Profile of the lock of a planned fortress on Crab Island

Title Leupe: Plan en profil van de nieuwe geprojecteerde redoute, op het Grabbe Yland aan de mond van Rio de Berbice.

This profile is part of a plan for a fort on the Crab Island.

A plan similar to this one had already been designed to no avail by P.M. Osterlin before 1735 (see VEL1611). That did not mean, however, that the notion of placing a fort on Crab Island had been entirely abandoned. Following sustained pressure from private planters in Berbice, the directors finally turned, in 1738, to the Society of Surinam with the request that the French engineer, Pierre-Dominique Desmaretz, then responsible for the construction of Fort Nieuw Amsterdam, be seconded to Berbice for some time so that he could come up with a new plan for the fortification of the island. Desmaretz travelled there the following year and developed the plan of which this profile was part.

These are two profiles of the lock which is to be built on the east side of the fortress.

Despite the reduction in cost achieved in comparison to the previous plan, even this version was found to be too expensive and so, as in the past, Crab Island remained unfortified.

Scale-bar of 50 Rhineland rods = 126 ‘strepen’.