Plan for a new fortification at Nieuw-Amsterdam

Title Leupe: Project voor de Berbice.

The military engineer Jean-Guillaume d’Arnaud was sent out in 1770 to oversee the scheduled reconstruction of Fort Nassau and Nieuw-Amsterdam. In 1771 he drew up several versions of a design for a new fortification on the site of the small fort that had been destroyed in 1763, In line with the final decision made by the directors to stick to the old location.

Two of the four project drawings that have been preserved are signed, including this one.

This plan shows the general layout of his new fort, including profiles of the walls but without any further details concerning the inner area.

The map VEL1632B likely shows the ground floor of the fort.

The design with the square ground plan and the two corner bastions placed diagonally opposite each other harked back to a model which, in European and colonial fortification architecture, had been common for at least a century and a half when it came to small secondary forts and field sconces but which was less suitable for a fortification on the scale anticipated by d’Arnaud; with its more than 80 metre long sides the new Fort Nassau would have a surface area four times as big as the previous structure.

The plan never gained the approval of the Society’s directors.

North is lower left.

Scale-bars of 10 Rhineland Rods = [approximately 1 : 515] / [profiles] 12 [Rhineland feet] = [approximately 1 : 1,160].