Did you know
Mud banks (or mud bays) are among the most striking natural phenomena along the Malabar coast, forming smooth-water anchorages, especially off Narakal and Alleppey. At the height of the south-west monsoon, the Arabian Sea lashes the shore with violent gales and heavy rollers. Fine, oily, greenish-black mud rises from the seabed and spreads through the water. The texture and density of this mud act as an elastic barrier. It softens wave energy and flattens the stormy surf until the roadstead becomes as calm and still as a “mill pond”. For centuries, foreign merchant vessels and European navigators anchored safely without heavy cables in open-sea sanctuaries, loading and discharging cargo peacefully while storms raged outside. Nineteenth-century observers noted that during the heaviest monsoon floods, water pressure from swollen backwaters inland forced underground channels to burst on the sea floor. The bursting channels threw up conical “mud volcanoes” filled with soft sediment, oil, and rotting plants. They recorded that the Alleppey bank shifted gradually southward down the coast by about fifteen miles in one century.
More about Vypeen Island
10- Did you knowVypin is the 58th most densely populated island in the world.
- Did you knowPallipuram Fort is the oldest existing European fort in India.
- Did you knowThe Vypin water metro station opened to the public on 26 April 2023.
- Did you knowThe Goshree bridges, about 3 km in total, link Vypin to Marine Drive in Kochi.
- Did you knowRegular boat services run from Fort Kochi to Vypin Island. Services can change.
- Did you knowThe Church of Our Lady of Hope was consecrated in 1605 by Bishop Dom Andrea de Santa Maria.
- Did you knowPortuguese sailors built Pallipuram Fort in timber on 27 September 1503, and rebuilt it in stone by 1505.
- Did you knowA bridge built in 2004 by the Goshree Islands Development Authority connects Vypeen Island to the mainland.
- Did you knowWhen the Dutch prohibited Roman Catholic worship inside Fort Kochi, Catholic priests were banished across the backwater to the newly formed island of Vypeen. There they established the Church of Our Lady of Hope, whose sanctuary still contains the historic altar and old decorative screen from Fort Kochi’s original Franciscan church.
- Did you knowBefore the 14th century, Cochin is completely missing from the travel writings of ancient writers and geographers. Pliny, Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and Ibn Battuta otherwise described ancient ports to its north and south. The modern port of Cochin and the neighbouring island of Vypin were formed in 1341 AD. Huge floods in the Periyar River blocked the ancient trading port of Muziris (Cranganore) with silt. The floods also broke open a deep, wide new outlet to the sea. This event was so great that local inhabitants began a calendar system. It is known as the Puthuvaippu Era (“new formation era”). They counted from the year the island emerged.