A Storm’s Demon Fury

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 16, 16 October 1912, Page 33

A Storm’s Demon Fury

East Coast Districts of England Submerged — Desolation and Destruction Widespread.

OJ f WIDE stretch of territory along y I the East Coast of England, I 1 taking in Norfolk, Essex and Suffolk, was completely inundated by an unprecedented flood last month. Abnormal rainfalls were experienced. Norwich and surrounding country was the centre of the deluge. Rain poured down at the rate of more than 50 tons to the acre every hour, or 000 tons per acre in all. The better part of a whole county was devastated. Tens of thousands of acres of rich cornland and rare pasturage vanished as completely as though they had been conjured away at the spell of some evil wizard : a city as rich in English history as the meadows and cornfields around her are rich in agricultural abundance, was crippled and thrown into blank despair in the day and utter darkness at night. Thousands of her poor were washed out of their homes in the lower suburbs

was in full swing on the great expanse of floods near Whittlesea, and over 40 wrecked vessels were lying on tin* bed of the river at Oulton Broad. Nearly SO country bridges and 120 culverts were destroyed in East Anglia. The River Raveley at Wood Walton burst its banks, two million blocks of turf being washed away. Many cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry were drowned in Norfolk, and a number of cottages demolished. The flood found its way to the Norwich electric works, and the city was eclipsed in alarming darkness. Between Spalding ami Peterborough there was an inland sea nearly 20 miles long by a mile wide. Nigb.t Rescue Work. At Norwich the tide was rising rapidly. Slumland, down by the river, already half awash, was drowning! The public did not lose their heads, nor did the police. There were many hundreds of lives to be saved down by the river, and

along the riverside—homeless and helpless but for the swift aid which came to them from more fortunate citizens. At one time the Cathedral was actually in danger. Two thousand people were left homeless, several lives were lost, trains held up, holiday parties marooned. At the height of the season, when the winding tidal rivers of Eastern England are bright with happy yachtsmen and grey with the huge sails of wherries and yachts, the tornado burst with demon fury, and Broadland was as much of a swamp (and more) than it was before the land was reclaimed ages ago. Desolation and destruction were widespread. Nearly all the telegraph wires were down. Thousands of Norwich canaries perished. The River Wye at Hereford was 14ft above the normal level. Yachting

for this dangerous work there was a hearty rush of volunteers from all quarters. The city was strangely silent, wrapped as it was in spectral gloom ami encroaching flood. But it was engagingly busy and brick. For a wonder there was neither wind nor rain to add to the perplexities of the situation; the night was calm and warm. Many hundreds of the very poor were* saved and taken to warmth ami shelter well out of the way of the creeping waters. All through the night this went on. with families being hauled out of their bedroom windows, deposited in Corporation carts, and any other available life vehicles—and the water still rising! The work of salvation was accomplished in swift silence. Being human, nearly all willingly lent a hand at the game:

there were few spectators. It was all ghostly ami grim. The river or was it the floodasw irl at our feet ami sometimes drenching us to our loins, brought with it an atmosphere Stygian and clamniv. We seemed to lose our tangibility as mortals, and to resemble more and more the restless populat ion of Shadow land. We carried candles and stable lanterns with us to show the way: now and then a naptha lamp flung its hissing jets of dazzling flame into the picture, and made it all the more uncanny. In this every face showed up unnaturally white and bloodless; the bare legs of the men as they splashed through the flood wert* like waxwork; the mean, miserable little houses across the way flashed and faded upon the eye as the lights flickered like a series of dissolving pictures thrown on a screen. The upper windows, opened wide, were filled with faces white, anxious, despairing. indifferent—all in turn, with some laughter at one window and tears at another. 'l'be babies, held high to attract the attention of the rescuers to their plight and their utter helplessness, seemed really to enjoy this sudden wakening into a night as full of wonders as a fairy tale. Family after family was handed down and borne off triumphant!v to higher ground and other comfortable solace. Here and there the houses were tottering, and one or two fell after the tenants had been removed.

