Mumbai was originally a group of 7 islands with a shallow sea water in between. Britishers reclaimed the land and connected all 7 islands to create a new port city - Bombay.
The seven islands of Bombay were 16th century Portuguese territories lying off the west coast of India, that were handed over to England under this title as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, married to Charles II in 1661.
After acquiring them as dowry, Charles II rented the islands to the East India Company in 1668 for 10 pounds of gold a year. By 1845, the islands had been merged into one landmass by means of multiple land reclamation projects. The resulting island of Bombay was later merged with the nearby islands of Trombay and Salsette that lay to its North-east and North respectively to form Greater Bombay.
The original islands handed over to England were as follows
Isle of Bombay
Colaba
Old Woman's Island (Little Colaba)
Mahim
Mazagaon
Parel
Worli
Former Retd at Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (1984–2015)2yBy 1845, the islands had been merged into one landmass by means of multiple land reclamation projects. The resulting island of Bombay was later merged with the nearby islands of Trombay and Salsette that lay to its north-east and north respectively to form Greater Bombay.
The original islands handed over to England were as follows:
- Old Woman's Island (Little Colaba)
The area at the core of Mumbai city today was built by uniting seven islands – the Isle of Bombay, Colaba, Old Woman's Island, Mahim, Mazagaon, Parel and Worli. These were then united with the islands of Salsette and Trombay towards the north, to form Greater Mumbai.
By 1845, the islands had been merged into one landmass by means of multiple land reclamation projects. The resulting island of Bombay was later merged with the nearby islands of Trombay and Salsette that lay to its north-east and north respectively to form Greater Bombay.
The original islands handed over to England were as follows:
- Old Woman's Island (Little Colaba)
The area at the core of Mumbai city today was built by uniting seven islands – the Isle of Bombay, Colaba, Old Woman's Island, Mahim, Mazagaon, Parel and Worli. These were then united with the islands of Salsette and Trombay towards the north, to form Greater Mumbai.
The seven islands of Bombay were an archipelago that were, over a span of five centuries, connected to form the area of the modern city of Mumbai. The seven islands were gradually physically united through land reclamation projects. The original archipelago was composed of the following islands:
Isle of Bombay,
Colaba
Old Woman’s Island (Little Colaba)
Mahim
Mazagaon
Parel
Worli
The nearby islands of Trombay and Salsette were merged to form Greater Bombay.
The remaining islands are:
Gharapuri Island/Elephanta Island
Butcher Island
Middle Ground Coastal Battery
Oyster Rock
East Ground
In the 1970s, the Supreme Court instituted a series of injunctions protecting the shoreline and access to it for fishermen. These injunctions, along with the creation of Coastal Regulatory Zones in the 1990s and growing environmental concerns, have significantly decreased the number and scale of land reclamation projects pursued in Mumbai.
Details
It took over 150 years to join the original seven islands of Mumbai. These seven islands were lush green thickly wooded, and dotted with 22 hills, with the Arabian Sea washing through them at high tide.
The original island of Mumbai was only 24 km long and 4 km wide from Dongri to Malabar Hill (at its broadest point) and the other six were Colaba, Old Woman’s island, Mahim, Parel, Worli, Mazgaon.
The first major reclamation took place in 1708, to construct the causeway (a causeway is a road or railway elevated, usually across a broad body of water or wetland.) between Mahim and Sion. The second major reclamation took place in 1772, to stop the ingress of water and the consequent flooding of central Mumbai, and to connect Mahalaxmi and Worli. This is regarded as the oldest unauthorised construction that took place in Mumbai and the offender was the erstwhile Governor of Mumbai, William Hornby at a total expenditure Rs 1,00,000. The approval for the reclamation had been sought from the company of directors in England, Hornby did not expect a rejection and went ahead with the construction. The rejection arrived a year later, but, the causeway was complete and Hornby was sacked. This causeway was named Hornby Vellard, sealing the Great Breach (Breach Candy) between Dongri, Malabar hill and Worli.
In 1803, Mumbai was connected to Salsette by a causeway from Sion. Colaba Causeway joined the island of Colaba to Mumbai in 1838, and Mahim and Bandra were connected by a causeway in 1845 at a total cost of Rs 1, 57, 000 donated entirely by Lady Avabai Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, wife of the first baronet Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy (the government refused to build these causeways).
After that a series of causeways were built under different governors.
Independence did not end the reclamation work but a third Backbay Reclamation was put into effect and yielded the acreage on which stand the high rises of Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade. Eventually, the Supreme Court injunction protecting the shoreline and access for fishermen has slowed down the work since 1970. The Supreme Court has added more restriction in 1990s with the Coastal Regulatory Zones. The Backbay Reclamation Project symbolised a major shift in the spirit of the city from Victorian to an International city.
So; hope this brief answers your question. Natural reasons; and probably the desire of the British to build another port for international maritime trade. The Western coast of India was also closer to the U.K. The city was the principal supplier of cotton to Britain during the American civil war, the population soared and more money/business flooded into the city. Traders such as Sassoon(a Baghdadi Jew); the establishment and development of the Bombay Stock Exchange, and a few other notable businessmen also became richer due to trade in cotton and opium in the late 1800s. The seven islands including Salsette(where most of the suburbs are presently) needed to become a bigger, more integrated city.
Mumbai, as we are seeing today was built by the British rulers in India. Somewhere around 1820′s, the Britishers joined the then existing seven islands by reclamation to form the present day Mumbai.
Reclamation of the 7 islands was done to make Bombay as a port city. This was the main reason to connect all islands.
