Plan for the reconstruction of fort Sint Andries

Title Leupe: Platte grond van de nieuwe Beschoeying van het fort St. Andries.

On 6th March 1781, more than a week after the occupation of Essequibo and Demerara, two English ships sailed into view of the recently renovated Fort Sint Andries, which was poorly equipped post and so after brief combat was forced to surrender. The small fort was subsequently set alight, after which the British proceeded unimpeded towards Fort Nassau where Governor Pieter Hendrik Koppiers (1778-1781) also found himself forced to capitulate, due to a lack of military personnel. After the expulsion of the British in February 1782, Sint Andries was provisionally patched up under French interim administration, but it was not until the French had departed in March 1784 that serious new plans for fortifications on the mouth of the river Berbice could be drawn up.

This draft depicts the proposal by Jan Carel Willem Herlin to add defences next to the breastwork of the Sint Andries Fort.

Two profiles and a ground plan shows how the defences or Beschoeyinge are to be constructed.

Scale-bars of 150 Rhineland feet = 90 ‘strepen’.