Desolation in Broadland. One correspondent thus describes the scent' of desolation: I startl'd from Norwich early this morning in a powerful car in .in attempt to reach isolated Broadland. The floods in the lower parts of the city, which had risen several feet with the high tide before dawn, were now subsiding. but we had great difficulty ami many failures in getting out of the town. The river was roaring through the lower quarters, and in slumland the work of rescue was still going on, as it hail been going on all through the night, unceasing! y. W’e floundered at last into a street or, rather, a stream which bubbled like a hot spring. It was an unlucky moment for us that we chose our time of crossing

just a- the wood block* burst and were flung up to the surface as though an earthquake had happened. W’e *tuck hopelessly until a bold brigade of street urchins calmlv stripped off their trousers and hauled us through. So we left this new and astonishing Norfolk Venice behind us. climbed into the grim slopes of Mousehold Heath, ami struck at last the perplexing network of narrow lanes ami the interminable avenues of dwarf oaks which form so distinguishing a feature of the Broads. At every turn and twi-t of these snaky little roi ls we met havoc ami desolation. A* least a dozen times in an hour we were turned back by great trees which had fallen across the road and smashed there. The district here was a desert for desolation and loneliness. It is a gay world at this time of the vear. brightened everywhere with happy holiday folk, and all the little rivers sparkling with the hardy but merry amateur yachtsman ami tin' girl of his heart, in nitty rig. There was nobody to be seen now but an occasional weary postman piddling (and paddling) along with his belated mail and anon losing his way. as we lost it. Only a hydro-aeropl ine would carry us safely across this morass of the pleasureseeker. My objective was \\ ’roxham. the famous headquarters of the gaiety, the jollity, and tin* dolce far niente of the Broadland yachting season and thence to Sheringham and ( romer. Ihe last ‘’navigable*’ road to \\ roxham was arched by a huge

elm tree, which bad been thing down by the wild storm of Monday, ami now it crossed the road. Thanks to the intervention of a monster bough, it formed a rude archway, imminently tottering to its fall, and under this we managed to crawl into the pretty little red-brick sub urb of WToxham. A little farther on. ami we heard the roaring of a cataract, for here the quiet Bure had burst her banks in a wild frenzy of Hood, and had taken complete command. It was a wild, savage scene. W roxham bridge was shaking and swaying at tin* shock of the thudding water. The whole pile of heavy masonry would have been swept away hours ago like an artificial erection of lath and plaster, had not the river burst at another spot a little lower down, and roared off in fens of thousands of tons down a bv-road to make another

river, and that before it Hooded a tremendous acreage under tin* shadow of Wroxham old church. So, by a second freak of this ordinarily peaceful little river, many lives and houses and mills a ml shops were saved. I hit the water was four feet deep across the road beyond the bridge, and further progress eastwards was barred. You could just get through on a wagon with a pair of lusty horses in the shafts; but it would have drowned niv engine,

so I took the wagon. rolled up my trousers. and explored the dismal, dismantled little town. Every house hereabouts was aswim—or very near it. Gruesome Flotsam. 1 stood on the shaking bridge (remembering with a qualm that already 80 of its brethren in Norfolk had been swept away), and watched the most confounding circus I have ever seen in my life. Hundreds and hundreds of hay rocks were Hashing down with incredible speed on

the top of the swirl. Some of the tallest of them would hit the under side of the bridge with the sound as of giant wet sponges being Hung at it — squash, squelch! and then with a devilish gurgle the careering water would suck them through, to reappear on the other side, and then float on merrily again to their ultimate end. wherever that might be. It was not only hay that danced this weird water dance through Wroxham town. All manner of things came down on the crest of the torrent- once a whole haystack, and now and again the produce

of gardens, the wreck of outbuildings, and the drowned bodies of birds and animals, both tame and domesticated. Pigs and sheep were seen, and one man paddled into the Horseshoes Inn telling in a hoarse whisper of the corpse of a child he had seen disappear under the bridge—just a momentary glimpse, and no more. But it had turned him sick and livid. 1 could find no definite news of lives lost or people missing; but who can tell, when miles of wild water have broken down the lines of communication in this sad. blighted land of the Broads?

