland takes the more plausible Nazis-win scenario.