1287: St. Lucia’s Flood Transformed the Netherlands

On December 14, 1287 (the day after the commemoration of St. Lucia’s Day) a mammoth low pressure system that coincided with high tide caused the North Sea to rise up over the protective sea walls and dikes, overflowing a large portion of the Netherlands. The catastrophic inundation, which wiped out entire villages and is estimated to have killed between 50,000 and 80,000 people, quickly eroded the low-lying terrain and transformed what had been a region of fertile peatland in the midst of a complex network of estuaries and freshwater lakes into a permanent inlet of the sea – the Zuiderzee, as the Dutch thereafter called it. But, in fulfillment of the saying that “it is an ill wind that blows nobody good,” one long-standing consequence was that the previously landlocked village of Amsterdam now found itself enviously situated upon the leeward side of a fine harbor, and arose almost overnight from insignificance to become one of the leading ports and trading centers of Europe – indeed, of the world.