DRYING UP THE NORTH SEA

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 75, 29 March 1930, Page 20

DRYING UP THE NORTH SEA

' A stupendous scheme to enlarge the land area, of Europe by 115,Q0Q square miles, and thus to provide , space for 20,000,000 people, is being worked out by a number of German engineering experts, s>ays the "Sunday News" (London). Their plan is to drain tUc southern part of tho North Scj, and so link up England with Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Dpnmark, thereby reverting to conditions that probably obtained in pre-historic times, The plan, which.would add to Europe a territory almost as big as Italy, would take its present coii&t-Hno from Hoi]an<i/.and give Belgium a canal in rqturn for a s.ea. Amsterdam would become an inland city, and Hamburg vir-. tually'-a. Baltic port. The .mouths of the Thames, the Scheldt, and the Rhino would be joined up by canals with the English Channel, England would become a Continental country, linked by railways ucrosa the reclaimed land witli- Gonnany, Bolgium, and Holland. . Even a "Channel tunnel would become as antiquated as a stage-coach. Essex and Suffolk would no longer be on tho Noith Sea, and Norfolk would bo shut-off from it save on the coast of the Wash. < The', southern part of the North Sea, the oxpeft -point out, irrelatively shallow. In that part which,.under the fantastic scheme, it is proposed -to drain r 'tlje/depth is nowhere"more thau I^o-fe^t 'This area would bo. shut off ffo'o>" tha northern part by a' stupendous dam* nearly -150 miles long, stretching irom "th*e neighbourhood of Hun'stanton, in Norfolk, to the Skagcrrak toast of Denmark.

FANTASTIC GERMAN SCHEME

Another d.tm, about 150 miles 1 ia length, would-rutt from tho Essex coast:, on the estuary of. the Thames, round Kent to between Dover and Calais, and then along the seabo.aru1 of the Continent 'tq the Dutch shores near Sehoveningen. Dover would bo Jinked by a great bridge to that point of tho dam whiea would jut into the Straits of Dovor, and another bridge' would carry railway and road to Calais. A third and much i shorter dam would divert thq waters of the Weber and the EJbe into the Kiel Canal and the Baltic Sea, by which way the shipping of Bremen and Hamburg would have to seek the oceans of the world.

The averago height of .the dams would, bo about 90£t. " y_ Experts declare that mineials would be found in abundance, especially coal, beneath the. reclaimed area, and that there may even be big oilfields. Tho wealth to be found in sunken ships would, they-believe, be enormous. 'The engineers and various expertp who.aro 'studying Iho matter frankly admit that thero ara many difficulties in the way of its realisation, apart from the tremendous technical work of drainage.

On the map of thoir dreams Uioso who have worked out thia prodigious change in the map of Europe have placed. 15 large and s>mall towns. But, so far, they have given a name to only one—Neu Hamburg (Now Hamburg)* which certainly seems to bo a gdoo, tJe*J/too far away from.its .namesake "to deserve tho title, and to bo well outside, what could possibly bo Germany's share of tho spoils of the conquest of the North Sea. ,