The arrival of many British merchants led to the development of Mumbai as a trade by the end of the seventeenth century. at the time of Ameriacan Civil war outbreak in 1861, mumbai port is used for exporting of cotton to the West, and led to an enormous increase in cotton-trade throug
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Reclamations
The Great Breach
The only record which survives of large-scale engineering before the arrival of the Portuguese is that of the remnants of a massive stone causeway across the Flats on the island of Bombay. These Flats were the low-lying lands between Dongri and Malabar hills, seperated from the island of Worli by the Great Breach, through which the sea poured in at high tide.
Pydhonie and Umarkhadi
The Great Breach may have extended almost to Umarkhadi, the creek seperating Bombay from Mazagaon. Occasionally the two would be linked by a shallow creek at the site of the crowded present-day bazaar area of Pydhonie. Only the name, which means "foot wash", now gives a clue to the fact that it was once a creek, because this was probably the first piece of land to be reclaimed from the sea.
Quite as likely, Umarkhadi was also filled in soon after the arrival of the British and joined Mazagaon irretrievably to Bombay. The last story in which Mazagaon appears as a seperate island relates to its occupation by the Sidi of Janjira in 1690-1. He was repelled by a rag-tag navy of fishermen led by the amateur Parsi admiral Rustomji Dorabji.
The Hornby Vellard
Early efforts at land reclamation concentrated on the small creeks crossing the northern Flats of Bombay island. Several of these were dammed or filled in during the eighteenth century. As a result, the areas north and east of Umarkhadi and Mazagaon were slowly settled in this period. However, the next major reclamation was due to the closure of the Great Breach north of Cumballa Hill in 1784 by the building of a sea-wall called the Hornby Vellard. The wall allowed reclamation of the Flats and supplied about 400 acres of land for the extension of the crowded inner city. The precincts of Mahalaxmi, Kamathipura, Tardeo and parts of Bycullah were settled.
Colaba and Old Woman's Island
The fort area and the older parts of the Indian town were extremely crowded by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The rich English and Parsi merchants had already moved to the new suburbs of Mazagaon and Bycullah. In 1796, the island of Colaba was declared a cantonment area, and civilians were refused permission to build there. As boat traffic to Colaba increased over the next few decades and many people perished due to overloaded boats capsizing, the need for a Causeway became evident. The Colaba Causeway was completed in 1838, and used Old Woman's island as a stepping stone to Colaba.
[Image] Map of Bombay (1846): (59 Kbytes)
The First Backbay Reclamation Scheme
The first Backbay Reclamation Company was formed during the boom years of the early 1860's, with the stated purpose of reclaiming the whole of Backbay, from the tip of Malabar Hill to the end of Colaba. When the American Civil War ended in 1865, a depression set in and land prices fell. The company went bankrupt and was liquidated. The government took over the narrow strip of land that had been created and gave it to the BB&CI Railways for the purpose of laying a line from Churchgate to their new terminus in Colaba.
The Dockyards
The Backbay reclamation was a major fiasco. The real work took place on the eastern shore of Bombay. All the way from the Sassoon Docks in the south to Sewri in the north, land reclamation proceeded all through the second half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth.
The Elphinstone Land and Press Company was formed in 1858 to reclaim 250 acres of land from Apollo Bunder to Mazagaon, and a further 100 acres at Bori Bunder, to be given to the GIP Railways for building a the Victoria Terminus. The company went bankrupt with the 1865 crash, and their equipment, along with the already reclaimed land, was given over to the newly-formed Bombay Port Trust in 1873. By the mid 1880's the reclamations were complete, and wet and dry docks had been built.
Early Twentieth Century
The Port Trust continued its work well into the Twentieth century. Between 1914 and 1918 it completed building a dry dock and used the excavated earth to create the 22 acre Ballard Estate. In the meanwhile another ill-advised Backbay reclamation had gone the way of the first. However, this created the land on which one of the city's most well-known landmarks was built-- the Marine Drive. The Art Deco buildings west of the Oval Maidan also stand on land reclaimed by this scheme.
[Image] Map of Bombay (1954): (21.1 Kbytes)
Late Twentieth Century
The Independence did not bring reclamation work to an end. The third Backbay reclamation scheme was put into effect and yielded the small acreage on which the high-rises of Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade are planted. The Naval Dockyards were reclaimed on the east, and smaller works were continued further north. A series of Supreme Court injunctions protecting the shoreline and access to it for fishermen have slowed such work since the 1970's. In the late 1990's the Supreme Court has further restricted reclamations by setting up Coastal Regulatory Zones.
The Hornby Vellard
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The Hornby Vellard
Did you mean: The Great Breach The only record which survives of large-scale engineering before the arrival of the Portuguese is that of the remnants of a massive stone causeway across the Flats on the island of Bombay. These Flats were the low-lying lands between Dongri and Malabar hill, separated from the island of Worli by the Great Breach, through which the sea poured in at high tideThe Great Breach
Pydhonie and Umarkhadi
The Hornby Vellard
Early efforts at land reclamation concentrated on the small creeks crossing the northern Flats of Bombay island. Several of these were dammed or filled in during the eighteenth century. As a result, the areas north and east of Umarkhadi andMazagaon were slowly settled in this period. However, the next major reclamation was due to the closure of the Great Breach north of Cumballa Hill in 1784 by the building of a sea-wall called the Hornby Vellard. The wall allowed reclamation of the Flats and supplied about 400 acres of land for the extension of the crowded inner city. The precincts of Mahalaxmi,Kamathipura, Tardeo and parts of Bycullah were settled.
![[Image]](https://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/images/Maps/bombay-map_1846.gif){kind=link}
![[Image]](https://theory.tifr.res.in/bombay/images/Maps/bombay-map_1954.gif){kind=link}