A Monthly Publication

 By Jim Welham

 During the 20^th century there have been several schemes to dam the Wash for reasons as diverse as protecting the fenland from being flooded by seawater, creating a huge area of farmland, or a vast freshwater reservoir.  Other ideas involved changing the courses of the four main rivers so they all had the same outfall, or diverting them from the Wash altogether allowing it to silt up. Due to apparently insurmountable difficulties none of these projects passed the discussion stage. 

· The rivers Great Ouse, Witham, Nene, and Welland drain water from 12% of the area of England which flows through the fens and can only be discharged into the Wash at low tide.

· The bed of the Wash was rock and sand and valueless for the purpose of agriculture

· The ports of Kings Lynn, Wisbech and Boston would no longer be accessible to shipping.

However Leonard Weaver, of the Dynamic Electric Company, Derby Lodge, East Sheen had a far, far greater vision of not only of damming the Wash, but of providing cheap electricity for much of England.

  On Saturday 10 November 1928 he delivered what was described as a magnificent oration at Hunstanton Town Hall, to a crowded meeting presided over by Lord Fermoy, MP. Weaver described how his dam would extend from Hunstanton to Gibraltar Point, near Skegness, and would convert the Wash into an inland lake of 125 square miles, turning it into an area for sailing, and fish breeding of national importance. Great dredgers would throw up huge embankments about 120 to 150 feet wide at their base, tapering to 18 feet at the top, all of which would be covered in concrete. A road on top of the dam would save motorists the detour of 70 miles round the coast.  A series of improvements would be made between New Hunstanton and the old village.  Amongst these would be a promenade of concrete built along the base of the cliff and the present dangerous areas would be shaped down and the rock used for building purposes. The cliff face above the promenade would be concreted over in which a series of rock gardens would be constructed.  Ships would pass through locks in the dam and sail along embanked deep water channels to the ports of Lynn, Boston and Wisbech. There would be employment provided for 4,000 men currently on the dole who would bring to Hunstanton a spending power of at least £10,000 a week.

The other part of the project was to harness the tidal waters of the Wash in order to generate electrical energy. An embankment would run from the dam 8 miles off Hunstanton, for about 6 miles in the direction of Kings Lynn then return to the land at Wolferton. An area of 31,500 acres would be enclosed, which would in turn be divided by another 8 mile-long dam creating a high level basin of  22,500  acres on the Hunstanton side  and a 9,000 acre low level basin on the Kings Lynn side. 

The power station situated on the dam near Snettisham would be equipped with special turbines suitable for salt water. Sluice gates would permit the inflow of the tide into the larger basin at high tide, and as soon as the tide started to ebb, those gates would close automatically. The water from the high basin would then fall at least 17 feet through a series of turbines into the second empty basin generating infinite energy, before the water was returned to the sea at low tide. A continuous supply of power would be maintained, and nowhere in the world was more suitable for such a scheme than the Wash. A cubic foot of fresh water weighed 62 lbs; sea water 64 lbs; and if dropped 17 feet, which was the minimum height of the tide, every foot of water would represent over 1,000 lbs. How much electricity would be generated by an acre of water dropped through a modern turbine? 24 million acres of water each year could be used to generate a yearly output estimated at 2,628,000,000 horse power when each hour produced 300,000 hp. On the basis of 80% efficiency the annual income would be £730,000, providing shareholders with a substantial return on their investment.  This would mean that 5,500 tons of coal would be saved each day, a total of 2 million tons a year. The Wash could supply the electricity required for the 25 million people in the East of England, London, and the Home Counties as far as Brighton, not only on the scale used then, but what would be needed in 50 years time. He predicted no engineering difficulties. The dam would follow the line of low water on a good sand bed, and as it would be exposed 8 hours out of 12 when the tide was out, the work of inspection and maintenance could be reduced to a minimum. The people of Hunstanton would only be able to see the full basin and would not need a telescope to see the sea as the tide would always be in, making Hunstanton the finest gem on the coast.  Weaver said that every tide hurled millions of tons of water on the shores of England and none had been used for the purpose the Almighty had intended. The message of the waves was, “Use me.” He said that electricity had grown in importance, and the era was beginning when it would be the greatest force in the world. Up to then coal had caused England’s pre-eminence, but King Coal was dying. He remembered seeing the first building illuminated by electricity, the Winter Gardens at Morecambe Bay. Thousands of people had paid their shillings to see the wonderful lights. Everyone was now familiar with electricity, but not everyone knew that the cheapest way of producing electrical energy was by the power of water. In Great Britain there were a number of hydro-electric plants on rivers which sometimes ran dry, yet the sea was unfailing. The cost of the hydro-electric plant, the 30 miles of dams and the dividing dam between 2 basins on which the power house would be built would be no more than £4,600,000. He was not asking the audience to invest their money in one shilling shares in the Dynamic Electrical Company, but to show their support for this great enterprise because of the improvement in amenities that would develop as a result.

