The Draining of the Fens 191 



beds of the estuaries were continually being raised. This fact, combined with 

 the lowering of the peat surface in the interior of the Fenland (see Fig. 47), 

 made the outfall channels almost as liigh as the peatlands behind.' The fresh 

 waters found great and greater difficulty in reaching the sea, and the main- 

 tenance of a clear charmel seawards became of paramount importance. As 

 Colonel Dodson wrote in 1664, just after Vermuyden's draining: "if we 

 cannot be masters there, all other endeavours signifie nothing". The great 

 controversies of the eighteenth century were outfall controversies, con- 

 cerned with topics like the disposition of sluices, the mechanics of silting, 

 the formation of sandbanks, and the nature of tidal scour. Thomas 

 Badeslade's pamphlet of 1729 was but one of very many. As he said: 



all parties acknowledge the misfortune, for they all suffer; but all do not agree in 

 the cause of this general calamity, nor in the method that must be put in practice 

 to reheve them ; but all agree and declare, that if something be not done, this 

 country will be rendered uninhabitable. 



By 1800, the Ouse reached the sea through a channel of varying width, 

 filled with shifting sandbanks; in the Nene, "ships of large burden could 

 no longer reach" Wisbech ; the Welland estuary, too, was full of shoals; 

 that of the Witham was in no better plight. During the nineteenth 

 century, various remedies were tried. New cuts were made, straightening 

 and improving the lower tidal courses of the rivers. The estuary most 

 affecting the Cambridgeshire fens was that of the River Ouse. Above King's 

 Lynn, the Ouse (carrying so much of the water of the Bedford Level) made 

 an extensive bend of about 6 miles to St Germans (see Fig. 48). The channel 

 was nearly a mile wide in places, and comprised a number of imcertain 

 streams. During floods, the flow of the river was much impeded, and 

 it was clear that no improvement could result until the obstructions had 

 been cleared. The remedy was to cut off the great bend of the Ouse ; to 

 make the new channel large enough to contain the whole body of the 

 river; and, incidentally, to increase the velocity of the current by shortening 

 the line of the stream.* An Act was obtained in 1795 enabling the cut to 

 be made, but the work was not started until 18 17. Finally, in 182 1, seventy 

 years after it had been first proposed, the Eau Brink Cut was opened. It 

 had an immediately beneficial effect upon the Middle and South Levels — 

 imtil further accumulations of silt made new improvements urgent. In 

 1852, further straightening was secured by means of the Marsh Cut 

 towards the sea. Some years before this (in 1846), the Norfolk Estuary 

 Company had been estabhshed. Intended to recover land from the Wash, 

 the primary object of this body became the maintenance of an extension 

 seawards of the Eau Brink Cut. Training walls were built to induce the 



' See p. 186 above. * See p. 117 above. 