Above the Plinißoll Line. At the King’* Head—a popular inn at all times —the landlord was perched disconsolately upon a tall barrel of beer with his naked toes swishing about in tin* brown water which surrounded him. He was serving the drinks from a shelf fixed high and dry above the Plimsoll line. His few customers had either sculled up to the door of the hostelry or were carried into the bar pickaback by pink-legged u bearers,” and deposited more or less gently upon the counter of the bar. Here they squatted tailor-wise and circulated the cheering cup. Mark Tapleys to a man! There was no bread in Wroxham last night, but this morning, by some manner of means, the enterprising proprietors of the Wroxham Hygienic Bakery managed to turn out a batch of nice hot loaves in spite of the inches of distilled Norfolk swirling across their bakehouse floor. The furniture of the dining-room of the Horseshoes —of which 1 retain memories of many happy evenings in the halcyon days before the flood—was floating about all higgledy-piggledy, and 1 was told of a fat two-pounder bream having been stalked (and killed) in the larder of that hospitable caravanserai. I left the cheery brothers of the Hygienic Bakery, loading their cart (in rowing shorts!) with crisp loaves to carry to hungry cottagers further K.ield; I left the Oldest Inhabitant propped up in a grandfather chair upstairs (downstairs was swimming) and declaring that nothing like this had ever happened in all his born days—and I floundered to seek adventures elsewhere. Sudden and Terrible. The village of Coltishall, a few miles away, has suffered far worse than even Wroxham. The bridge was down and six or seven houses had been washed away. It is a marvel that nobody was drowned here, for the water-burst was sudden and terrible, taking most people unawares. A group of farm outhouses were struck with something very like a tor-

undo, and all the stock was drowned. Still more tragedy, further along, at Buxton Lammas, on the Bure. Here the “fouling” of the lock was the chief contributory cans? to the havoc that wrecked Buxton after the storm had sped and when the tide turned. The whole of the river banks from the Anchor Inn to the Mill collapsed, and the mad tide swept everything before it. Here again—by some miracle-—no human lives were sacrificed to the savage flood, but cottagjs

were undermined, fowl-houses and poul-try-runs and pigstyes were obliterated, boats and yachts were torn from their moorings and hurled down the stream to be found bottom upward many hours later and many miles away. I saw at Buxton Lammas many drowned pigs caught up in fences and tree stumps, and several dead and dripping and ghastly lying over the wreckage of their styes, broken backed and stiff, as though some fabulous butcher of im-

mense strength had picked them up by their hindlegs and flung them there. This was the most gruesome as it was the most striking object-lesson of the demon fury of the storm I had seen so far. The terror still seemed to live* in the dead faces of these miserable beasts. At Belaugh. the village between Wr<>\ham and Coltishall. the house of the largest farmer in the district was this

morning two feet deep in water, and the family had fled upstairs, rescuing what “lares et penates” they could ‘in the small time the engulfing waters allowed them for salvage operations. for many, many years in this place has lived an old lady, crippled and helpless with rheumatism. She was sitting in her armchair downstairs and alone when ithe waters crept in and lapped about her feet. She could not move, but she managed somehow to sound an alarm, and the neighbours came in and, with infinite trouble, carried her up the narrow stairs. This was yesterday. To-day the flood was rising higher, and the lower walls of the old lady’s little home were crumbling away—an almost certain preliminary to complete collapse later on. 1 left the aged sufferer’s Good Samaritans doing their brave best to rescue her by hauling her out of a top window—a perilous ■business, and, I am afraid, fatal either way to the old lady. She was not complaining; she only said in a feeble falsetto pipe that she would rather die right away in her Tittle cottage- that had harboured her for so many years than end her life in a strange place where she could not recognise the furniture! Her furniture —the simple, intimate little things that had lived with her so long—had been more than human companionship to her: to lose these friends would be too, too cruel! Heaven help the dear old dame to a peaceful sleep at last. I had not the heart —nor the time in this tearing life through flood and field —to stay behind and see this pathetic little drama through. And now, last of all, to the prettiest, the most romantic riverside hostelry in England—the Ferry Inn at Horning; the scene of ever memorable parties and festivities, where the homely fare was always of the best, the company the cheeriest, and where Mr Crowe, the host, had always a different yarn to spin of how and where and under what miraculous circumstances he caught that record Pike, which still glares in lifelike reality from the glass case in the coffee-room. And the smooth bowling-green, beyond the slope of trim lawn that leads down to the river, where the wherries lie up, snug and trim o’ nights, and music trickles across the quiet water. . . . Here again, and finally—desolation and flood, and a lonely waste of waters, and the Ferry Inn standing, stark and shivering, waist-deep in the deluge! ,