Lord Fermoy declined to express an opinion about the scheme, but members of the Hunstanton Urban District Council and the Advancement Association said that they had been impressed and several attended a superb banquet at the Sandringham Hotel.

Journalists interviewed members of the public to gauge their opinion.  Mr H G Ward, the clerk to the Hunstanton Urban Council said that he would not offer any opinion of the scheme except that to him, it appeared impossible to accomplish.  He had heard of such schemes before and they had never come to anything.  

Independent experts were unanimously against the proposal.

· No dam could withstand the violence of the tides and gales, especially as it would not have a solid foundation. Memories were still fresh of the expense and labour that had been required to alter the course of the river Ouse, which had been a comparatively small project.

· The water from the rivers would inundate the flatlands from Cambridge to Lincoln, and conditions would revert to those of Roman times. The drainage of the fenlands depended on the tidal ebb and without it an area of at least 8 times the size of the Wash would be flooded.  It would be difficult to judge to what depth, but over a million acres of the finest farmland could be affected.

· The water behind a dam would become brackish – a mixture of fresh and salt water – and would destroy the breeding ground for species such as shrimps.

· Some areas in the Wash are 160 feet deep.  The sands are treacherous and moving all the time causing the channels for shipping to be changed frequently.  The menace of quicksand was shown by the wreck of the Wick Bay a 3,000 ton vessel which sank off Terrington and is now 10 feet below the surface of the sand.

These points were brought to Weaver’s attention who merely replied that there were no conditions that had not been provided for.

Weaver must have thought that public memory was short. It soon came to light that 20 years earlier he had been a boot and shoe repairer, then an evangelical preacher and occasionally a share tout. In the course of a lurid financial career Weaver had embarked on many staggeringly ambitious projects. He had been involved in company disasters too numerous to mention.  He had been declared bankrupt three times, and was still undischarged from the last occasion owing nearly £10,000. Four years previously he had promised to harness the tides on the river Blackwater, at West Mersea in Essex. He formed a company called the Weaver Tidal Power Syndicate, Ltd, which achieved nothing, though he disposed of the 50,000 shares which he had been given just before the company failed. All the other investors lost their money.  Weaver’s excuse on that occasion was that that his hands had been tied by bankruptcy. Now that he was even more fettered, his audacity at launching the present scheme was described as being without parallel. He had recently been severely censured for his dealings with the consolidated Brick and Coal Company and the Weaver Motor Engineering Company.

Weaver lost all credibility and became a figure of ridicule nicknamed Canute the Second after the Viking King who proved to his flattering courtiers that only God had the power to command the tides.

During the following year another idea to reclaim land from the Wash off Gibraltar Points and use it as a speedway track, golf course, aerodrome and sand yacht racing track also failed to achieve financial backing.

In 1962 a further study entitled ‘A basin full of water,’ regarding damming the Wash was published. It was estimated that at least 110,000,000 cubic yards of sand would be needed to create the embankment which could be protected by bitumen, nylon or plastic. An alternative would be to refine the methods used during the D Day landings and build huge, hollow concrete blocks weighing thousands of tons which would be able to float and which could be sunk exactly where they were required then filled with sand.

In 1972 two trial attempts to create artificial fresh water reservoirs in the Wash off Sutton Bridge, were abandoned as being too costly, but we may yet know what will happen if the Wash is dammed. 

The internet reveals that the Wash Tidal Barrier Corporation PLC intends to erect a barrier that will span the 18 kilometres of the Wash from Hunstanton to just south of Skegness.  An additional 5 km in Lincolnshire will reach high ground, which will manage the height of the tide, generate green energy and provide 500,000 people with flood protection.

· The tide would be used to create energy equivalent to the output of 2 nuclear power stations.

· The Wash could be farmed to provide farmed sea fish and shellfish, and offer the opportunity to use some of the sandbanks for agricultural, commercial and general use.

· The barrier would provide the backbone for a large number of wind turbines.

· It would be built with a modern method such as geotextiles (giant sandbags.)

· It is also proposed to use old car tyres to hold the sand which would provide a useful final resting place for a problem material.

· Locks would provide a protected, deep water port for shipping.

· The project would cost £2 billion and pump hundreds of millions into the local economy.

The completion date is expected to be April 2012.

Can all the previously described difficulties be overcome with modern technology or are there yet more Canutes waiting to be discovered?