Grote Mandrenke

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The (1^st) Grote Mandrenke (Old North Frisian for "Great Drowning of Men") was the name of a massive southwesterly Atlantic gale (see also European windstorm) 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 "2^nd St. Marcellus flood". The "1^st 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.

An immense storm tide of the North Sea swept far inland from the Netherlands to Denmark, wiping out entire towns and districts, such as Rungholt on the island of Strand in North Frisia.

This storm tide, along with others of like size in the 13th century and 14th century, played a part in the formation of the Zuider Zee, and was characteristic of the unsettled and changeable weather in northern Europe at the beginning of the Little Ice Age.

[edit] See also

• Burchardi flood — "the second Grote Mandrenke" of October 11 and 12, 1634
• North Sea flood of 1953