Grote Mandrenke Storm
The storm Grote Mandrenke (Great Drowning of Men) strikes the Netherlands in January 1362.
Hurricane-force winds with enormous waves and a considerable sea level rise (a storm surge) due to the combined action of push by the wind and lifting of the sea surface because of low air pressure flooded extensive areas of the Netherlands, killing at least 25,000 inhabitants. This number should of cause be seen in relation to the much smaller population at that time than now. The storm also flooded and eroded large land areas in western Slesvig, Denmark, whereby sixty parishes is said to have disappeared totally. Also southern England was severely hit by the storm, with much damage on buildings and infrastructure.
The Grote Mandrenke (Dutch: "Great Drowning of Men") was the name of a massive southwesterly Atlantic gale which swept across England, the Netherlands, northern Germany and Schleswig around January 16th 1362, causing at minimum 25,000 deaths.
But in January 1362 probably the greatest North Sea flood in history caused catastrophe. A ferocious storm swept across England, as one chronicler recorded: “A strong gale blew from the north so violently for a day and night that it flattened trees, mills, houses and a great many church towers.”
The violent winds drove a huge storm surge in the North Sea that wiped out the port of Ravensor Odd, on what is now Spurn Head, Yorkshire, at the mouth of the Humber Estuary. The flood swamped the Danish, German and Dutch coast-lines and changed their shapes. In the Netherlands the storm surge carved out a huge inland sea – what is now the Zuider Zee – and smashed the German coast into islands.
The (1st) Grote Mandrenke (Low Saxon for "Great Drowning of Men") was the name of a massive southwesterly Atlantic gale which swept across England, the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Schleswig around January 16, 1362, causing at minimum 25,000 deaths. January 16 is the feast day of St. Marcellus (pope Marcellus I), hence the terrible storm tide is also called the "2nd St. Marcellus flood". The "1st St. Marcellus flood" which drowned 36.000 men mainly in West Friesland and Groningen (today provinces in the north of the Netherlands) took place on the same day (January 16) in 1219.
