There are remembrance signs of the disaster everywhere, there’s a museum devoted to the disaster, and there are newer, stronger and more impressive coastal defenses everywhere along the coast here.
Perhaps that is what made me think once more of how Marienburg is supposed to be protected from high tides. Because I don’t understand the official explanation.
Marienburg, sold down the river describes how the city walls, called ‘The Vloedmuur’ (the flood wall, in English) protect the city against overflooding.
And elsewhere:A miracle of engineering, sufficient to keep even the mighty ocean at bay in times of need. Great pumping engines, the finest ever created by dwarven artisans, are kept ready to begin their work at a moment’s notice.’
How does that work?‘During times of dangerously high tides, residents near the walls can hear the rhythmic thrumming of the Dwarf-built pumps forcing water out into the swamp.’
First, look at the map of Marienburg. The city walls, the Vloedmuur, are only built on land. The part where the rising water will flow through at high tide, the river itself, is wide open. You can pump away all the water you want, but if it keeps flowing in from the sea, that won’t help.
Second, where does that water go to? To the swamps around the city, apparently. But if the tide is so high that the city is overflowing, then surely the swamps around the city are overflown as well. So if you pump water to those swamps it is a bit like taking a cup of water from one place in a bowl and emptying that cup somewhere else in that same bowl. You can move the water around all you want in the bowl, but that won’t lower the water level in there.
Theoretically, it could be that heavy dikes protect the Wasteland from the high tides of the Manaanspoort Sea. In that case, the swamps around the city are a different ‘bowl of water’ than the sea itself, and pumping water to those areas would help. But in that case, the pumps are a costly, energy-intensive (the pumps will require fuel or such to work) and maintenance-heavy solution. Making overflow areas in the dikes downstream from Marienburg, from where water can flow into the surrounding marshes when the levels get too high, is a much simpler solution which will keep the water level at a maximum, and probably one with a larger capacity than city-based pumps.
So I don’t understand how the Vloedmuur and the pumps really work.
Secondly, note how the Manaanspoort Sea is formed like a funnel with Marienburg at its narrowest point. Much like how in the real world the North Sea is a gigantic funnel, becoming smaller at the southern end. Seventy—two years ago, the combination of springtide and a northern storm pushed the waters at that southern end so high that it made the dikes break.
The same could happen in the Warhammer world. A northernly storm would push the waters toward the southern end of the Manaanspoort Sea, and make them reach high levels. Even moreso at high tide. And there are no dikes to protect the city - it has a wide open connection to the sea. There would be enormous quantities of water flowing into the river from the sea. Could the dwarf-made pumps really have the capacity to pump all that water away before it does significant damage?