On the night of St Elizabeth's day a North Sea storm surge breached dikes around the Grote Hollandse Waard, drowning a populous and prosperous reclaimed region of the southern delta. Dozens of villages were lost and the inundation created the Biesbosch, a tidal freshwater wetland that persists today. Attempts to re-drain the area largely failed for generations. The disaster is among the deadliest in Dutch history, with traditional death tolls in the thousands.
It demonstrated the fragility of early reclamation and shaped a lasting national awareness that drained land must be defended in perpetuity.
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