Project plan for a new fort at Paramaribo according to the design no. 6

Title Leupe: Plan van het Fortresse Zelandia. Met de voorgestelde veranderingen.

After the Governor and Council of Surinam noted the bad condition of fort Zeelandia in the early 1700s, they commissioned a resident Huguenot, Isaac Tourton (1678-1742), to investigate the condition of the fort and make recommendations for improvements. In his report of 18 July, Tourton (1678-1742) concluded that Fort Zeelandia was not fit to defend the colony and that adaptations would be ineffectual. His recommendations of building an entirely new fort at the confluence of the Suriname and the Commewijne Rivers was, however, rejected by the councillors on account of the expected high costs and the unstable, muddy ground there. Instead, they asked Tourton to make a design for a fort to replace Zeelandia, for which he produced six variants (see VEL2030A1 to A6.) Design number six was ultimately endorsed to be built. In a subsequent letter, Tourton sent the ground plan of the present state of the fort and his worked out detail map of plan number 6. (See VEL2067B.) This map is an improved version of the latter, sent in 1712, on which the orientation of the planned fort have been slightly altered. Moreover, more defences around the fort itself have been added.

North is up.

Taken from: OBP Suriname 1712 [fol.] 351.

Scale-bar of 175 Toises each of six Rhineland feet = [approximately 1 : 1,200].