SEA-SODDEN HORSEY
By ANTHONY BUXTON
THE first indication that I heard of disaster came from a farmer bursting into the house at 7.30 p.m. on February 12th with the words "The sea is in, Sir." After a phenomenal tide caused by a north-west gale just before full moon, the sea beating against the low line of sandhills that protects, or rather protected, a great tract of low land, had burst through these sandhills on a width of ro yards and was rapidly covering arable and marshes alike. I walked down the road and met the salt water about 150 yards from the house, and on the road was a mass of dead worms, many drowned hares, rabbits, pheasants and partridges.
Human inhabitants and with very few exceptions farm stock were safely evacuated. Most of the flooded houses have been reoccupied and structural damage is less than was expected. The two first attempts by the East Norfolk River Catchment Board to stop the breach were inadequate and the salt water lay on the land for three months, in the parishes of Somerton, Horsey, Waxburn and part of Hickling. All the fish in Horsey, with the exception of eels, were killed the first night and a few days later at Hickling. In their place there entered from the sea smelts, herrings, flat fish, crabs and barnacles. Practically all vegetation was destroyed, with the exception of reed. Since there is no natural fall, all the water in normal times has to be drained by pumping into the high-level system of broads and dykes. This was the only possible method of getting rid of the sea-water. By day-and-night pumping after the breach was closed this salt water was lifted into the high-water system and started on its slow journey of 21 miles back to the sea at Yarmouth. But even now the water in Horsey Mere is salt and is likely to remain so until many inches of rain have fallen and been in turn pumped into the broads. The land is a red-brown salt desert, that reminds me of the interior of Asia Minor, and the only forms of vegetation that are really thriving are samphire, the seeds of which must have been brought in by the sea, a maritime sedge, pinrush (not common rush) and a goose foot, locally known as fat hen.
Experiments are in progress to discover what if anything will grow, but so far their results are negative. Six packets each containing seeds of 250 wild species of plants have been used in these experiments. The contents of five of the packets were sown in five different plots in the deva- stated area. The sixth packet was kept as a control and sown in boxes containing good garden soil. The seeds in this sixth packet germinated at once and the boxes became miniature forests in a few days. Not a single seed in any of the five other packets has shown any signs of life and lusty young seedlings from the control packet planted in the salted land died in a night.
Trees behaved in a peculiar way. Many of them made repeated, in some cases violent, efforts to produce leaves and flowers. In nearly every case these efforts ended in complete failure, but there are a few examples of isolated success, or apparent success, in avoiding death. A few oaks growing along a dyke, for instance, seemed to produce almost normal foliage, whereas no other oak or conifer, except four Corsican pines, in the wood shows any sign of life. At another spot a group of young birches growing in the middle of a sedge marsh appear almost normal, whereas their elder brethren growing on the sides of dykes quite close to them lost all the few leaves they put forth. These exceptions to the general destruction are probably due to fresh water-springs. Any sowing on agricultural land that approached high- water mark failed at once. There was only one exception to complete destruction of an agricultural crop washed by the sea-water. A grass field was only covered by salt water for a few hours on the first night of the floods. All the clover was destroyed but some of the coarse grasses survived. The reed, which is used for thatching, is severely checked but not killed : it has grown to an average height of 2 feet instead of 5, and contrary to the normal rule the reed on the lowest ground has made the poorest growth. The lesser bulrush Which provides summer insect food for bearded tits, and also the thick stems of "mixed reed," are almost entirely killed, but faint signs of growth in isolated spots give some hope of slow recovery. That rare plant, the marsh sow thistle (Souchus Palustris) has survived, but has received a bad shock. It is now (Sep- tember 7th) in full flower, but has not reached more than half its normal height. Horsey is one of its few homes in these islands.
' The question on everyone's lips is how long, if the sea be kept out, will recovery take ? In answering that ques- tion there seems to be no reliable evidence except other cases of sea flooding, and in those where careful records have been kept (floods in Essex, on the Humber and in Holland), the sea-water was only on the land for a fortnight, whereas in the East Norfolk floods it was on continuously for three months. In these other cases complete recovdry Wok from three to twenty years, and the more the land was worked, the slower was that recovery.
The salt turns the soil into a sodium clay with the con- sistency of putty. It will not work, it will not drain, and attempts to plough it or even to harrow it apparently retard natural processes of recovery. Therefore we are sitting tight, watching the experiments and following the advice of the ex- perts, who say that when the worms come back we can begin to hope. The only worm at present is the wire worm; nothing, not even salt, will kill him.
The flooded district is famous as a haunt of marsh-loving birds, and the effects of the flood upon them have been disastrous. Their food-supply has gone and they have gone with it. The few that tried to breed in practically every case failed to produce a family. Water-hens, for instance, remained in quite large numbers, but not a single young water-hen has been seen. The bitterns nearly all moved further inland, and those that remained failed to boom until June, producing nothing but a single grunt until mid-. summer. One pair, however, discovered in an isolated spot a supply of frogs, and with their help and the eels, which seem quite unaffected, nested and reared a family. The two pairs of harriers that .tried the experiment of remaining produced one chick from ten eggs, five per nest. The bearded tits wandered about in search of food and nesting-places, and the few that tried to breed completely failed. Reed warblers were not much affected, sedge warblers, grasshopper warblers and others gave the desert a passing look and decamped at once in disgust. The few that were foolish enough to remain spent a miserable and profitless summer. The one exception are the pigeons; wood pigeons, stock doves, and in particular turtle doves, seem to thrive on salt.
It is all very interesting no doubt, but life in a small oasis, surrounded by a red desert streaked and blotched by green reed, is rather depressing.
Previous page
