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Here, on what is now dry land, on the morning of June 24, 1340, 800 ships of war, full of armed men 35,000 of them were drawn up in line of battle; and further out to sea, beyond the entrance of the Zwijn, the newly-risen sun was shining on the sails of another fleet which was manuvring in the offing. 'In the cities of Flanders, says Dr.
There are still some traces of the ancient bed of the Zwijn amongst the fields near Coolkerke, a village a short distance to the north of Bruges a broad ditch with broken banks, and large pools of slimy water lying desolate and forlorn in a wilderness of tangled bushes. These are now the only remains of the highway by which the 'deep-laden argosies' used to enter in the days of old.
But the old burg, it seems, was not thought capable of holding out against the Normans, who could easily land on the banks of the Zwijn; and Baldwin, therefore, set about building a new stronghold on the east side of the old burg, and close to it. It was surrounded partly by the main stream of the Roya, and partly by backwaters flowing from it.
The Burgundian provinces under the wise administrations of Margaret and Mary, and protected by the strong arm of the emperor from foreign attack, were at this period by far the richest state in Europe and the financial mainstay of the Habsburg power. Bruges, however, had now ceased to be the central market and exchange of Europe, owing to the silting up of the river Zwijn.
As soon as there was light next morning, the English weighed anchor and sailed along the coast to the east; past lonely yellow sands, which have swarmed during recent years with workmen toiling at the construction of the immense harbour of See-Brugge, which is to be the future port of Bruges; past what was then the small fishing hamlet of Heyst; past a range of barren dunes, amongst which to-day Duinbergen, the latest of the Flemish watering-places, with its spacious hotel and trim villas, is being laid out; past a waste of storm-swept sand and rushes, on which are now the digue of Knocke, a cluster of hotels and crowded lodging-houses, and a golf-course; and so onwards till they opened the mouth of the Zwijn, and saw the French ships crowding the entrance, 'their masts appearing to be like a great wood, and beyond them the walls of Sluis rising from the wet sands left by the receding tide.
It is quite inland now, miles from the salt water; and from the high ramparts which still surround it the view extends to the north across broad green fields, covering what was once the bed of the sea, in the days when the tide ebbed and flowed in the channel of the Zwijn, over which ships passed sailing on their way to Bruges.
The Roya, flowing eastwards, fell into the Zwijn, an arm of the sea, which then ran up close to the town, and on which stood Damme, now a small inland village, but once a busy port crowded with shipping. Towards the end of the ninth and at the beginning of the tenth century great changes took place on the banks of the Roya, and the foundations of Bruges as we know it now were laid.
The heavy volume of water which poured with every ebbing tide down the Scheldt between Flushing and Breskens swept past the island of Walcheren, and spread out into the North Sea and down the English Channel, leaving the mud it carried with it on the sands round the mouth of the Zwijn, which itself did not discharge a current strong enough to prevent the slow but sure formation of a bank across its entrance.
The English fleet anchored off the coast between Blankenberghe and Heyst on the evening of June 23, and from the top of the dunes the English scouts saw in the distance the masts of the French ships in the Zwijn.
From this point the canal, which has a depth of 26-1/2 feet and is fed by sea-water, runs in a straight line to Bruges, and ends at the inner port, which is within a few hundred yards of where the Roya used to meet the Zwijn. It is capable of affording a minimum capacity of 1,000,000 tons per annum, and the whole equipment has been fitted up necessary for dealing with this amount of traffic.
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