Flushing, Netherlands

From Free net encyclopedia

Flushing (Dutch Image:Ltspkr.pngVlissingen) is a municipality and a city in the southwestern Netherlands on the former island of Walcheren. With its strategic location between the Scheldt river and the North Sea, Flushing has been an important harbour for centuries. It was granted city rights in 1315. In the 17th century Flushing was a main harbour for ships of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It is also known as the birthplace of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter.

Flushing is mainly noted for the wharves on the Scheldt where most of the ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy (Koninklijke Marine) are built.

1 Population centres
2 History of the name 'Vlissingen'
3 Famous people
4 Transport
5 External links

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Population centres

Oude Stad (the "Old City")
Rosenburg
Paauwenburg
Papegaaienburg
Lammerenburg
Westerzicht
Oost-Souburg
Ritthem (West-Souburg is just a quarter)
Flushing

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History of the name 'Vlissingen'

The derivation of the name Vlissingen is moot. Most theories relate the name to the word fles (bottle) in one way or another.

According to one story, when saint Willibrord landed in Flushing with a bottle in the seventh century, he shared its contents with the beggars he found there while trying to convert them. A miracle occurred, familiar to readers of hagiography, when the contents of the bottle did not diminish. When the Bishop realised the beggars did not want to listen to his words, he gave them his bottle. After that, he supposedly called the city Flessinghe.

Another source states that the name had its origins in an old ferry-service house, on which a bottle was attached by way of a sign. The monk Jacob van Dreischor, who visited the city in 967, then apparently called the ferry-house het veer aan de Flesse (the ferry at the Bottle). Because many cities in the region later received the appendix -inge, the name, according to this etymology, evolved to Vles-inge.

According to another source, the name was derived from the Danish word Vles, which means tides.

In turn, the Dutch colony of Nieuw Vlissingen ('New Vlissingen') on the Antillian island of Tobago was definitely named for Vlissingen, as was Flushing, Queens an independent seventeenth-century township that became part of New York City in 1898.

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