Every monsoon, Mumbai braces for the same challenge.

Heavy rain brings parts of the city to a standstill. Roads disappear under water, train services are disrupted, and neighbourhoods along rivers and the coastline are often flooded.

The reasons are well known. Rapid urbanisation, shrinking mangroves, inadequate drainage, rising sea levels, and increasingly intense spells of rainfall all play a role.

But one chapter of Mumbai's flooding story began more than 240 years ago, when the city as we know it did not yet exist.

In the late 18th century, present-day Mumbai was a cluster of seven islands separated by tidal creeks, marshes, and mudflats. At high tide, seawater regularly swept into the low-lying areas between them, flooding farmland and making travel difficult.

As the British East India Company sought to transform Bombay into a major trading port, controlling these tides became a priority.

Their solution was the Hornby Vellard, an embankment built in 1782 to block seawater from entering one of the city's most troublesome inlets.

The structure solved an immediate problem and paved the way for Bombay's expansion. It also marked the beginning of a series of land reclamation projects that would gradually reshape the city's coastline.

More than two centuries later, that transformation continues to influence conversations about why Mumbai floods and how the city can better prepare for the monsoon.

Before Mumbai became one city

It's hard to imagine today's Mumbai as seven separate islands, but that was once its natural geography.

Colaba, Old Woman's Island, Bombay, Mazgaon, Parel, Mahim, and Worli were divided by creeks, estuaries, salt marshes, and mangrove forests. The landscape shifted with the tides. Areas that appeared as dry land in the morning could be submerged beneath seawater just a few hours later.

For the Koli fishing communities, who had lived along this coast long before the Portuguese and the British arrived, these tidal rhythms shaped everyday life.

Fishing routes, settlements, and livelihoods depended on the movement of the sea. Mangroves protected the shoreline from erosion, while wetlands and creeks carried excess rainwater back into the Arabian Sea during the monsoon.

The British, however, saw the islands through a different lens.

Bombay had already begun to emerge as an important trading settlement, but its geography limited its growth. Moving people and goods between the islands depended on the tides. Saltwater regularly damaged farmland, and constructing roads or expanding settlements across marshy terrain was difficult.

If Bombay was to become a thriving commercial centre, the landscape itself would........

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